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Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

• foobarian 5y ago
  And this is where all the nerds come in and say: "We told you so!" Spending anything more than a trivial amount of money for "cloud purchases" with next to no control over when the actual owner can change their mind, seems crazy to me.
• Macha 5y ago
  Well I think this is probably the push to move my email to fastmail, though for €5/month if they've got rid of the 5 user minimum I might pay for the archive/drive space/laziness.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    I don't remember the details, but fastmail was recently the recipient of some HN ire recently. Might be worth your time to search to see if it changes your opinion of fastmail. Lots of users chimed in with alts in the thread there.
• Aeolun 5y ago
  I feel like it would have been clear by now that anyone still expecting their Google account to be a safe store of any form of value was going to be dissapointed. Moved everything off of Google a few years ago and much happier for it. I certainly don’t have to worry when one of these threads inevitably appears every 3 months or so.
• Macha 5y ago
  > Yes. If your needs have changed and you don’t want to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription, you can use the Data Export tool to export your organization’s data. This is such a half assed answer. Data Export won't export my android purchases for example.
  • vesinisa 5y ago
    I think you can keep your Play Store purchases. If you do not upgrade to a paid subscription, your account is just converted to a free account under an external domain: https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646 Just make sure you set up working mail for your domain, e.g. run your own / use some other MX service.
  • Closi 5y ago
    I don't think this affects the android account, but even if it does you can just add an alternate email address to your android account to maintain access.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• svetagency 5y ago
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• obelix74 5y ago
  I am more or less done moving out of Google Workspace. This is what worked for me. TL/DR: - Create gmail accounts for each user - Configure POP3 at their domain gmail accounts - Pull email from domain to gmail - Move their google drive and google photos from domain - Disconnect google workspace from google domain - Setup email forwards at google domain from personal domain to gmail Details here. https://blog.anands.net/freeing-your-domain-from-google-workspace-c32bdc504c94 https://blog.anands.net/freeing-your-domain-from-google-work...
• neop1x 5y ago
  If this service weren't free and weren't advertised as free forever (see the original ToS [1]), more people would run their own email server and e-mail would be less centralized. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20090211101551/http://google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/standard_terms.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090211101551/http://google.com/...
• Normille 5y ago
  Is this for real? I've not received that email from Google. If so, I guess it's time to setup my own mailserver. I've been meaning to do it for a long while now anyway, as I'm not comfortable with the thought that Google is data-harvesting all my and my family's emails. But with mailservers being notoriously difficult to setup and configure securely, I keep putting it off. Time to get reading a few tutorials, methinks. Can anyone recommend a good lightweight email server [I have less than a dozen email accounts on my domain] and a useful tutorial on setting it all up securely? Incidentally, I run email accounts on some of my other domains, using Yandex Mail for Domains [0] which [at least last time I checked] was still free. Im slightly dubious about using it for my main domain though as I've found delivery to be less than 100% reliable. In the past, I've had one or two emails disappear completely. Yandex's own mail logs showed them being received, but they never showed up in my inbox or any of my other folders. I suspect Yandex have a slightly over-eager server level spam filter, which ate them before they ever reached my inbox. But Yandex's support are generally useless and were unable to tell me what had become of the emails in question, even when I presented them with their own mail log. [0] https://yandex.com/support/connect/add-domain.html https://yandex.com/support/connect/add-domain.html
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  • wayoutthere 5y ago
    Email is increasingly difficult to do yourself with the proliferation of anti-spam and anti-malware protection, combined with consolidated usage of SaaS apps for email across the board. Most of the IP address space in AWS and Azure is blacklisted by spam filters (as is customer IP space from most ISPs if they don’t already filter SMTP traffic), so unless you want to roll the dice on config settings for everyone you send email to, you’re generally going to need an authenticated relay for outgoing mail — and your best option will be one of the big cloud providers. If you want a secure mail service that won’t read your email, try ProtonMail.
    • derekp7 5y ago
      You can set up an email server to receive mail typically (assuming your ISP doesn't block it). For outbound mail, you can create a dedicated regular gmail address, and instruct it to accept sending emails out with an alternate email/domain in the From address and set up all outbound mail to route through that. (I haven't tried this yet, but it looks like all the pieces are there under the "send mail as" setting on gmail).
• comprambler 5y ago
  Unsure if this is true or not as I haven’t received anything as of yet. Finally, actual motivation to get off google. Probably will go to Outlook premium for my own domain’s email.
  • bouke 5y ago
    Indeed, I have been putting off migrating, but this surely is a great motivator to finally get off gsuite.
    • cypherpunks01 5y ago
      Agreed.. do you know where you will end up migrating to? I looked into FastMail a long time ago, at that time it was the best replacement for just the Gmail component with custom domain, not sure if it still is.
      • bouke 5y ago
        I looked into FastMail as well about 1-2 years ago. I’d like IMAP PUSH support for iOS, to replace the polling needed for gmail. Good support for iOS search is also needed, I haven’t investigated how FastMail works in that regard yet.
      • blibble 5y ago
        I moved from gsuite to fastmail about 6 months ago I'm pretty wary of any "automatic import from $previous_service" tools (having been bitten in the past) so I ran the fastmail importer against my user's accounts, then later reconciled this against the gmail/fastmail APIs with my own code ... it was completely byte-for-byte perfect (other than "muted" conversations, which weren't imported at all, that I dealt with separately) I was very impressed indeed
        • area51org 5y ago
          Thx for this. It's reassuring to hear.
    • 5y ago
• jbj 5y ago
  looking forward to more attention on nextcloud plugins!
• Ciantic 5y ago
  I used to setup bunch of these for my small business clients, I and them are going to have a bad day.
• Brajeshwar 5y ago
  For those not trying to host their own, you might want to look at Migadu[1]. I have quite a lot of domains still running on the legacy GSuite, and a few others on the paid workspace, and the remaining on Migadu (not relations but a happy customer). 1. https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com
  • loceng 5y ago
    I really like how they present themselves - with Pros/Cons link in main top nav - with first link being to the drawbacks. "No bulk messaging You cannot use Migadu to send mails fast. These attempts are monitored and will be quickly sanctioned. We do not approve of or accept bulk mailing, even if it is not spam. Please use dedicated services for that." I wonder if CC'ing or BCC'ing a list of 100 or 1,000 people every 3-6 months is included in this - if so that's probably the biggest turnoff so far.
    • jagger27 5y ago
      A large and important CC/BCC should probably be done through a mailing list, no?
      • mlyle 5y ago
        A lot of us have one-off use cases to email 80 people. There's that one time you need to email everyone on your kid's sports team even though you're not the coach, etc.
  • awill 5y ago
    Migadu is great overall. I've been using it for probably 3-4 years. I will say, they broke imap/pop without an announcement. They just silently changed the pop endpoint. I had to reach out to support to get the new endpoint. That's totally unacceptable without advanced notice. They also doubled the price and added worse storage limits in 2020 citing the pandemic and increased expenses. So it's something to be weary of. However, the price quality of the product are good, so I'm happy I migrated away from Google.
• AndrewDucker 5y ago
  I created a free account many years ago for my family. We've all been using it ever since for everything. So I have a lot of purchases and history in there. All of my YouTube stuff, all of my Android purchases. Everything to do with Google. And now they're going to start charging me $70 per family member or delete all of their purchases for the last decade or so. To say I'm aghast is putting it mildly.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • criddell 5y ago
    How are you calculating $70 per family member?
    • mig39 5y ago
      I guess it's $70 per user per year?
      • deleted 5y ago
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    • deleted 5y ago
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    • AndrewDucker 5y ago
      "Plans start at $6 /user/month" - $6x12months = $72 per year.
      • criddell 5y ago
        Oh I see. I thought you were saying $70 per month.
    • gadders 5y ago
      >> Plans start at $6 /user/month $6 * 12 = $72
• patja 5y ago
  I've been meaning to migrate but am more than a little leery of the potential for gotchas and disruption. Any advice from those who have gone through this already? I understand you just lose all your Google Play purchases and need to re-purchase any apps or subscriptions you want to keep. I'm assuming this will basically require an Android phone factory reset and to be setup fresh with a "new" Google account for the old email address? Is this the case? I also understand the need to do a Google Takeout and download everything. Already got bit by this once though when I recently did a Takeout to backup all my Google Photos content: a week or so later, after I had already permanently deleted the originals, I received an email from Google saying "sorry there was a bug in Takeout and some of your large videos were omitted from your exported data". I guess you need to comb through and verify everything actually made it to the Takeout to be safe. When you migrate an email address off of Google Apps for Your Domain to another email host or self-host, what happens to the Google Account for that email address? Is it possible to shut down the Google Apps for Your Domain service for the domain in question and then establish a new fresh Google account for the same email address (not a gmail address) that was formerly part of the Google Apps for Your Domain service?
  • awill 5y ago
    Oof, this sucks. I'd forgotten about losing all Android purchases. That totally sucks. You still need to get out though, as it will only get worse. I personally migrated by downloading and uploading over imap.
    • SkyPuncher 5y ago
      IMO, this seems like a lawsuit territory. "Start paying us or we'll hold your purchases hostage".
  • rjewell 5y ago
    I went through this last year. It was relatively smooth, but I did do a factory reset and spent a couple hours on the project just to be sure. I have been plagued by account problems for years, though, having signed up for services like YouTube with a personal email prior to creating the same email address in Google Workspace. I recommend avoiding it, and just using a free Gmail account for basic usage of Google docs and YouTube and your phone.
• michaelmrose 5y ago
  Bummer the only value I get out of the service as an individual user over Gmail is a custom domain. Migration is going to suck only because of stupidly relying on login with Google which won't work after I putge everything google from my life with fire. I'm presuming this includes paid apps that Google will be stealing when I decline to pay them by the month to keep them. Lesson learned don't use anything Google.
  • awill 5y ago
    I switched to Migadu a few years ago, as I realized that having a personal account with Google Workspace was a bad idea. All Google features kept getting delayed for Workspace users. Google removed the free tier (huge red flag on its future). Fortunately I just had to migrate email and calendar. You're in a bigger mess. Yep. Get out. Stop relying on Google for anything important.
    • antifa 5y ago
      Migadu starts at $20/year. Like everything else, almost all services with free tiers went crippled or paid-only with the pandemic, and last I checked all the SEO listed the same outdated options.
  • mgraczyk 5y ago
    You probably also get 65GB of storage for free, but you may not be using it.
• the-iceman 5y ago
  Long-time user of "Google Apps for Your Domain".....what's the easiest way to migrate 10 family members to regular Gmail?
  • kevincox 5y ago
    I don't think there is a good option here because I don't think you can use the same domain. You would need to switch to a service that can have multiple mailboxes on a domain.
    • the-iceman 5y ago
      I can handle setting up new email that still uses the domain. The issue is all the data/purchases/etc with the Google Apps account that can't be transferred to a regular Gmail account.
      • kevincox 5y ago
        Ah yes. That is also the problem I have and I don't think there is any option here. There was an internal experiment but I guess that didn't go anywhere before they decided to just close all of the accounts. The wording sounds like non-"Workspace" services will still be available so i guess you can theoretically still access purchases. Not great, because now I have half of my stuff in different accounts but not too bad.
      • jdofaz 5y ago
        Add "Cloud Identity Free" to your subscription, seems to have let me keep all my purchases. (I canceled my legacy subscription today to avoid future charges)
        • cynix 5y ago
          It seems it's not possible to add "Cloud Identity Free Edition" to your account while the legacy subscription is still active, and I don't want to risk cancelling it before the deadline in case it has other unintended consequences :(
• ggm 5y ago
  hmm. cost per user approaches alternate mail providers with domains. Self-hosting would be cheaper, but the problem is blacklisting of a VPS IP range for email sending. Probably, it requires some use of a specific SMTP service for mail and do all the rest in the self-host, but then that means finding SMTP-as-a-service for $ distinct from VPS, unless you can VPS host for the same cost inside one of the FAANG and avoid the SMTP blacklisting that way?
  • gSuiteLegacyUgh 5y ago
    Hmmm, SendGrid offers 100 sends per day for free and their "API" has an SMTP feature. I'm sure there are others. SMTP relay for outbound? I'm thinking of giving it a go.
    • ggm 5y ago
      I'm building out iredmail on my VPS now, to try this.
      • ggm 5y ago
        well.. to report back there are minor nits in the docs about "how to do it" but I succeeded in getting DKIM/SPF done, and google and pobox both honoured it for delivery which is something. (I used the google postmaster doorway to prove control of the domain) I think this approach may be viable.
• rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I have one simple rule. Never rely on Google for anything. Not email, not cloud storage, not infrastructure, *anything*. If you're going to use one of their products, cost-in the expense of moving everything out at a moments notice and keep constant backups of your data. My advice to anyone is to just avoid using Google for anything you expect to use long term.
  • criddell 5y ago
    A lot of us have been using it for more than a decade. I'm going to look around, but $6 / user / month doesn't seem outrageous to me.
    • rubyist5eva 5y ago
      I'm sure they are banking on people just ponying up the cash because they've been with them for so long. It's basically mafia protection payments. Pay us or we'll break your legs (delete all your data).
      • vl 5y ago
        Not at all, they actually would be happy to get rid of all these low value accounts. They don’t want to maintain separate SKU, and given that this option is not available for 10 years, any potential revenue is so tiny, they just don’t want to bother.
      • criddell 5y ago
        Do you know anybody else who will give me free hosting for the next 12 years before demanding payment? I think I'm okay with moving once every ten or twelve years.
        • quesomaster9000 5y ago
          I wish most places would even let me pay for 10 years at a time like you can do with domain names, when it comes to peace of mind in the event of unexpected circumstances (which is incredibly relevant now given COVID-19, losing your job, ending up in hospital for a few months etc.) How fragile is your infrastructure if one or two missed payments will wipe everything or even let somebody else take over your intangible identifiers because they're now 'inactive'.
