Fastmail lets customers keep their main copy of email in the EU

Fastmail announced on August 3, 2026 that customers can now choose the European Union as the primary home for their Fastmail data. The EU copy lives on Fastmail’s own servers in Amsterdam. Until now, every Fastmail account was stored only in the United States.

What changed

Data residency is now a setting. It sits under Settings → Users & Sharing → Team Settings, in a Data residency section below GDPR. The status moves from queued to transferring to done, and the account stays usable while it moves.

Fastmail pre-selected the EU for customers with billing addresses in or near Europe. It copied an encrypted version of their data to Europe ahead of time, and that copy is set to become their primary copy shortly. Those customers can switch back to the US if they want. Everyone else can join a queue to move to the EU, which takes longer because all email has to sync to Europe first. Fastmail may limit how often an account changes region.

What it costs

Nothing extra. Fastmail says it considered a surcharge for EU storage and decided against it.

What it does not do

The post is direct about the limits. Fastmail has only one European site so far, so EU data still has a resilience copy in a US location, and emergency backups for all customers stay in Philadelphia. Fastmail says plainly that it cannot guarantee your data stays only in the EU. Choosing a region changes where the primary copy lives, not how well it is protected.

Who should care

Small businesses in Europe that want their mailboxes hosted mainly in the EU now have that option at Fastmail without paying more. Teams that need a guarantee that data never leaves the EU will need to look elsewhere for now.

What to do

If EU hosting matters to you, check the Data residency setting in your account and confirm where your primary copy is today before you rely on it for a compliance review.