• mgraczyk 5y ago
  I'm a Google employee who just found out about this. I'm not annoyed that I have to pay, it's been ~13 years of free service and I don't think Google is obligated to continue providing this to me. The annoying part is that Google doesn't provide any migration tool, but there are migration tools for Google Edu accounts so that graduating students can migrate their data to personal Google accounts. The software is evidently mostly written and tested, but for whatever reason it hasn't been brought over the finish line for other workspace users. Obviously our use case isn't that common (it's been "legacy" for years) but still annoying to know that there's probably some script I could run to do this, but nobody has built the web UI for it.
  • treesknees 5y ago
    The problem is, I'm not a freeloader despite having my free account for almost 13 years. I was a proud owner of Nexus phones, Google Fi subscriber, Google Music (YouTube Premium) subscriber, I've purchased apps and tv content on Google Play, and I also started paying for Google Drive storage after they removed the free unlimited photo backups. I had YouTube TV for a time. Having a powerful Gsuite service was a driving factor into the Google ecosystem for me. I've been slowly pulling out of Google's services as they've been shutdown, renamed, etc. This will be the ultimate drive off of their services for me. By wanting an extra $6/month/user, they are now losing out on a lot more. I'm sure that my situation isn't unique.
    • quesomaster9000 5y ago
      The long-tail isn't being considered here IMO. Dyn.com (nee DynDNS, in the dialup days) was bought out by Oracle, my nearly 20 year old lifetime VIP account will be terminated in May despite using a few thousand requests per month and in the past highly recommending their extortionately priced but rather excellent global load balancer and enterprise anycast services (to the tune of thousands of dollars per month). Likewise with Google, I had an original G1 phone and several iterations of the Pixel, have migrated several companies over to their excellent their cloud offerings, again to the tune of tens of thousands per month. It just feels like I'm getting the shitty end of the stick here. In both cases I could've done it cheaper myself with other providers, and had to strongly argue that the alternative (Dyn, Google Cloud, AWS etc.) is a pragmatic and possibly the best albeit expensive choice in the long-run.
• bmarquez 5y ago
  I'm a G Suite legacy user that is affected by this change, primarily using it for personal email. Extremely, extremely annoyed that Android app purchases will be lost. Since I also have Apple devices I'm considering moving over to iCloud+ since they now support 3 email boxes and 5 domain names per account: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 Other options I'm researching include Outlook Premium and Zohomail. Will be watching the comment section for other alternatives.
  • treesknees 5y ago
    This is what I'm planning to do. Hopefully Apple's anti spam is as good as Gmail.
  • echelon 5y ago
    "Free forever" I swear that we woke up 20 years in the future and that Google and Microsoft traded places.
    • CRConrad 5y ago
      Those of us who were awake for that time noticed that they didn't; Google just moved over to where Microsoft was and still is. The only difference is that Google got worse and Microsoft much better at PR, so many people are now under the misapprehension that Microsoft moved in the opposite direction.
  • Someone1234 5y ago
    The problem I have with iCloud+ isn't the product or price, it is how terrible Apple's web/cross-platform experience is. Say what you will about Google/Gmail, but it has always worked extremely well just in a browser let alone all their app offers.
    • jackson1442 5y ago
      Not since they redid the gmail UI, it's _intolerably_ slow. Granted, the only thing iCloud has going for it is the speed of the interface compared to gmail, the overall interface is rather poor. fwiw I use Fastmail, it's relatively inexpensive (~$100/3 years). My only real gripe is the app passwords tend to break, but the fastmail client is pretty good.
• SkyPuncher 5y ago
  I can't blame Google for this, but this is a pain. I'm likely a low-value customer and being intentionally churned out with this change (that's fine). Google really needs to figure out their customer support. I've always been hesitant to commit because I've feared I'd not be able to get support if I ran into an issue.
  • rkagerer 5y ago
    I can't blame Google for this I can. Free forever means exactly that. They shouldn't have made the promise in the first place if they didn't have a plan on how to sustain it. Along with their other behavior these days they are just another lying corporation. At least give folks a chance to migrate their purchases without forcing them to pay rent to keep what they ostensibly already own.
• boronine 5y ago
  I've heard that it's possible to strike a balance by self-hosting incoming email and outsourcing outgoing email to Amazon SES. SES provides SMTP credentials which should be fairly straightforward to use. Anyone has experience with this kind of setup?
  • thenickdude 5y ago
    SES for outgoing works pretty nicely, I don't think I ran into any gotchas. You can use SES for inbound email receipt as well, but unfortunately there's no POP3/IMAP service (emails just get stored in an S3 bucket). However you can use a Lambda to forward inbound email to a personal email account: https://github.com/arithmetric/aws-lambda-ses-forwarder https://github.com/arithmetric/aws-lambda-ses-forwarder
    • boronine 5y ago
      Thanks! Your solution may be best for usability. Researching further I found another solution that is perhaps best for privacy: https://github.com/markushinz/aws-ses-pop3-server https://github.com/markushinz/aws-ses-pop3-server SES -> S3 -> aws-ses-pop3-server -> desktop client with POP3 and SMTP Using this option, email is only really usable from a single device, but it avoids sharing private emails with yet another cloud, especially a free cloud that would share email with advertisers.
      • boronine 5y ago
        EDIT: Wanting a minimal implementation, I instead made a script: 1. List email files in S3 2. For each file, download into a local maildir-style directory, then delete original 3. Use `mutt -f ./maildir` to browse
        • thenickdude 5y ago
          Hmm you could probably use the AWS CLI's "aws s3 sync" command for that right? Sounds pretty practical
• quesomaster9000 5y ago
  Have been a G Suite legacy free user for over 10 years now, given my usage it costs them basically nothing, especially with the revenue they've made from my usage, purchasing via adverts etc. Fairly recently Google suddenly remembered ~$15 in adwords spend from just over 7 years ago, for a now defunct business I worked at where I had (presumably by accident) used my personal adwords account as a quick test. The problem is this was the first I'd heard about it, and in the UK it exceeds the statutory limitation period for debt recovery. I stated very clearly that what they were attempting to do is illegal in my jurisdiction and I'm more than happy to take them to the small claims court to recover costs and damages related to dealing with alleged non-payment and any subsequent account closure etc. While the fee eventually got waived, it was impossible to talk to anybody on the phone (as I had been advised) and I kept going in loops until finally being able to 'chat' to somebody who was more useful than a chocolate teapot. It seemed they wanted me to input some billing details so they could auto-upgrade me when the time comes. I won't be paying $6/mo, due to a spotty history I've had to rely on paying for domains for years in advance and relying on free services because the absolute last thing I want is one of my most important daily tools (e.g. account recovery, 2FA) being turned off because something unexpected happened - the amount of hassle that would cause is immense and could have some very serious knock-on effects that effectively lock me out of many other things. I know, Google can decide to block and terminate your account across the board, so far they haven't, but it has been on my mind for a while now. It's time to step-up my de-googling to the next level, and work on better continuity plans.
• yaacov 5y ago
  > As of December 6, 2012, Google stopped offering the free edition to new customers. 10 years of a free product is not bad
  • deweywsu 5y ago
    Nothing against you, but a clarification here: this is a service, not a product.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      For the free service, the user was the product. Now, the service is the product. Only since it's Googs, the user will still be a product too. Googs needs to re-watch the Seinfeld episode on double dipping.
  • vesinisa 5y ago
    Yes, and Hacker News calling it "killing for existing customers" is ridiculous. No service or access is being "killed" here - they are simply asking to start paying for it like everyone else.
    • bmarquez 5y ago
      One of the problems is that people who paid for Google Play purchases and other services have no way of migrating them to a free Gmail account.
      • edoceo 5y ago
        Or from free into the Paid ones - either move you pay twice.
        • KallDrexx 5y ago
          Wait, we'll lose our purchases even going from gsuite to workspace? Is that confirmed somewhere?
• batrachos 5y ago
  'Google kills' is the information technology equivalent of 'Florida man'. Always a fount of disappointed amusement.
• SteveNuts 5y ago
  Google is really on a killing spree lately. Can any insiders give us insight into whether the people at the top of Google are aware that they have a strong reputation in the community for killing things off?
  • withinboredom 5y ago
    not an insider but I don't think they really care.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      also not an insider, but it's obvious that Google is running out of runway and needs to start making money on its products lest it should shutter its doors. /s
  • aingisni_del 5y ago
    Do you really think they care about that reputation? It's simply binary: Product makes money, product does not make money. Did you think Google was giving away free stuff for "the community"?
    • SteveNuts 5y ago
      I'm not necessarily just talking about this particular instance, just in general that's definitely been the overall theme of the discussion when things like this happen. We're a paying G-suite customer so we're not affected, but we HAVE been affected by features that users adopt as part of their workflow and productivity that Google decides to axe on a whim. It makes us as an IT organization look stupid when our users come asking us where the feature they rely on went. I just want to know if leadership at Google has any inkling that this is their reputation or not.
    • evilduck 5y ago
      Loss leaders are a thing. I've had a free GSuite account on my personal domain which effectively acted as free job training and contributed to choosing them as an email provider for two companies I've worked for and clearly contributed to vastly more revenue than it would cost to host my personal GSuite account for my next 10 lifetimes. Over the last decade I've slowly but surely stopped recommending Google for anything they offer. It's been a slow attrition but I've wound up at zero. They've very effectively taken a good chunk of their best evangelists and turned them into detractors. I have no idea if they've done the math and decided that was worth it, but I sure hope they have and it's not just total incompetence from one of the biggest players in the industry.
• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I have a hard time remembering the last time something positive came from G. - a former Internet darling company that could do no wrong.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    Their maps and turn-by-turn navigation are still the best.
    • Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Not where I live: it often tries to lead me on the one way lane in the opposite direction. In Russia, Yandex Maps navigation is far superior.
    • Sunspark 5y ago
      Check out HERE maps. Solid.
    • Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
      Guessing you’re not a cyclist!
• iamben 5y ago
  I'm happy I've been able to use this (for free) for such a long time - genuinely great. But I do hope the 'seamless' transition will sort the things that just fell by the wayside, like the ability to review Play store apps etc.
• herodoturtle 5y ago
  What are some (paid) alternatives to using G-Suite for emails? Context: We're a small but relatively old SaaS company. Been happily using G Suite's free tier since day 1 - only for email. This announcement is a tad disappointing, but as other commenters have said, 10 years of a free product is pretty great. We'll likely upgrade to Google's paid tier, but out of curiosity, since we're switching to a paid service, we may as well explore alternatives too. Just need cloud email accounts for around 8 users, and with minimal risk of being flagged as spam. Thanks!
  • petemir 5y ago
    I used zoho for a long time, free tier.
    • MPSimmons 5y ago
      I use Zoho for some personal projects, and enjoy it. It's very full featured with a la carte pricing for additional services.
    • ValentineC 5y ago
      I used Zoho for an event's domain, and didn't like how they removed POP/IMAP for their free version without any prior notice. I'd trust them not to pull the rug any further even less than Google.
  • killerpopiller 5y ago
    I am happy with MS 365
    • sigzero 5y ago
      I already pay yearly for the apps. I can roll that cost in and it might be fine.
  • cpach 5y ago
    Fastmail.
• samueldr 5y ago
  I figure all play store purchases and similar content are now taken hostage. Are there any ways to migrate those licenses to a "google account"? Or am I being forced to pay to keep using licenses I already paid for? Oh, and what about my YouTube channel?
  • mpettitt 5y ago
    Historically, they've not been able to migrate purchases from g suite to Gmail - I've been asking on roughly an annual basis for the last 5 years. I really hope they are going to change that, although I don't buy much anymore thanks to a phone with very little app storage space.
  • Macha 5y ago
    This is my worry. Also device support, etc.
  • bmarquez 5y ago
    YouTube channels can be converted to a "brand account" then you can link it to a different email address. Play store purchases are probably lost (I'm in the same boat). I have no intention of repurchasing my Android apps so I guess its an easy permanent switch to iOS at this point.
  • snuxoll 5y ago
    This is really pissing me off because of this. I've dealt with annoying limitations on my Google Account that I created back when it was just "Google Apps for Domains" to have a custom email domain for myself and my family. The service has been plagued with limitations as Google has added new services, but I've dealt with it as a nuisance - now my account is being held hostage? Google can get bent. They advertised Google Apps as a solution for families way back when it was announced, and they're seemingly content to burn any good will it bought them.
  • donmcronald 5y ago
    Since you can have a Google account with a non-Gmail address [1] they should at least provide a way to switch to a non-Workspace account. I have a ton of app purchases tied to my account that are going to get stolen if I don't pay the extortion money. 1. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en
• treesknees 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432
• batch12 5y ago
  I needed this. Finally an excuse to get off my ass and transition the last bits away.
• jfengel 5y ago
  Huh. I thought that was what I had, but I haven't heard this directly from them. It's the first I've heard of it. I used a microscopic subset of the features. Aside from them hosting my email, I don't think I'm any different from other users. It's just me; I'm not really a business. I notice some differences, mostly in limitations: less storage, features of my Pixel phone that sometimes don't work with that account. I'll probably upgrade to whatever the minimal plan is just because it's less trouble than any alternatives. I've had this for a very long time, so there's a lot that I'd rather not touch. They're providing a fair bit of value and I don't really mind paying for that. But I'm surprised not to have heard about this by email. Perhaps I'm on yet another different legacy thing.
  • blakesterz 5y ago
    > Perhaps I'm on yet another different legacy thing. I keep wondering the same thing. Haven't seen any communication at all from Google, so maybe for some reason I don't fall into this thing that is no longer free? They can't possibly do this to me and not even tell me... can they?
    • Aloha 5y ago
      I mean they can, but it'd be kinda foolish, we're the people who've been pushing people into their service. O365 looks pretty decent.
    • novaleaf 5y ago
      I haven't heard anything yet either. I spend about $5k/mth on GCP so I wonder if they might be making an exception for spenders....
    • jrochkind1 5y ago
      Same. I think they aren't actually emailing us. Lucky I saw it here! We have until May 1st. It definitely applies to you, if you think it might. There aren't different legacy things like this, just this one. Go to to admin.google.com, click on Billing / Manage Subscriptions. You'll see your subscription is "G Suite legacy"/"Free plan". And you'll see a message "You are on the G Suite Legacy free edition. Consider upgrading to Google Workspace Business Starter [Learn More]". Click on [Learn More], you'll see the message that "you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no loger be available starting July 1, 2022". Also the confusing message that "Support availability is rolling out to our G Suite legacy free edition customers oer the coming days. If you do not currently have access to Support, please check back in a few days." I don't even know what that means, or how to check if I "have access to Support". (I guess I have literally never had access to Support!)
• snarkerson 5y ago
  So no more free gmail accounts?
  • mpettitt 5y ago
    No, they like @gmail.com, but don't want people getting gmail for their own domains without paying.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      If you pay, do they stop scanning all of your emails?
      • javagram 5y ago
        There are no ads in the paid edition of G Suite. They actually stopped scanning emails for ads in free Gmail about 5 years though. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/26/google-will-stop-scanning-content-of-personal-emails https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/26/google-wi... Of course, both offerings still scan your email for spam filtering, as all major providers do.
        • dylan604 5y ago
          Where's the pay out for G to keep free Gmail then? I never read that the stopping of scanning was for the free accounts. I had only understood it to be for those that paid for the GSuite. Are we really to believe that Googs is operating Gmail for free with no hoovering of data to offset the cost of the service?
          • javagram 5y ago
            Gmail still has advertising, it just is targeted by the standard google way of "hoovering up" your data from across the web and the rest of your google profile. Not by scanning your emails. Google's blog post says https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in... : > Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change. This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products. Ads shown are based on users’ settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalization. G Suite will continue to be ad free.
• fishtoaster 5y ago
  Damn. I've been using the free version to host my personal email with a custom domain for, apparently, over a decade. I have no need for the rest of gsuite - I just want `myfirstname@mydomain.com`. Guess I have to decide if it's worth $72/year for that, or look into alternative email hosts.
• a2tech 5y ago
  Does anyone know of another service that accepts the email+whatever@domain.com wildcard? I've used that feature a lot over the years and its the only thing keeping me on Google Mail
  • moberley 5y ago
    Fastmail does generally support that. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plus-addressing-and-subdomain-addressing https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plu...
    • nyc640 5y ago
      Fastmail also supports subdomain addressing for your own domains so that if your email is user123@yourdomain.tld you can use whatever@user123.yourdomain.tld rather than user123+whatever@yourdomain.tld and it will be delivered to your mailbox. This is great because: 1. You can create a new alias spam@yourdomain.tld and sign up for services with whatever@spam.yourdomain.tld and it’s all centralized in the same inbox. 2. I’ve found some websites that don’t allow ‘+’ in their email checker/parser. Also since plus addressing is such a common pattern, when sites sell your email to marketers, they probably strip the ‘+whatever’ part anyway so you’ll never know who’s selling your info. 3. They make it really easy in the web UI to reply to emails sent to whatever@user123.yourdomain.tld from the same email address (whatever@user123.yourdomain.tld) vs. for example if you use wildcard addressing. I’ve found this helpful for the few times when an automated email system or customer support person requires you to reply from the correct email for “authentication”.
    • a2tech 5y ago
      Awesome! I didn't think they supported this the last time I looked and its the only thing that was stopping me from migrating
• blocked_again 5y ago
  I wonder how much extra revenue would be generated out of this move? Google stock to the moon?
  • spcebar 5y ago
    I hope it's plenty- I was really starting to worry about Google's bottom line with all their goodwill to users. /s
  • kevincox 5y ago
    I was trying to find this discussion. How many if these accounts actually exist and how many if them do they think will actually convert. Reading the comments I found a number of things: - There are actually a lot of these accounts. - A lot of people were paying for extra storage anyways. But it still seems like the math doesn't work out. They are probably using a lot of current users for adding services like YouTube premium, extra space, Google Pay... as well as losing a lot of future users because they have just pissed them off. A lot of buisbesses that may have naturally expanded might just migrate to new providers now and angry people may pick other providers in the future. It seems like maintaining this must have cost near zero. Overall it was likely actually profitable if you count total cost for these accounts vs all spend. There is probably a decent amount of new revenue, but a lot of this probably would have occured naturally on its own and you are cutting off this marketing forever. It seems like I must be missing the true reason. Unless they really, really whatef that short-term small profit bump.
• halostatue 5y ago
  Does anyone have any recommendations on _easy and inexpensive_ ways to migrate an entire family off this (6–7 users)? The value we get is _not_ worth ~$500 US per year. I don’t need a full business suite. I mostly need the email and calendar. I’d need to poll other people whether they use Google Drive or not.
  • acegopher 5y ago
    Same here. Was an early GMail for Domains user with my entire extended family (10 users). Have had problems with many features not working because "Workspace" (for example, adding a user to Google Home devices). Only did GMail for Domains for the custom address, would just be on GMail otherwise. Hate that there has never been a migration path, and will lose 13+ years of app purchases, pictures, email, youtube history, etc. without a migration tool.
  • bourbonjuggler 5y ago
    I started using Zoho mail about a year ago in a very slow effort to migrate away from google services. I'm paying $75/yr for their 10GB plan, but they offer other options as well. https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html?src=hd https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html?src=hd
  • ADent 5y ago
    I am using MXRoute.com. They have a lifetime account with unlimited addresses and some limits. Looks like the price has gone up since I signed up, but so did the storage included.
    • pronoiac 5y ago
      I've wanted to explore them for a while, but haven't gotten around to it. Does it deliver to gmail and others ok, or does it go to spam?
  • halostatue 5y ago
    It’s even worse than I thought. The Google suite is almost CA$700 per year for 6 people. I can pay about CA$100 less than that to Microsoft and get copies of Word &c for everyone. I can pay less than half the Google cost and get a similar suite from Zoho for everyone.
• nightski 5y ago
  It's OK, I began killing Google from my life last year. Excited for the last bits to be gone.
• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I'm actually rather salty about this, as a long-time G suite user: google has considerably degraded the service over the last few years. For example, since a couple of years ago you can't rate apps on Google Play and leave reviews if you use a G Suite account. You also can't use family subscription/space sharing plans, which is especially ironic given that many years ago Google was promoting G suite (or whatever it was called back then) as a way to run your family emails on your own domain. So the paid account is in several things worse than a free Gmail account.
  • neop1x 5y ago
    Yes and I also suspect that android backup works worse for GSuite accounts (can't confirm). It looked to me like it would backup less so I switched to @gmail.com for all non-email google services some time ago. Now I can review PlayStore apps and I know backup works as good as it can.
• sschueller 5y ago
  Thanks Google, this is the push I need to leave your God damn platform for good. Good bye.
• jasonsync 5y ago
  A long, long time ago I registered a domain name for a close group of friends, and the 4 of us have been happily use the free Gsuite for email @thedomain ever since. From what I can tell we'd will have to start paying CAD $31.20 per month for 4 users. Seems pricy for our use case?
  • dylan604 5y ago
    do the friends only email each other on the domain, or use it for all things email? if doing it just amongst the friends, you can drop to just one account, then share the credentials amongst the group. use it like freedom fighters to just write drafts to each other.
    • jasonsync 5y ago
      It's their primary personal email account for everything. Mine too.
• msmoke 5y ago
  I hope they make a tool to migrate accounts into individual Google accounts. I've been using G'Apps to back a family domain and will be moving to Fastmail which will leave anyone whose made purchases on the Play store or the like in the lurch. Hopefully no one has but I'm expecting some awkward conversations over the next few months.
• tyingq 5y ago
  Microsoft is probably happy about it. O365 for Family is $99/year total (not per-person), and allows up to 6 people, and you can use your own domain.
  • cecida 5y ago
    Some caveats. You won't be able to use your primary main_user@formerlyhostedbygoodle.com address as your login to the Office365 suite. You'll have to manage each inbox separately (I had 4 email accounts in GSuite legacy).
    • tyingq 5y ago
      >You won't be able to use your primary main_user@formerlyhostedbygoodle.com address as your login to the Office365 suite. That's interesting...why not? Edit: Found in their FAQ: "We strongly recommend against setting your personalized email address as your primary alias for signing in. Doing this can create problems with signing in or even sending and receiving email." https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalized-email-address-in-microsoft-365-75416a58-b225-4c02-8c07-8979403b427b https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalize... So it's not clear if you can't, or you can, but it's not recommended.
• mike503 5y ago
  Holy shit, this is pathetic. I should be grateful for the years I’ve spent on a grandfathered plan, but it’s mostly the same as a plain old free gmail account (for anything I use and the hundreds of small businesses I helped setup on it) and that’s not going anywhere. I’m slightly above annoyed for my own personal setup (just using it for email, guess I’m going to have to look into setting up forwarding instead) but for the hundreds of small businesses I setup and have been enjoying it and relying on it (and often wouldn’t be using it if it was let free) I have no idea what to say to them. Most of them are so small $6/month simply isn’t worth it for the low volume of email they get and now they’re also going to have to deal with migration.
• babycake 5y ago
  So for regular users, does this mean my google docs, sheets, photos will be gone? What is G Suite vs Workspace? Or will all my docs be ported over and I'll still have access?
  • someguydave 5y ago
    Yes I would like to know this too. from the fairly useless google support doc: "How does the upgrade affect my current G Suite legacy free edition subscription? Your current G Suite legacy free subscriptions and related services will continue to function as they do today, until you self-upgrade or we upgrade you automatically to one of the new editions." So does this mean I lose all of my google gmail, photos, sheets, drive, YouTube etc or not?
  • kevincox 5y ago
    As far as I can tell there is no way to change the owner of these files. Youcan presumably make a copy of these one-by-one after sharing with a new account?
• pitterpatter 5y ago
  So what happens if you have Google Voice with a legacy Google Apps account? https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_us/pricing.html https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_us/pricing.html shows that Google Voice is a separate add-on from Google Workspace
  • bmarquez 5y ago
    It's still possible to port-out your Google Voice number for a fee. I wouldn't rely on keeping Google Voice after Google kills the legacy accounts. If you have to, port out to a different SMS service (you could port back in to consumer Gmail if you really wanted to). Back when legacy accounts weren't legacy, Google Voice was free for G Suite (I think they are now called "unmanaged") and Google is trying to get rid of those accounts in favor of newer paid "managed" accounts.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    You can transfer a phone number from that sort of account to a Gmail account. I just tried it and it seems to work. Go into settings then transfer. It takes you to the legacy page to do the transfer, oddly.
    • YaraAllen 5y ago
      Does this actually work? The help site (https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1065667?visit_id=637782856265576273-2825377946&rd=2#googlexfer https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1065667?visit_id=637...) states that: > A Voice for Google Workspace account number to any other type of Google Account, including personal accounts and accounts using a different Google Workspace domain. I am confused if my Legacy G Suite account is considered a Google Workspace account of if it's something different.
      • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
        Yes it works, I moved a GV number from my Legacy G Suite account to a Gmail account.
• Apreche 5y ago
  I knew something like this would probably come, but it doesn't make it any better. Complete BS. 16 years ago me and my friends signed up for "GMail for your domain". That's it. We wanted to use GMail, which was by far the best email available at the time, and have email addresses at our own domain instead of @gmail.com. That's it. Since that time several of us have been using our GFYD/GSuite/Workspaces accounts as our primary Google accounts. We're not a business. We don't use any business features. We just use them as our personal Google accounts. We use them for YouTube, Photos, everything. Our entire digital identities are bound to these accounts. Yet, over the years, these accounts are just worse than free personal Google accounts. Because we are not a business, there is absolutely no benefit to these accounts whatsoever other than the custom domain. In fact, we can't even use the new version of Google Pay. It only works with free accounts! We all had to switch to other payment platforms to split bills. Ironically, we'll have to use one of those non-Google platforms to split the Google Workspaces bill as well. And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone else gets for free. I'd be less angry if we got some kind of benefit above and beyond normal free Google accounts. I'd be less angry if the price wasn't a ridiculous per-user rate. I'd be less angry if we weren't forced into this against our will. This is not what we signed up for 16 years ago. I'd be less angry if they offered some way to escape. Let use merge/transition our accounts with personal Google accounts. Let us have personal accounts with custom domain, iCloud offers that feature now. Nope. Just looks like most of our accounts are going to get deleted or are going to have to pay $6/month for nothing.
  • q1w2 5y ago
    Same here. Set this up for my family, and really the only thing I wanted was a gmail account with my own domain. Ideally I'd like to have some self-hosted solution though - will be looking at options...
  • jahlove 5y ago
    > And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone else gets for free. > Just looks like most of our accounts are going to get deleted or are going to have to pay $6/month for nothing. Am I wrong or are you paying that $6/mo for having the gmail UI in front of your custom domain? Doesn't really seem like nothing.
• seanwilson 5y ago
  Hmm, if you're using x@example.com via G Suite, how do you transition away from G Suite but still use x@example.com to login to your Android phone and other Google sign-in related stuff? Anything you need to be careful of so you don't get locked out?
  • Octopuz 5y ago
    Either become a nonprofit or delete the account in G Suite and recreate it as a free regular Google account after the domain name has been removed from G Suite.
    • seanwilson 5y ago
      > recreate it as a free regular Google account after the domain name has been removed from G Suite How though? Create x@gmail.com and copy your old emails into it, change your domain settings to stop pointing to G Suite and forward x@example.com to x@gmail.com instead, cancel your example.com G Suite and your email should still be working.... But then what happens to apps and Android login that are connected to your x@example.com Google SSO login? You can connect this up to x@gmail.com?
      • easton 5y ago
        > But then what happens to apps and Android login that are connected to your x@example.com Google SSO login? You can connect this up to x@gmail.com? At this point you cannot. You will have to create a new Google Account, and none of your purchases will go across. I'm guessing that whoever signed off on this didn't remember that Google sells movies and Android apps, or else they would've put a FAQ telling people this on the page.
      • Octopuz 5y ago
        It is said that the core services will stop working. Google Photos, YouTube and purchases/subscriptions are not considered as core services.
  • miken123 5y ago
• smudgy 5y ago
  Poop. Welp, it's time to pay I guess.
• Sunspark 5y ago
  I am affected by this. I am sorry to hear that Google is running low on cash to pay for the bandwidth consumed by my two-user email/calendar suite.
  • area51org 5y ago
    Yup. The multi-billion-dollar company is low on cash and just has to do this. I hope they succeed in completely ruining any goodwill they have left. I'd toss out some four-letter words, to boot, but I just can't be bothered.
• mike503 5y ago
  If you have a Google registered domain don’t they throw in Workspace for free? Is that a possible way to continue keeping at least a single base account alive without paying per month? Otherwise I guess I’m going to look at using something to forward emails to my free Google account (Cloudflare now has email forwarding…)
  • hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Unfortunately, you can't use your domain for outbound email though, right?
    • mike503 5y ago
      when doing forwarding, yeah, it doesn't look like it. When I tried to add an alias on my gmail.com it asked for my SMTP account. I guess maybe I've never done that off a free gmail before (just paid / grandfathered Workspace ones!) - so it'll work well for anything inbound that's needed. But yeah, if you need outbound, still an open. Still assuming Google Domains allows you a basic Workspace account though.
• area51org 5y ago
  I'm just like so many others here: I've had these services for years and now they pull the plug. Here's an exercise in how to piss off the world. I will never recommend or use google products in the future if I have a choice. Never. Reason: you just don't know what Google is going to do next. Here's a highly successful, multi-billion-dollar company. They don't need the money. But they want it, because apparently, there just aren't enough billions.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• gnabgib 5y ago
  The article title is "G Suite legacy free edition", and is about a service which hasn't been available for 10 years being finally sunset, last day of access 30-April. Wouldn't "G Suite legacy free edition ends May, 2022" be a less editorialized title?
  • q1w2 5y ago
    Seems like the "real" deadline will be July 1st - and possibly to the end of that month.
• shimonabi 5y ago
  I won't be spending 6$/month, that's for sure. I'd rather go self-hosting. I quit Facebook. I can quit Gmail too.
• littlecranky67 5y ago
  I'm affected and will move to another provider; does anybody has tips/insights how to export all those Emails and make them searchable - probably offline only, I just still want to be able to access 10+ years of mails. Moving them over to another email provider is not required.
  • arbitrage 5y ago
    Using Thunderbird, create a new local mail account. Connect to your gmail account using IMAP. Drag & drop your emails from the original account to your local mailbox in Thunderbird. This process may require a little bit of babysitting, or work flawlessly without a hitch, I've seen both outcomes doing this for folks over the years.
• worik 5y ago
  He gives the kids free samples Because ho knows full well That today's innocent young faces Are tomorrows clientele... Time to pay the dealer... What did anybody expect?
• jlv2 5y ago
  I've had this for 10+ years. I use it for a family domain. Everyone in the family has a user in the legacy G-suite, but it's really only set up as an email forwarder to their personal gmail account. No one logs in under it. I'm not going to pay $6/user/mo just to do that, and I don't think any of them (all adults at this point) would either. If I could get up an email forwarding without needing a paying user, I'd probably move to Business Starter for a user or two. I've not reconfigured any users in there for about 6 years, so I have to look to see if this is possible.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • eivindga 5y ago
    Sounds like you need something like: https://improvmx.com/ https://improvmx.com/ or https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/email-forwarding https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/email-forwarding (I have no idea if they work as advertised, as I have never used these services.)
    • sfblah 5y ago
      If GP isn't too angry at Google, you can get mail forwarding via Google Domains as well.
• ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  More discussion on other post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432 Mods: maybe a merge to this one since it's the 'official' Google post
• beerandt 5y ago
  At some level, it's been sort of nice that Google has been nudging me off of their platforms one product at a time, while reminding me to not become overly reliant on the ones I continue to use.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    True, Email and docs were their last products I used to do anything real.
• ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  As an admin of a number of legacy G Suite accounts I have yet to receive any email about this/pointing to this
  • ggm 5y ago
    Likewise.
    • duckworth 5y ago
      Same boat. Ugh.
  • znkynz 5y ago
    Likewise. Multi-generational family account. Around 17 users. Huge cost - i suspect many individuals just stop using it; a few may want to stay. Will one of us want to pay for it, and then collect subs from others - no - not really.
• nighthawk454 5y ago
  "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further". The problem here is there's no way out now. If 15 years ago you made the mistake of wanting gasp a domain for your email, you're basically roped into paying now. Almost everything a free G Suite user wants is identical to the free @gmail account, which is remaining free. Except the custom domain. Fine - but there's no way to just lose the custom domain at this point. Over the years, the Google account has grown in importance and things tied to it. It's fairly un-viable to migrate it to an @gmail account. Especially for your whole family. So, the options are nuke all your Google accounts and suffer the consequences, or pay up. Not like we didn't see this coming of course, but still sucks.
  • area51org 5y ago
    You're not roped in (good, albeit not free, alternatives exist), but yeah, this is just a fuckover. I've been paying google for GDrive for some time now, and that's about to end. It's back to Dropbox. I know, I don't have to do this, but the hell with google. I'm done. This is nothing short of a needless f---over, and I want as little to do with them as possible.
    • nighthawk454 5y ago
      Not _absolutely_ roped in, but practically, yes. The cost of switching is ridiculously higher than the cost of just paying up - it's not a realistic option. Which, considering they also control how hard it is to switch, is a bit artificial. It would be a little different if they did this to _everyone_ and completely removed the free @gmail plans. But instead they're targeting GSuite users when @gmail plans are _right there_, because they know they can get it. Honestly, if it weren't for the alternatives setting somewhat of a market price, little could stop them from charging triple. The only comparable plan is the lowest tier of 4 tiers as it is, and I doubt it's gonna get _cheaper_ over time.
      • fragmede 5y ago
        Not really - that was the whole point of getting my own domain, so I could move it over if something like this ever happened. Mail to me gets sent to user@domain.name, both before and after the switch. You can argue the other services like google drive and docs are harder to move, and that's true, but those also have their own alternatives that aren't quite as reliant as email is in having the same user@domain.name forever.
• SamCritch 5y ago
  Oh this is a monster pain in the ass. All 5 family members are using this service for mail, Android phones/apps, TV, movies etc, plus I have a couple of extra accounts (e.g. separate email account for e-commerce orders). I already pay for extra Drive space and I buy movies frequently enough. All I want is to be able to use my own domain for my family, and carry on using the current settings on Android etc. Now I'll be paying over $40/mo for it. Can't Google just come up with an "own domain for families" version at a lower price, and make it work with the child protection features?
  • sandos 5y ago
    Yeah, our kids got regular gmail accounts from the start because of family link and google assistant issues. We are still 4 adults using my domain and it is in no way business-related. These prices are way too steep for simply having a nicer domain.
• gingerlime 5y ago
  Glad I migrated my email off of it to Fastmail (although still going through my own email server) Any tips for downloading google docs and sheets? any online alternative for those? (libreoffice or Mac numbers aren’t that exciting…)
• webmaven 5y ago
  I have a few legacy Google Apps for Your Domain accounts, but lost the domains per-se several years ago during a perfect storm of clinical depression and financial hardship (which hasn't really ended, just tapered off a bit) where I let the registrations expire. The domains are now being squatted on. The legacy accounts still work for things other than email like Drive, but I've mostly switched to using my Gmail account on Android and elsewhere. I'll have to think hard about whether I want to start paying for the custom domain accounts, to preserve the option of eventually registering new domains to associate with them (I'm unlikely to pay what the squatters are asking for the original domains I lost), or just do my best to migrate all the old data off, finally.
• theossuary 5y ago
  I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do. Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much considering Google doesn't have one). Right now I'm really considering moving over to them. But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts. I used this as my primary email on at least 7 android phones (the original Pixel up through the Pixel 6 I preordered). The loss of Youtube purchases; android play purchases, etc. is going to hurt. I'm sad it isn't illegal to turn a free account into a paid one when it means losing purchased content like this. I'm not 100% sure what to do, I don't have dozens of hours to walk everyone through a migration; and Google provides absolutely no migration tools to help with this. This is the last time I'll be burned by Google though. I used to be a huge fan; but at this point I'm done. I'm really looking forward to cutting them out completely. As an added bonus; I no longer have to worry about them deciding to ban my account one day and lose everything.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    > But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts. Contacts and Email seems to be the easy part: you can download the emails via IMAP to a client like Thunderbird, and the re-upload them on a new account. Years ago I did this transferring from one G Suite account to another for a friend, worked very well. Contacts can be exported in CSV and then imported bia CSV, no big deal too. I have routinely transferred loads of contacts between different systems this way, including Gmail. With calendar, I never had a necessity to transfer data, but I imagine that there are ways, given that it uses a standard iCalendar format.
    • digital_voodoo 5y ago
      Are you sure about the re-uploading part? I've had an issue like that last week, and am currently stuck with my mails locally, not able to 'put them back' to the IMAP server. Not Gmail though.
• sigzero 5y ago
  I already pay $99 for Microsoft Office apps. I can move to them for the lowest business account which includes that and for just a little more get what I currently have. Anyway, I have until May to figure out what I want to do.
  • binkHN 5y ago
    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-365-family/cfq7ttc0k5dm?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-36...
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Is this google scraping the bottom of the barrel ? That would be a worrying sign And it doesn't help that navigating "google business account" is a nightmare. I m looking how to edit aliases to an email account, there's no option to edit it.
• taf2 5y ago
  Interesting my free gmail domain from my company from 15 years ago is still alive and well... granted my new company from 12 years ago is now paying for gmail... but i wonder does this mean my old company email will soon vanish?
• greatpatton 5y ago
  People are talking about their purchases on Google play, but that's not the main point. All the web services where you used Google as the IdP are going to be toasted if you move. You will to go through all the services you use to see how to transfer your account there. It will teach me one thing: never ever use an external IdP and always create local account.
  • vetinari 5y ago
    Some people learned this lesson few years ago, when Google started locking out accounts for whatever transgressions were punishable at the time. Since I'm one of those people who prefer to learn from mistakes of others instead of mine, I never used Google, or Github, or other OIDC/SAML2/whatever provider as the IdP and always created local account.
  • kevincox 5y ago
    I think almost all of these will allow password reset by email. So you should be able to get in again. I'm more worried about the Google services that provide absolutely no support for migrating between different accounts.
• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, Google!
• wombat-man 5y ago
  I'm surprised so many of you are upset by this. I use a paid email for the custom domain (not gmail) but I feel like they're requesting a pretty reasonable fee after such a long time of free usage.
  • criddell 5y ago
    I think the big outrage is directed at losing all the apps, movies, books, etc... that you purchased from Google using that account. It feels like they should provide some way of transferring those purchases to another account.
    • wombat-man 5y ago
      yeah that makes sense actually.
  • chrishas35 5y ago
    I think the issue is that so many of us were brought in on something pretty simple, "GMail for Domains", that has become so much more than we ever asked for. And in return we've gotten a lesser product (the Google accounts are handicapped in many ways) and a painful migration experience to leave (see inability to take Google Play purchases as one example). It's a terrible bait and switch now that they have years of history to amplify the pain of leaving. You're right the fee is not unreasonable for the services offered, especially compared to the competition. But given it's not really what many were actually after (we just wanted a @example.com gmail account!) and are left with a handicapped account, why would we want to pay up?
  • zeagle 5y ago
    I'll give you my perspective. I migrated away from GMail years ago for my domain. MX records point to the other host. I have all their core services turned off except Maps and Drive (I don't host anything). I only keep the account because I have 9+ years of play store purchases attached. At the least they need to provide a way to move purchases from a legacy account to a regular account in this process.
• zeagle 5y ago
  I /wish/ I could migrate to a regular gmail account from me@mydomain.tld. I've put up with a crippled account for years that can't access arbitrary features or leave store reviews because of my play store purchase library. My email was moved to another host years ago for privacy reasons. Do they not realize the downstream effect is they are removing the lock-in that kept has users like me from switching to iOS for all these years? When this keeps me buying a new pixel every other year there is a revenue impact even thought the account is 'free'.
• area51org 5y ago
  Boy, you could not dream of a better way to drive people away from custom Gmail domain accounts, and into the arms of * Fastmail * Protonmail * Zoho
• Malakun 5y ago
  Time to get a backup. takeout.google.com
• SergeAx 5y ago
  I don't know if it was inevitable, but I do not share a sentiment here. Supporting domain mail with web interface and services around is costs resources, and Google have no obligation spending it forever. It was a nice gift and I feel grateful. I also feel it is a perfect time to try out new CloudFlare's domain email forwarding service, while it is free.
  • donmcronald 5y ago
    It costs more for a single user on Google Workspace or MS365 than it used to cost for shared hosting that came with 50-Unlimited email accounts. Small businesses that only need email are getting royally screwed by big tech. Everything is more complex, has no additional features, and is a solid 10x what it should actually cost once you have 10+ users on email. And before anyone chimes in about needing to deal with backups, etc. on shared hosting, go check out all the backup products for MS365 and Google Workspace. And before anyone chimes in about deliverability issues, those are caused by Microsoft, Google, etc., not solved by them.
    • easton 5y ago
      You get Exchange with the Microsoft offering, which offers things like (good) calendars and contacts, and push email to your mobile phone, which you could do with IMAP but many of those shared hosting platforms didn't have to begin with. Exchange is $1 per month, which is perhaps a little more than shared hosting but you get way more features.
      • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
        Are you saying office365 email is $1/month? Source please as thats way lower than I recall or found in a search. Cheapest seems to be $4 US p/m/u https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/compa...
        • easton 5y ago
• cosmotic 5y ago
  My retired mother and retired father are both considered "users" and so are my numerous service accounts. This will cost me almost a thousand dollars a year for three actual humans that use the service for nothing more than gmail.
  • laurasia99 5y ago
    I'm in the same position, except 5 warm bodies. Thank you HN for this story - at least now I've got a few months to start migrating & consolidating these 'users'.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• hnarn 5y ago
  Cool, finally an excuse to spend some time to completely exclude Google from my life. Get f***ed. It’s been bothering me for years how nothing about Google Apps is smooth, the accounts are consistently not treated like “normal” Google accounts (for example, you can’t buy Youtube Premium even if you wanted to), and I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall.
• rndmio 5y ago
  If they’d just let me transition my account to a normal one so I don’t lose everything I’ve purchased in the play store that’d be fine. I don’t need everything else, I just don’t want to lose what I’ve already paid for.
• jtc331 5y ago
  I've got multiple domains on "G Suite legacy" which the admin console claims have been around since March of 2013. Given the article references December 6, 2012 as the date they stopped offering this I'm wondering if I somehow have a different product that wasn't sunset? The name is exactly what's referenced in this article, but I've received no notice, and I don't see any warnings on admin.google.com for these accounts. What gives?
  • Strom 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure the date shown in admin.google.com is incorrect. For me it also shows March 2013, but in reality I've had it since 2010 - and I've got e-mails still in my inbox to prove it. The more disturbing part is that I, like you, haven't received any notice from Google themselves.
    • mec31 5y ago
      I haven’t received a notice either. I do however use Google as my domain registrar, and I purchase storage from Google. Is it even conceivable that either of those has spared me? Or is Google just lagging with its termination notices?
    • jtc331 5y ago
      I also don’t see a notice on the admin panel, but others in the comments here seem to suggest they do. So…yet another layer of confusion.
• daftdoki 5y ago
• blip54321 5y ago
  I think a class action is in order here. Two claims: 1) False advertising. A lot of it.... 2) All those Google purchases....
  • ryan29 5y ago
    It's the purchases for me. I'd be ok with every user in my domain getting converted into standalone Google accounts. If they don't do something, I'm going to think about emailing every developer I've ever bought an app from and asking them if they can move my purchase to an alternate GMail account. I'll at least do it for anything expensive that I still use. I'd love to see a class action lawsuit for Google Play purchases that get usurped.
    • hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      Why alternative G-mail? Pick a different company to reduce the chance of the rug being pulled again.
• sigzero 5y ago
  My Pixel phone (and the wife's) uses that account. Well this is going to be a fun choice.
• luckyorlame 5y ago
  bye bye google; thanks for all the fishes
• nunez 5y ago
  So I guess that's a great way to shovel hundreds of thousands of legacy Workspace users down to Google consumer. Honestly, the only reason why I'm even on Workspace is because of Gmail aliases, but this news is reminding me that I need to stop paying them $12/month for this (which used to be free back in the day, and it was $6/month just last year!)
• znkynz 5y ago
  Am admin for such a domain; not had the email; do not see anything in my admin portal advising?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• lobsang 5y ago
  So, does anyone have a recommended alternative for a mail provider with support for custom domain names? Like a lot of people this is literally the only reason I have a legacy workspace account. Also, I guess, any recommendations for a decent IMAP client for Android?
• jcpham2 5y ago
  Thanks for killing my family’s primary email addresses google! Absolutely no reason to pay for gmail @ vanity domain. Why I thought they would offer this service for free forever and actually went through with setting my kids up this way is beyond me - now it’s just 4x the work to migrate.
• kk6mrp 5y ago
  I'm young enough that I missed the free tier however I later eventually came across MXRoute [0] which is still offering the lifetime promo. Looks like it increased to $175 since I bought it. I haven't been disappointed and it is faster than Gmail from my experience. I host Cypht [1] for the front-end instead of using their webmail. [0] https://mxroute.com/ https://mxroute.com/ [1] https://cypht.org/ https://cypht.org/
• filmgirlcw 5y ago
  I can’t be too mad because I’ve had 15 or 16 years of free service, but I’m now annoyed I have to investigate where I want to migrate, since I literally don’t use any of the other Google services. And now I get to figure out what happens when a Google account is no longer tied to a paid Google account for stuff like calendar and document access.
• pingec 5y ago
  Is there a way to seamlessly migrate current email address to another email provider and what steps can be taken so that it will be even easier to switch provider next time?
• Karunamon 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind this so much if I didn't have quite a lot of money tied up in Android purchases. The fact that they don't offer a migration path for this ought to be criminal.
• pronik 5y ago
  I probably have no problem paying for the service (gotta become a customer after being a product for 15 years). However, the service needs to start being on par with the regular Google account offering. Most of current users me included have setup family domains, but that's one of the areas which does not work with GAFYD/G-Suite/Workspace properly -- no Family Link, not Family Sharing in Android etc. The solution according to Google? Create a @gmail.com account for these cases. Speaking of which: same goes for children's accounts for Family Link -- you can only create a @gmail.com one for children, not an account in your domain which you control. This needs fixing.
• jhawk28 5y ago
  Apple has a custom domain for email with their Cloud+. Guess I'll be switching to that.
  • criddell 5y ago
    This is interesting. If you or anybody else has experience moving from G Suite to iCloud+, I'd love to hear it.
    • rssoconnor 5y ago
      After reviewing this thread, iCloud+ is top of my list for migration, and I don't even own an Apple-anything. (Migadu is my secondary choice if this iCloud+ thing falls through for some reason.) From what I've been reading iCloud+ has some limitations, but it will fit my needs. An iCloud+ subscription costs $1 a month ($1.29 CAD), and the subscription can be shared with a "family" of up to 5 other iCloud accounts. iCloud+ supports up to 5 domains and three email addresses per domain per person. Domains can be shared between the family or not. I also trust Apple to have a competent security team. I'll probably start the process this month.
  • xinyc 5y ago
    My main problem with iCloud is that when I first started using Apple products, I used my own email address as my Apple ID. Later I registered a separate Apple ID with my desired username @icloud.com when they became free, but before it was possible to create an @icloud.com address on your existing Apple ID. Now it's impossible to merge these two and I don't really want to dig myself into a deeper hole by creating some randomword@icloud.com on my primary Apple ID just to be able to use the iCloud+ custom domain feature.
• xpressvideoz 5y ago
  I'd like to call myself wise because I've alwayed used a "genuine" Google account (@gmail.com) when I needed to purchase digital goods. Not that I knew they would stop offering the free version of G Suite, but there have always been some strange inconsistencies between a genuine Google account and a G Suite one, like feature differences and regional availability. But I'm still using G Suite to forward emails sent to my domain to my primary Google account, so I must find some alternatives to it.
• sumek83 5y ago
  I'm one of the people affected. Over the years I've created multiple accounts most with multiple aliases on top of that. I would have a separate account for recruiters and job hunting, separate one for logging into sensitive accounts, separate one for each of the countries in which I've spend more time, etc, etc Now I would need to start spending ~$90 + VAT (?) per month to keep this setup going. Anyone with a similar situation? Any services you could recommend to migrate to?
• quintes 5y ago
  Arg just heard about this. Again a reminder not to use free. I need a plan.
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Did any of you who migrated to fastmail have any gotchas in the process? They do document the process, but still, maybe there are things one needs to be aware of.
• xrd 5y ago
  I love Zoho for this reason. $12 a year for unlimited domains (actually, not sure if there is a limit but I've not hit it yet...). Each user is an additional $12 but it's mostly just me. I've got a bunch of those free Google legacy accounts and will be migrating all the domains to Zoho.
• fomine3 5y ago
  Sad but I can't blame Google to stop long-running great free service. I'll just sign up for cheapest plan but I also wish good alternative migration path is provided.
• quintes 5y ago
  I saw fastmail mentioned but where else can I do one email address and aliases to that or wildcard catch all for other email addresses not in the alias list?
• zuccs 5y ago
  I have no issues paying for email hosting with Google (and already do on some domains), but how are people dealing with shared company email addresses with access to things like Google Analytics, Google My Business, etc.? If that shared email address is google@yourdomain.com, and Google suspends that Google account on July 1st, how are you supposed to disconnect it from G Suite and sign it up as a free Google account (no Gmail)?
  • urbandw311er 5y ago
    There’s a reply somewhere on here about something called “Cloud Identity Free” — seems like you can ditch the G Suite apps but still keep the SSO sign in.
• vidanay 5y ago
  Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit! Both my wife and my son have their Android accounts set up through our GAFYD account. Untangling that is going to be a mess.
• edub 5y ago
  Does anyone know of an email provider that will handle billing the users directly? Shared pain as the rest, have been hosting email for people with the same last name since 1998, and migrated to G Suite for Your Domain in 2006, and they graciously increased the max users for the free account, and I have 147 users (almost all are active). From 1998-2006 I ran the email server, and it was a pain to deal with issues and complaints (mostly poor spam filtering). I can't go back to that, and I can't afford $10,584 a year to offer free email. I've researched some other paid options, but my biggest issue is that I just can't deal with invoicing and collecting money from 140+ people. What I really need is an email host that will direct bill all the users. I don't mind paying for email as a service, I just need someone else to deal with all the money stuff from the other users. For others assistance in research if you will be paying the bill for the full domain, here are some options I looked at: Google Workplace - $72/year/user - advantage being no impact on users Microsoft 365 - $60/year/user - less expensive, probably equal in quality to Google Fastmail - $50/year/user - cheaper still, great reputation Rackspace - $36/year/user - cheaper still, not best reputation Namecheap - $11/year/user - most likely a get what you pay for situation Honestly I think email is worth $72/year, and I would go that route if Google would bill each user directly.
• michilehr 5y ago
  The bad thing isn't that Google wants me to pay for a service. The bad thing is that some of us have no choice - or need a long day or two to migrate all the stuff. I am a heavy Google Photos user who has shared a lot of albums. Also a lot of Android payments and much more. For Google Photos, I can't export and import albums - only photos. So I would have to recreate the structure manually. This alone is a huge task. If there is a "migrate to Gmail" button all is fine. But there isn't an easy solution. I am now glad I had to create a private Gmail account for Stadia. But I also have to think about investing more money in games - or not.
  • afiori 5y ago
    The GDPR-compliant export tool they offer should also encode your albums, I don't think it will be easy to port them somewhere else, but it should be possible
• alanfranz 5y ago
  Just one thought (I'm not sure it's feasible, but I think it is). If I have no Google Play/other things to buy, why shouldn't I be able to: * setup MX record with another provider (many domain register offer that as a commodity, e.g. I think Gandi does) * setup mail forwarding to my private @gmail.com account * in my private gmail, setup username@mydomain.com as an alias. Everything should work. It may take a bit of time for the migration... but gmail.com usage with another domain should not be a real issue.
• atrandom 5y ago
  https://forwardemail.net/ https://forwardemail.net/ seems like a decent option for forwarding email from custom domain to @gmail.com (or any other free mail host).
• ab_testing 5y ago
  I am old enough to remember that Microsoft also had a similar free email product for custom domains called Microsoft live mail or something like that. In fact, you can still find articles on the internet about how to move from Microsoft to Google workspaces when Microsoft killed their free product. I think even the users of this product knew that email with custom domain is a premium product that pretty much no email provider provides for free. I am still surprised that they let it run for 10+ years. I dread the reaction on HN when Google finally decides to kill Google voice , which is another very popular but free Google service. In fact I am sure that running Google voice is even more expensive to run than workspaces because just the cost of assigning a phone number is some fractions of a dollar to the FCC.
  • jasonjayr 5y ago
    Regarding Google voice, voip.ms is lining up the features to replace that (sms/mms/voice transcription/forwarding/etc.). For $20 (paid to google) they will release your GV number so you can port it to voip.ms, and then you pay as you go there.
  • fooey 5y ago
    The frustrating thing is I think many of us would be perfectly happy paying for a custom domain in plain old regular gmail, but $6 per month per user is waaaay too expensive when all we care about is email.
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      I think I pay $60/year for Protonmail, and at least $30/year for my email forwarding service. $72/year for gmail seems reasonable given it includes drive.
      • tristan957 5y ago
        Your ProtonMail account most likely includes access to ProtonDrive. Proton's services are also encrypted at rest. So for cheaper, you support a company fighting for user privacy. $72 for GMail is unreasonable considering you are also the product by merely hosting your data with Google.
• GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
  I need to migrate away now, what a total pain.
• mmastrac 5y ago
  Ouch. This will hit my personal domain. At least they could have given us a discount plan (1-2/user/month?). I don't really have any desire to stay on Google's services, but it's going to be a pain to move things off and I'm sure they are counting on that. Between this and the Nest-apps-domain-login fiasco, Google has burnt all my good will. It's time for me to wind down my Google stuff.
• bbulkow 5y ago
  On the other side , not annoyed. I transitioned from free gsuite to paid a few years ago. For my twelve (12) bucks a month, i get 2tb of storage, great mail services, all the docs i can write, etc. When i compare to individual apps wanting $10 per month, this is probably my best monthly spend on my list. Fitness apps are the worst. My main gripe is services that don't work with a paid account, like nest and home automation.
• bubblecheck 5y ago
  Back of napkin calc as a sole prop: * google has risen by over a trillion in value since I began using google apps for my custom domain w/ gmail and linked search. * I was an early adopter of "google". Via data donation efforts as an end user, I have contributed substantially to google. Estimate: My lifetime value to google is greater than the average user by an order of magnitude. * Avg. val of each of 10 billion homo sapiens at ~$1T USD: >$1,000 per homo sapien. * Est. val of my data contribution over two decades of full time use: >$10,000. * google, based on this inequity, I will settle for a lifetime of free grandfathered service per my status quo. Alternatively, I will continue to documented my grievances regarding your malicious, targeted, experimental negative emotional contagion data abuse practices -- with higher USA authorities -- until you are dismantled per long-established monopoly laws.
• sfblah 5y ago
  I have my personal email on this. Luckily, we have a small family foundation that is a 501(c)3. So, I've just requested to switch over to the nonprofit plan. I'm not sure if this is applicable to many other people out there, but it is, in principle, an option. One interesting thing I just learned is, by switching designation, I can get 2TB of storage per user for $3 a month. Right now I'm paying $10 a month for 1TB of storage from Google Drive. So actually this will wind up making things cheaper for me.
  • cynix 5y ago
    How much time/money/effort does it take to create/maintain a non-profit foundation?
• usuallymatt 5y ago
  Not sure if anyone has seen this but if I login as <user><domain>@gmail.com with my <user>@<domain> password it logs me into my Domain account. I wonder if they are preparing to roll out a tool where you can convert your Domain account over to a gmail account.
  • jimmies 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on that? Let's say I'm foo@bar.com, what username could I give to gmail?
    • anticensor 5y ago
      foobarcom@gmail.com ?
• Sloppy 5y ago
  This is an affront in several ways. 1) Apparently bait and switch is fair play now? The fact that it took years for the hook to be applied makes it no less wrong. 2) Apparently we cannot buy software anymore. I don't want 90% of upgrades but they force me to buy them as "subscriptions" now. How many do you have now that virtual monopolies are converting from buy one copy of software to "subscribe only"? Google Apps is just another in this "hook the user on free access -- then milk them forever once they are committed," business model. Office, Creative Suite, what's next Chrome?, Edge?, Firefox?, Acrobat? Google seems now 100% devoted to evil. My advice is: 1) create an HTTPS WEBDAV server to sync your photos to. I did this a year ago when I realized that my bill for photos would increase forever if I didn't erase the old ones as I took new ones. Switching to my own hardware is like getting a print of those film negatives... 2) host your own email 3) Get an old copy of Word and Excel (who cares about new features?) EFF killed cert costs, may they turn to these other commodities... Once you go through this painful transition you'll only pay for Internet access and the hardware to run it.
  • Sloppy 5y ago
    BTW I run a 16 core home server with 10 tb of storage accessible over Comcast home edition for the cost of electricity. At the risk of sounding old and idealistic, isn't this what the Internet was supposed to be? Isn't this where the idealists among Web3 proponents are headed?
    • erulabs 5y ago
      Heh, I'm writing an essay on this topic currently. It's so strange that Cloud is worth a trillion dollars, web3/crypto is worth as much, and self-hosting is... completely obscure? With multiple global satellite internet services coming soon - do we need crypto to be distributed? Can't we just... use the internet? I don't think you sound old and idealistic, but I am _for sure_ old and idealistic, so...
• zxspectrum1982 5y ago
  I have not received that email. Maybe this is only for some users?
• thecrumb 5y ago
  I don't really mind paying for this but I'm sure as hell not giving any money to Google. Been screwed over too many times.
• freedomben 5y ago
  If anybody is in this boat, I can highly recommend Zoho Mail. I pay $1/mo/user and the product is really great. They do have a "forever free" tier as well but I'm not certain what all that includes. The $1/mo/user is a great price, and they have IMAP/POP3 and a pretty great API as well. You can also create as many groups as you want so if you have a company of 3 people where a mix of you need to handle support@, admin@, marketing@, etc you can easily do that. I have no affiliation with Zoho other than being a happy customer.
• LightG 5y ago
  Anecdote: I would have paid the Google tax. I actually tried to just out of convenience. But one small bit of nonsense stopped me. Google required me to send them my passport and photo ID for the priveldge of paying them for additional storage. I gave up on them at that point. ... breaking the camels back ... I'm currently migrating away from my last Google piece: Gmail. Who remembers when Google were exciting? The good old days ...
• lets-progress 5y ago
  This thread, and many others like it, is a goldmine of handy tips. We have links to providers, solid evidence of migration success and plenty more. However, it's not a great resource at the moment. If anyone has time to collate the tips, links, articles of methods etc into a wiki we (the community of g suites) can help our fellows. A collaborative tips doc will help us all out. Also the g suite support doc now says a tool will be coming that can migrate purchases to regular G accounts. They've listened (a bit).
• newman314 5y ago
  FML. Does anyone have a good tool to extract emails from Google Apps? I literally only use Apps for custom domain email and a placeholder static website. It's certainly not worth $72 a year for it. I saw that someone had posted that iCloud supports custom email domains so I suppose that's an option but now need to figure a way to migrate from Google to iCloud. Found this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514 One can host 5 domains with 3 email addresses per domain on iCloud.
  • embeng4096 5y ago
    Imapsync maybe? I haven't personally used it, though I did previously buy it thinking it would download to local machine -- it transfers between accounts using IMAP which wasn't my intent but sounds like it is yours. https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ https://imapsync.lamiral.info/
    • newman314 5y ago
      Thanks. I realized that I was just reading about GMail backups a few days. Here are some repos that I happened to star on GH. * https://github.com/gauteh/lieer * https://github.com/imapsync/imapsync * https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup
      • embeng4096 5y ago
        Thank you!
        • newman314 5y ago
          Found a review of iCloud's custom domain: https://medium.com/empty-coffee/three-months-with-apple-icloud-mails-custom-domains-e988fec4838a https://medium.com/empty-coffee/three-months-with-apple-iclo... TL; DR: Seems to work BUT may have issues with SPF/DKIM etc. Looking for anyone else on HN to chime in with their experience using iCloud custom domains.
  • below43 5y ago
• op00to 5y ago
  Has anyone used iCloud mail recently? I’m already paying for Apple One, so this would be a $0 extra cost solution for me and my family.
  • jdofaz 5y ago
    I am, just for myself, it has worked fine with all my devices (including Thunderbird, K-9 and davx5). Calendar invitations work fine too
    • op00to 5y ago
      Thank you for sharing! I am worried because mail isn’t apples core business…
• joak 5y ago
  Shit !
• illuminated 5y ago
  Yandex is one of the rare services still giving free mail hosting for custom domains: https://ukit.com/help/how-do-i-set-up-a-domain-based-email-address-with-yandex https://ukit.com/help/how-do-i-set-up-a-domain-based-email-a...
• fishbacon 5y ago
  Searched my inbox and I cannot find anything like this. But it does seem I need to make some changes. Lucky for me I only ever used email mostly because it is convenient. Odd that they haven't sent me anything.
• jdofaz 5y ago
  Over the last year or so I've worked to remove any dependency on my google account. After seeing this I decided to rip the band-aid off. Mostly because I didn't want to accidentally get charged for something. Like others said I had to upgrade my account to the new plan and then cancel the subscription, I then added "Cloud Identity Free" as a subscription. I can still access the handful of things I purchased and my android device is still able to to use google play with the same account. If I try and go to google drive, gmail or calendar I get: "We are sorry, but you have cancelled your subscription to Google Workspace. You will need to re-subscribe to Google Workspace in order to use Google Workspace services like Gmail."
• Hnrobert42 5y ago
  If we start paying, do we stop being the product? Or will Google keep collecting information about us?
• adav 5y ago
  Been using this for longer than a decade only to hear about the service’s closure on HN… thanks Google. I’m sure the ad revenue from reading my emails in that time covered my feeble 1 account use case.
• pontifier 5y ago
  So, does someone have a docker image that I can throw at a vps somewhere that will take over the job of email for my domains, and will also push notifications to my android phone? Edit: I also need it to do OAuth :)
• vhodges 5y ago
  I am not a company and I get they want people to pay, but the amount is a non-starter for me and my wife and so they won't be getting any money from me. Migadu is 20USD/Year for multipe domains ('almost' unlimited). Inbound (200/Day) and outbound (20/Day) message limits do apply but we probably wont't exceed those, but even if I find we need to move up, the next tier is 90/Year for a savings of over 50USD (more for my CAD) over the Google option. I've been thinking of moving my mail there (using it for another domain already) for a while anyways, this just provides the incentive to finally move it over.
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  Starting to pay for something that used to be free for so long is always weird. But I'd consider it if it was not Google. I simply don't trust them. This is not even about their corporate evilness or their bullying market dominance. I don't trust their engineering values and I don't trust their future business decisions, this is not stable enough to use as a business tool.
• patrickdavey 5y ago
  Does anyone know how this works with "catch all" domain handling. For years I have used FOO.org address with a legacy free edition. I always create service@foo.org email addresses, and they all drop through to the catch-all domain. Can I just register the one address "patrick@foo.org" and have all the addresses still just fall through as normal? What a nightmare :(
  • burnte 5y ago
    I never moved to the free GSuite and I'm glad. I have everything at my domain forward to me@mydomain.com and that goes to my gmail address. Then GMail is set up to send mail out through my domain's email server to retain the illusion.
    • patrickdavey 5y ago
      Good for you ;) Heh, quite jealous. I assume this means you're running your own mailserver, which was something I was hoping to avoid. It looks like Google does allow catch-all addresses on the new plan. https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650?hl=en . I'm still very tempted to move to fastmail instead though. Email was all I really used the legacy suite for. The annoying thing is things like toy apps which I have which are all with one of these legacy g-suite accounts (though, maybe those do all continue to work actually ?) What a mess (like, how does oauth work when I signed in with Google and now it's no longer a google account... it won't work.. gah!)
    • doctoboggan 5y ago
      How did you configure the forwarding from "me@mydomain.com" to your gmail address? Just using your registrars email forwarding options?
      • burnte 5y ago
        My webhost, Dreamhost. It's a configuration option in their mail transfer agent.
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  Uh oh, I think I have one of these. I somehow have my own custom domain pointing to gmail, for free, that I don't actually remember how I even got it, I've had it for years, but never have paid for it. That's all I do with this... whatever it is, email on a custom domain, I don't use anything else. I didn't receive any email this morning notifying me about it though. I guess maybe it's finally time to move to fastmail. I'm not giving up a custom domain email address. I don't like that I'll lose access to giant archive of received email. Is there a way to export all my archive/inbox from gmail? Import into fastmail? It looks like... maybe. But the fact that I'm trying to keep the same domain is going to complicate things maybe, since I can't easily have them both active at once to import from one to the other.
  • cstejerean 5y ago
    You should be able to use IMAP to move things over.
    • jrochkind1 5y ago
      I'm trying to figure out, if I sign up for a fastmail account @mycustomdomain, which is what my "legacy g suite" also uses... I guess I can probably still transfer over with IMAP before I change the MX and try to cancel the google "legacy g suite" account. It's pretty confusing. I wonder if I can manage to create an "ordinary" google account with the same email address afterwards.
• richardw 5y ago
  That’s about the last shred of trust. I was such a fanboy for so long. I’ve paid Google a lot of money when the price on the tin was upfront. I’ve used the free services as well. They generated huge goodwill and lock-in all over the place. Now it’s an extraction machine to pump the stock price and I’ll treat them like that.
• JamesAdir 5y ago
  HN is a very strange place. Maybe around a week ago people were complaining that 500K that YC puts now into companies is not a lot of money. Now they are complaining that 6$ per month per user in Google Workspace lowest tier is a deal breaker for them.
• rootusrootus 5y ago
  This is good. I host a family email domain with G Suite, and every time I've brought up switching away from google I get big pushback from family members on spending any money for email hosting. Google forcing the issue is good, because now I'll have exactly the excuse I needed to switch to Fastmail.
• chetangole 5y ago
  May be a right time to evaluate an alternative for your free '@gmail' accounts as well.
• collin128 5y ago
  For those running custom domains and feeling pinched, check out improveMX: https://improvmx.com/ https://improvmx.com/ I've been using them for a while for a side project email that sends/receives through a free Gmail account and it works well. I've worked with email for a while and was surprised by how easy it was to set up.
• ulfw 5y ago
  I've left Gmail and Google Apps (with my domain) long ago. If you need to pay anyway and are looking for email I recommend Microsoft Exchange Online. They're doing a shit job in marketing it, but $4 a month for Exchange email with immediate push to iPhone/iPad etc, good anti spam filtering and no Google profile building is worth it for me.
• sagarm 5y ago
  OK, this is annoying but it looks like there's a combination of features that allows me to continue using my domain as an alias for my @gmail.com account, including being able to send mail using the alias: 1. Email forwarding: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3251241?authuser=1&hl=en#emailForwarding https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3251241?authuser=1... 2. Send as alias: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157?authuser=1 https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157?authuser=1 I think this will actually end up being a better set up for my usage than GAFYD was.
• donatj 5y ago
  Hmm… Is there a good way to export all the email across all the accounts and move it to another more sanely priced service? I have been using this since it was “gmail for your domain” and have a number of old addresses I’d like to keep for history but am unwilling to pay $6 a month for, not to mention many friends having long neglected addresses I’m sure they’d like to keep.
  • kevincox 5y ago
    Email is trivial. You can either drank+drop in a client like thunderbird, Google Takeout all your mail and upload, or many providers will support a direct server-to-server POP or IMAP import.
• artdigital 5y ago
  Wow this sucks. I thought after taking away the ability to link new custom domains that this would have been it, and it'll just stay a crippled option that some will just continue use. I am grandfathered in. I don't actually use the account for much these days, but I have a few things like YouTube channels, YouTube premium (+ music), analytics, Android store purchases and bunch more things running through it. Sure I can use aliases for the domain or just set the mails go to a different provider, but outside of the mails I am now stuck and need to figure out what to do since there are no migration options available. Probably means I'll have to nuke everything and setup from scratch (for the things that don't allow setting a new admin).
• kureikain 5y ago
  I made https://mailwip.com https://mailwip.com as an email forwarding solution for this purpose. Simply point your MX records to our server, then email can be forward to your personal gmail/protonmail.
• makerofthings 5y ago
  I have this account. I am disappointed that I found out about it here, I don’t see any notifications that reflect this just one message saying I should /consider/ upgrading. I’m just using this to host my personal email domain, I don’t have users, I don’t use any of the rest of it. Just email@mydomain hosted on gmail. This is the strongest link I have to google, strange to see them shoot in the head like this. Looking through the thread, Fastmail seems to be the consensus? Edit: As if by magic, there is a Gsuite vs o365 discussion in the leadership channel, I have an opinion now.
• underwater 5y ago
  I don't want Google Suite. I don't want Google Workspaces. I want plain old Gmail with a custom domain. Google kept moving the goalposts and now they tell me that I'm a freeloader for not paying for the features I didn't ask for.
  • rekoil 5y ago
    This is exactly how I feel, and now I'm not sure where to move because I have 8 domains configured and services like ProtonMail want me to pay them for every domain (which just makes no sense to me, I can't figure out how the code that makes this a costly problem looks, my guess is it's a money grab tbh). Sure I don't often use them all, but it comes in handy at times to be able to quickly use a different domain. Been looking at Tutanota, but not sure how I feel about being required to use their clients. Any other good suggestions?
    • 42jd 5y ago
      Highly recommend Fastmail. Fantastic server side search and web app (plus has calendar which is essential for an email app imo). There also is nothing holding you back from bringing your own mail client (that can actually interact with the server eg tagging). They also allow connecting to other accounts such as gmail letting you have a single inbox on Fastmail itself. Favorite “hidden” feature is the ability to do sieve scripting which combined with wildcards and send from identities lets me auto sort emails by path. Eg apps-tech-hackernews@example.com. Also the standard account comes with 100 domains and are real easy to setup. Been using it for a year now and I haven’t had a single issue. Also the pricing is very reasonable.
    • demurgos 5y ago
      I've been using Migadu for years: you only pay for a single account and can link as many domains as you wish. Also they're pretty cheap and support was helpful when I messaged them.
• egberts1 5y ago
  Google should be the one paying ME to use their GMail with ALL THINGS THEY HAVE LEARNED ABOUT ME from my emails.
• precommunicator 5y ago
  Thank you Google for providing me with a free service for a lot of my domains for so many years, and thank you for the final push to switch to Protonmail, which I was considering for a while now, but didn't do because of the price.
• theshrike79 5y ago
  Well, shit. My home town has a tiny hobbyist theatre group. Their shows have like 30 people in them max, and half of those are family and friends. I set up a G Suite for them to handle email, because it was - you know - within their budget of 0€. There's no fucking way they can start paying 12€/user/month. That's more than they make from a show :D Any alternatives with reasonable pricing for ~5 people?
  • inyorgroove 5y ago
    iCloud+ ($0.99/month in US) allows custom domains with 5 emails. I set iCloud to forward by creating a on addressed to rule. Configured the "Accounts/Import" in my gmail account with smtp (I always used this with my vanity emails). Not exactly the same as before for your usecase perhaps (everyone will need a free gmail), but about as cheap as I could find per recommendation elsewhere in this thread.
    • below43 5y ago
      Cloudflare email routing is a good free option https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/
• cik 5y ago
  I have two domains - simply because of the failures of the google legacy tools. I have countless services that oauth dance through Google - services I care about. The problem is that I've never felt that I receive value for the Google services. The value is comparative. With a family of 6 this would cost me ~$45 per month. Frankly this doesn't have the 3x the value of Spotify (which I will pay for, forever), and value is comparative. For this price point, I can pay for O365. With O365, I get more storage, and I get usable office tools such as Excel and Word. The real question is do I gamble - do I migrate and hope the entire universe doesn't break - like my android? What happens with my google play purchases, are those forfeit as I migrate out a google account? Is it now time to get a free throwaway gmail account, purely for android purchases and nothing more? This is.... frustrating to say the least.
• buro9 5y ago
  For those looking to migrate to Gmail, a story of the mechanics of doing so: https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d2929066951 https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906... The gist: You can't move everything, you lose things like purchases on apps... but you can move email, docs, map saved items, photos... the core data you can shift, the rest you cannot. Expect some difficulties along the way.
• petre 5y ago
  Good. One decade of free service is enough. This will motivate me to get off my ass and use my personal e-mail server, maybe set up roundcube for webmail and spamassassin.
• compsciphd 5y ago
  I have a bunch of users from our university's computer club going years back where the club provided emails. For 15 years it was hosted on a qmail installation on a personal box of mine. A few years ago, as my time got more expensive and I didn't want to manage it as closely, I moved it to the free gsuite account that I had (with some headaches, as free gsuite didn't support email routing, so qmail aliases couldn't transition over, as "-" is not a traditional alias character). So, this is screwing with me a bit. What will probably end up happening, as I have a personal 1 user gsuite account already, which does support routing rules, I will just make the old domain an alias on my personal domain and use multiple routing rules to forward mail the matches regex ^username(-.*)?@ to whatever is their personal email account.
• Mikho 5y ago
  As many here I use own domain with free Gmail. This Google move changes everything and maybe it's time to move to Microsoft 365 subscription which provides possibility to use own domain even with personal and family plans [1]. For the same subscription Google asks, with MS 365 at least one gets 1TB of cloud and the latest Office suite. 6TB with family plan. No brainer I'd say. Just needed a motivation to finally ditch Google. 1. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalized-email-address-in-microsoft-365-75416a58-b225-4c02-8c07-8979403b427b https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalize...
• andreinwald 5y ago
  Free mail service for custom domains - G Suite alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006596
• blacklight 5y ago
  I'm so happy for having moved all of my content from G Suite to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance long ago. Now that Google has come up with this announcement, I simply decided to remove those services from my account (I had even forgotten that I still had them). All of my data and cloud services are safely stored somewhere else. Google's ransom strategy doesn't apply to me. If you haven't don't so yet, move to a self-hosted solution. Remember that there's no cloud, it's just somebody else's computer. And if the guy who runs that computer decides that you have to start paying more for it, you don't want to find yourself in a situation where you have no options but to accept - unless you want to give up your data. Google's ransom policies have started to become so obvious: the more evil somebody becomes, the more banal and predictable their actions.
• deadgiveaway 5y ago
  Upgrade from G Suite legacy free edition Where can I get help? If you have questions, you can contact: Google Workspace support So I click on that link, and I get: How to contact us To get phone, chat, or email support for your legacy free account at (my domain), you need to upgrade to Google Workspace. Well, no, you see, that's what I want to talk about. About not upgrading to Google Workspace.
• almokhtar 5y ago
  screw them going to https://www.hey.com/ https://www.hey.com/
• cx42net 5y ago
  If your main use case is to keep using Gmail with a custom domain, then it’s still possible to achieve it using our service - improvmx.com. We’ve prepared a guide that explains how to migrate step-by-step: https://improvmx.com/guides/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-alternative/ https://improvmx.com/guides/gsuite-legacy-free-edition-alter... Achieving the same functionality is possible on our free plan, and you can still use Gmail’s free SMTP method (https://improvmx.com/guides/send-emails-using-gmail/ https://improvmx.com/guides/send-emails-using-gmail/) to send emails from your alias, so no need to upgrade to anything. One main caveat: since it’s not possible to downgrade a G Suite account to a « free » one, you would need to create a new Google account for each of your users. That would mean that you’d lose all previously bought subscriptions or apps bought on Google Play with your account. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
  • rc_mob 5y ago
    this is lovely thank you for posting
    • cx42net 5y ago
      You are welcome, I'm happy if it's useful!
  • ssiddharth 5y ago
    This is perfect, thank you!
    • cx42net 5y ago
      I'm glad if I can help! :)
• slawekrewaj 5y ago
  If the main concern is to keep a free Google Account on a custom domain, then that's still possible. It's enough to convert all users from G Suite to the free edition of Cloud Identity - https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251?hl=en https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251?hl=e... Obviously that will require a replacement for gmail, calendar, etc, but it's understandable if somebody doesn't want to pay for Google's version
• YaraAllen 5y ago
  This change is a killer for those of us using Google Voice. Not only do you have to upgrade to a Google Workspace plan but you also have to pay separately for a Google Voice subscription. With the cheapest plan (https://cloud.google.com/voice#pricing https://cloud.google.com/voice#pricing), being $10/month/user.
• khaless 5y ago
  On a quick read of this the move seems pretty to have a pretty considerable impact on me, while I appreciate the free service it sounds like it’s been a trap. I’ve had gsuite for a while, primarily using it to host a custom domain for email for my family. Effectively I view my use of these services as mostly a free (gmail) user, just with the added benefit of a custom domain. I’m not sure $6/month/user is really worth it just for a custom domain; but I don’t really think I have a choice as the accounts also represent google accounts with other services hanging off them (digital purchases, other subscriptions such as YouTube premium, additional storage, etc). Either I need to continue to pay to not loose all the items I’ve accumulated in the google world on this account, or after this experience choose to migrate my whole family somewhere else and deal with whatever other complexities that means, but cement my final departure from Google’s products, including finding alternatives for the other products I currently subscribe for from Google
• daveloyall 5y ago
  I'm sure there is a better place in this hierarchical conversation for this contribution, but I've only got a few minutes before my next meeting. I'm sure some of you understand. :) Some of us should be categorically excluded from this whole "free product, what'd you expect?" sentiment. And here's why. May I present... an email that Google sent me in 2006. Wow, I'd almost forgotten that GAFYD was *not* the first name of this thing... Note these keywords: 2006, beta, bulk, offer, helping. Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 19:31:46 -0700 From: hosted-noreply@google.com To: ____@gmail.com Subject: Gmail for ____.net beta tester invitation Welcome to our beta test! Thanks for helping us test Gmail for your domain! We're excited to help you offer Gmail accounts with your domain. Here's how to get started: * First, click the link below. Log in with the same Google Account you used to volunteer to become a beta tester. https://www.google.com/hosted/____.net * Next, we'll guide you through a series of steps to register your domain for this service. * We'll then ask you to create a new administrative account for your domain. Most people choose something like admin@____.net. * You can then log in to the control panel ( https://www.google.com/hosted/____.net ) with your administrative account. Within the control panel, you can create new users, modify or suspend accounts, create aliases and lists, and customize the look and feel of Gmail for ____.net. You can even upload whole lists of new users with the bulk upload feature, and assign administrative rights to multiple accounts. * Finally, you'll need to configure your DNS MX records to work with Gmail. Once you log in to the control panel, you'll see detailed instructions on how to complete this step. If you get stuck, you can access our help center. Thanks again for helping us out, The Gmail Team --- Here is the original, in screenshot form, redacted, with highlighting of those keywords: https://imgur.com/a/wQdMCIz https://imgur.com/a/wQdMCIz You see, they wanted to use my cool vanity domain to entice users to join their Gmail service. It was all about Gmail "on" my domain. Now, let's talk about official notices and migration assistance. You hear me, Uncle G? I'm guessing that back then, you didn't know where this was going. But don't act like I've been freeloading... I *paid* *my* *dues*, and more. The least you can do now is help me pack.
• Mikho 5y ago
  Don't panic. You won't lose your purchases. So, to check what happens I cancelled "Google Workplace" subscription in one of my burner G Suite free legacy editions in the "Billing" section for one of the domains I own. Upon the cancellation in the section with "Apps" there were 44 services left in "Additional Google services" and 4 in "Google Workspace". The latter includes Google Drive and Google Keep—both still active for all users. Though I didn't see YouTube in the former section. After activating Cloud Identity Management free edition subscription there are now in "Additional Google services" 55 services (up from 44) including YouTube, Photos, Google Play, Pay, Books, Maps, Chrome sync, Web Store etc. All active for all users in the account. I checked and I'm still able to access and use them. It appears in general the account for the organization and all registered users are active and are able to access all services—though with no access to all Google Workspace services except Google Drive and Google Keep. They are still active.
• ianmf 5y ago
  I have not received an email from Google about the changes. It lead me to think that it is for accounts that have more than 1 active user. I have a G Suite Legacy with 1 account only. The change make sense to block companies from abusing the free legacy version. However, Google should allow users to downgrade to 1 account or migrate the data to gmail accounts.
• themadturk 5y ago
  Well, this is an unpleasant surprise. Most of my family has been on G Suite for nearly 20 years, under a grandfathered-in free account with a custom domain. Six dollars a month is at least $24 a month. Time for everyone to switch to a free account, or look for an alternative that's just as easy. The hard part will be getting email addresses changed, which is why I chose a custom domain to start with...and weaning people off the Gmail client.
  • mxuribe 5y ago
    I've also been used to the free tier of GSuite...but honestly, i can not complain. I got to use my own custom domain for my family for several years...so i can't be upset really. That being said, a few months ago i started testing zoho mail...because i had planneed to move away from google anyway (for reasons that are not about cost, but more about principles)...and so far my tests are pretty good with them! Zoho's performance and cheap pricing means that i will be hopping to them very likely. At least...that is my plan...we'll see. Also, i;'ve heard that mailbox.org is pretty good and low cost; so there are optins that won't break the bank.
    • pygy_ 5y ago
      Do you know if one can enable the catchall with the Zoho cheap plan (€0.9/month/user)? I have a single mail account, but I use the catchall to provide distinct email adresses to corporations (so if I ever get mail from foo-corp@my-domain.example.com, I know who leaked it).
    • mxuribe 5y ago
      @pygy_ Not sure what happened to your comment...but as far as supporting a catchall...while i do not use that feature, the follwoing help pages seem to indicate that it is supported: https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/catch-all-setup.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/catch-all-setup.... https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/mail/adminconsole/articles/what-is-a-catch-all-address https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/mail/adminconsole/article... https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/org-settings.html#alink3 https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/org-settings.htm... Good luck!
• znkynz 5y ago
  So- just got the email. Can't pay for it, as Gsuite thinks i am US based. I am NZ based, so can't use my credit card. It seems you can't change the country of a gsuite, after signup. Obv, i am not a business, but this is a family gsuite org- and yeah, people do move around the world over decades. No way to get support on this at all - there is no support to contact for free gsuite accounts....
• asciimov 5y ago
  It's sad that the MBA's have finally taken over at Google, and now they have to squeeze every last penny out of their customers (on top of all the ads they sell). The worst part of all this, is most of us casual users just want to do email, nothing else. I personally don't have a high enough volume of email to even warrant paying out for most services.
  • PradeetPatel 5y ago
    Why do people speak of MBA as if it is a bad thing? Serious question, in India it is often seen as an extremely prestigious title and its a gateway into a high paying position. Or is there a cultural difference I'm not understanding?
    • chrisseaton 5y ago
      I think a lot of engineers resent that someone could get more responsibility and more compensation than they do without being 'technical'! (Obviously much work in business administration is deeply technical anyway.)
      • gigatexal 5y ago
        Yeah ... this dichotomy is a false one: both sides need each other. Sales needs engineering to deliver. And Engineering needs sales to have some reason to build/work on something. Perhaps a good sales person might command the salary of 10 engineers if that sales person can bring in revenue commiserate of that salary. I read somewhere that one's salary is roughly 10% of the value one brings. So if a sales person brings in 10M in revenue common wisdom says pay them 1M. Now for engineers it is harder to value. So perhaps if it takes 10 engineers to delivery the 10M worth of revenue that sales person brought in then perhaps they're only paid 100k?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • knuthsat 5y ago
      MBAs are seen as people without skin in the game. They are rewarded if things are going well, and are not punished if things go bad. The asymmetry makes these individuals look as if they are here to leech and most of their knowledge is just how to "network". Just pick any big bank and look at how the board members rotate as time goes on.
• rsync 5y ago
  The correct answer here is takeout + rclone, right ? We're actually writing a detailed HOWTO about this workflow, mostly centered on gmail since you can't interface with gmail (directly) using rclone. Regardless, it is rclone that (in my opinion) makes this quite a bit less impactful.
  • pavel_lishin 5y ago
    > The correct answer here is takeout + rclone, right ? Answer to what? You mean for extracting your emails out of gmail?
    • vesinisa 5y ago
      I had some years ago great success with IMAP migration (downloaded all my emails to home computer from old GMail and then uploaded them back to my new GMail account). All my old emails are indexed and I can search them just like before, they just show the old From/To address. I also used a label to mark those uploaded emails, so if things would go awry along the way I could always nuke those migrated old emails.
  • jrochkind1 5y ago
    I don't understand what you're suggesting using rclone for how. I'd be interested in reading your article.
  • jahewson 5y ago
    What use is my email on S3?
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  I am not sure to understand this completely. What about Gmail use? Is that going to stay free?
  • neogodless 5y ago
    This is about free "business" level Google accounts. Personal Gmail is not connected to this.
  • hirako2000 5y ago
    it's staying free until Google announces that personal email accounts are made obsolete by offering some super email account with some killer feature, of course free with a small print: for 12 months, then some fee.
• Aaronstotle 5y ago
  So if I use gmail for personal email, I now have to switch to a paid plan?
  • mattl 5y ago
    gmail.com or your a personal domain name? - gmail.com -- no. - if you can go to https://admin.google.com https://admin.google.com and you have users -- yes
  • fuzzy2 5y ago
    No. This isn’t about Gmail. It’s about G Suite (formerly Google Apps), which was a business offering from the start. It certainly also contains a mail component based on the same technology, but it’s not Gmail. If your address is somebody@gmail.com, you are not affected.
    • Macha 5y ago
      > which was a business offering from the start It was not exclusively a business offer from 2010 when it was a free individual tier: http://web.archive.org/web/20101224193042/http://www.google.com/apps/ http://web.archive.org/web/20101224193042/http://www.google.... to 2012 when the free edition was marketed as entirely different product ot the business one: http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000138/https://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000138/https://www.google...
    • waych 5y ago
      This is still very disingenuous on Google's part. When many people, myself and family included, first associated our own custom domains with them, there _were_ no "Google Apps" other than gmail. Google Calendar wasn't a thing, neither was Google Docs, Google Sheets, nor Google Meet. Android didn't exist, neither did Fi. Youtube was still its own property with its own separate accounts system. Later on, when they started building new offerings, including those that became known bundled as "Google Apps", they continued to conflate the account usage with these several other services. When they decided this was something worthy of charging, they promised "free legacy" edition use indefinitely to users, calling them pioneers and champions of the service, as a way to thank them for their evangelism. The growth of periphery services continued, and now legacy users are faced with a hostage situation for all their data and purchases associated with their accounts.
• ankurpatel 5y ago
  It would be cheaper to go with iCloud+ service which offers custom email domains. I am now considering that after being on the free legacy plan for all of these years. https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/add-a-custom-domain-mma473945269/icloud https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/add-a-custom-domain-m...
  • api 5y ago
    Can you use it for things like e-mail if everyone doesn't use Apple stuff?
    • ankurpatel 5y ago
      For setup you may need iOS device at first but I don't think it is tied to it. I am using a lot of Apple devices so not a problem for me but maybe if you dont and do not have Apple ID.
  • theginger 5y ago
    I looked at this a while ago. But I discovered quite how tightly looped the apple eco system is. Without an iPhone or a Mac I can sign up for a free iCloud account, but bizarrely I cannot have a paid one.
    • criddell 5y ago
      Did you install iCloud on your Windows PC?
  • xn--7pr67wky3 5y ago
    Is catch-all supported yet for custom email domains on iCloud+? That's really the only thing holding me back from it.
  • below43 5y ago
    If you're an iPhone/Mac user and already using iCloud+ for files/photo storage, this is a good solution as it won't cost you anything more (assuming you're happy to rely mainly on the iOS and Mac OS apps as the web-based mail client is terrible to use).
• GeekyBear 5y ago
  Google, this is a bait and switch mess of your own making. The solution is to allow users an option to convert back to a free account without losing access to their data, files, apps, and any purchased digital goods.
  • pxx 5y ago
    The accounts don't disappear when you cancel. Only the Workspace features. https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646?hl=en
    • GeekyBear 5y ago
      Did you notice that step one of that link is "Save your data"?
      • pxx 5y ago
        The _accounts_ don't disappear. The data linked with the features you're cancelling does. So, apps and purchased digital goods don't seem to disappear. Files that you need to pay for storage costs for do.
• MarkusWandel 5y ago
  I have four active email users in my free "legacy edition" vanity domain workspace. I am not willing to pay USD4x6x12 per year to have this continue to work. Looking around for the most affordable alternative for four active email accounts brings me to... Microsoft! Microsoft 365 Family Edition. Like a lot of salary drones I use Microsoft products at work, so I get a discount. It is sad to be paying for full Microsoft Office capability only to not use it, only to keep my email addresses working. It seems positively bizarre, from the view of 20 years ago, to be fleeing from Google to Microsoft. But the fact remains, CAD$76.xx or so per year is something I can stomach for email address continuity for four people. Well, maybe the terabyte of cloud storage per user could come in handy for (encrypted) cloud backups as well. If you can't get the employee discount, googling suggests the best deal for M$365 Family in Canada is: Costco! $99 for 15 months. Anyone else find something good for four users? A colleague has Fastmail for CAD$46/year (paid multiple years in advance). I'd love to use that, but for four users... too expensive again.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/ https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/ Mid-level tier is just under $60/year for 4 mailboxes, custom domain name, and, if desired, catch-all email. Reasonably good webmail, as well as SMTP/IMAP/POP3 options.
  • savy91 5y ago
    Zoho Mail si probably the cheapest you can find for limited users and custom domains
  • criddell 5y ago
    You might want to consider iCloud+ as well. It starts at $1 / month. You get 50 GB of storage, custom email domain, etc...
    • rodolphoarruda 5y ago
      iCloud price is affordable. One problem I noticed, though, is the process to create a family account. You must have an Apple device to do it. There is no option to do it through the browser. I don't have an Apple device, so I cannot create a family group associated to my individual account.
• etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  I find the outrage here quite amazing. This tier has been deprecated for about 10 years already. Furthermore, the costs to upgrade are not egregious, most everyone here would not have a big problem with it. Also, it's not like one is losing one's email address -- you control the domain...
  • bmarquez 5y ago
    I find the inability to transfer my paid Android apps and Youtube purchases to a free Gmail account quite egregious. GSuite already had lesser consumer functionality than regular Gmail accounts, at least let us transfer over our purchases.
    • 627467 5y ago
      It is quite egregious that purchases in app stores cannot be migrated but as far as FAQ states, you don't lose access to that Google account and as such you don't lose access to the purchased content. You just lose access to the email and productivity suite. Think of the scenario where you sign up to a Google account using a Hotmail account: you can make Google apps/content purchases in that account
      • bmarquez 5y ago
        The FAQ didn't say that when the news first came out; it must have been updated due to backlash. As a side note, I still haven't gotten an email notification of this days later. If it wasn't for HN I wouldn't have known Google was cancelling legacy G Suite at all.
  • cosmotic 5y ago
    I find ~$1000 a year for just email accounts for three humans to be egregious (the non-humans are service accounts for things like NAS, printer, or TeamCity/Jenkins).
    • neogodless 5y ago
      Wow. Why is it so much? I saw the $6/month per user plan, which would be $216 for three humans. Is that a massively discounted (80%) introductory price?
• YaraAllen 5y ago
  I don't have a problem with Google eliminating the free tier or charging for use but the lack of a migration option hurts. In my case, I only have one user, so it's not a big issue paying for it. But I also use Google Voice which isn't part of the standard Google Workspace package and I have to pay $10/month/user to add it. So I would go from paying $0/year to $192/year ($6/month for Google Workspace + $10/month for Google Voice) is a bit of a pain. I am OK paying $72/year for email, etc. but $200 is a bit steep. And if I want to migrate to a non-G Suite account, none of my history will transfer over.
• bgidley 5y ago
  If you want to keep the google accounts working for things that free (photos, YouTube etc) you can switch first to the business essentials plan and then to the cloud identity plan. Then you can move the email elsewhere but the google accounts still work. This was essential for me as I used g suite for my family and some are using it for photos.
  • danielx 5y ago
    Yes, this is the way. Info about Cloud Identity Free: https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251 https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251 Steps for adding Cloud Identity Free: https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/topic/7555155 https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/topic/7555155 You will only lose access to Gmail and Calendar, though make sure you migrate email and calendar before moving to Cloud Identity Free. Disclaimer: i haven't followed the steps myself since i'm paying for a personal Workspace account since a few years ago.
    • seanwilson 5y ago
      So say your custom domain is example.com and you have a user who logs in with me@example.com that has data in Google Gmail, Drive, Photos and Calendar. What are the migration steps? I'm finding this really confusing. Backup Gmail and Calendar, switch to business essentials plan, then cloud identity plan, set up email for me@example.com with some other provider and you can still use me@example.com to access your old Drive and Photos?
      • danielx 5y ago
        Yeah, those steps seems about right. But you'd probably want to set up the new provider as your first step and upgrade from the legacy free edition as your last step. I also like to point the MX records to the new provider before doing the backup so there will be no incoming messages while the backup is in progress. Disclaimer: i haven't followed the steps myself since i'm paying for a personal Workspace account since a few years ago.
  • Sanzig 5y ago
• celso 5y ago
  If you interested in Cloudflare's Email Routing https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/ we're mass enabling the zones that have asked for Beta access and will be going GA soon. Email me at celso@cf if you can't wait; we'll try to prioritize.
  • drewda 5y ago
    This is a very interesting option for handling incoming email from a personal domain or two (especially since it's from an established company, rather than a random individuals's email forwarding service :) Does Cloudflare have any options for handling outgoing email? If not, I assume you still have to set up your actual email host in a way that can send through all the vanity domains, with appropriate DKIM records, etc.
    • below43 5y ago
      If you were to use free Gmail, this allows you to send via other email addresses (so you could forward youremail@yourdomain.com to your Gmail and send emails as coming from that email address). See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en
      • feupan 5y ago
        Can that completely hide that real sender (me@gmail.com) without setting up a SMTP server? Seeing "me@gmail.com on behalf of me@example.com" or ending up in spam would be a deal breaker.
        • below43 5y ago
          No I don't think so Actually, I was wrong: it looks like there's no longer an option to do that from Gmail :(
  • below43 5y ago
    Wonderful timing! I already have one domain approved and can confirm it's an awesome tool thanks :) ps. I suspect that this will provide people a very simple way to migrate to using free Gmail as their email solution. (though in my case, I've taken the free Gsuite product closure as an incentive to fully de-Google).
• pkrumins 5y ago
  Does anyone know if this applies to Gmail for domains as well?
  • jrochkind1 5y ago
    I don't think there is such a thing called "gmail for domains". If you have gmail at a custom domain, you aren't paying anything for it, and you've had it for 10 years or more like that... this is probably talking about you, yes. The thing some of us have had for 10 years or more has been called different things at different points in Google history. Including "Google Apps For Your Domain" and "G-Suite" and "Google Workspace". Maybe it was called "gmail for domains" at one point? It's honestly been very confusing as google keeps changing how things work and what they are called and migrating my legacy free account along each time, with some services breaking etc., I almost feel like I'm finally being put out of my misery.
    • Macha 5y ago
      There was briefly a seperate Gmail for Domains that was rolled into what was then Google Apps For Your Domain. There's also the possibility that you've registered a regular google account at a non-google domain.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • neogodless 5y ago
    I believe Gmail for Domains, Google Apps for Business and GSuite (now GSuite Legacy) were all previous names for what is now Google Workspaces.
• immutology 5y ago
  From what I've seen, the biggest issue here is that you cannot transfer purchased Google Play Store purchases. Even without the G Suite thing, this is a problem. For example, I have a fairly unprofessional primary Google account that I created when I was young and dumb(er). I would like to transfer the hundreds of dollars in purchases I've made under that account to another, more appropriately named, account but it does not seem possible. They could solve this part of the problem for the affected G Suite deprecated users as well as people in positions like me by having a way to do this.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    My understanding now is that even if you let the forced Google Workspace account lapse, the underlying accounts will continue to function as Google Accounts. You will not have access to Email, Documents, Photos, Calendar, etc. but you will still be able to login to Google and use Play Store purchases.
    • Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Only until they are inevitably turned off down the road. Such legacy things never stick for too long.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• boronine 5y ago
  After finding out about this yesterday I started experimenting with using Amazon SES to do custom domain email. Sending can be accomplished using SES-generated SMTP credentials, but receiving is not straightforward. Here is my script to receive SES emails from S3 to a local maildir folder that can be opened with mutt: https://gist.github.com/boronine/661fd24ba6671f687ff714969d961b85 https://gist.github.com/boronine/661fd24ba6671f687ff714969d9... Not very convenient but quite private and virtually free. EDIT: I am using rclone, but you can also use awscli or boto3
• szundi 5y ago
  I find it interesting that there are already 79 comments and no one remembers: this was advertised back then as "FREE FOREVER". Even before that I was a beta user, quite sad that Google is not wealthy enough to keep its promise.
  • neop1x 5y ago
    Yes, the original ToS [1] for Google Apps: 17. Modification. Except as provided in Section 18, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement [...] 18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment: (i) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above; and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20090211101551/http://google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/standard_terms.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090211101551/http://google.com/...
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    I think that is exactly why people are pissed off about this.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  So, we enter the brave new world of extortion for data held hostage. Cool. I wonder if Google has factored in what this will do to their brand image, the cost in the longer term will likely far outstrip the savings and the resulting income from sign ups.
  • WillPostForFood 5y ago
    How to download your Google data https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Yes, Good luck using those dumps anywhere else but in Google. This isn't all that easy to deal with for some, migrating years of email, and so on is a lot of work. Besides the loss of App purchases and other financial impact. Fortunately for once I was prepared for something like this and besides a couple of documents I'll be able to shut it down easily.
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    This is why I have a nightly cron that backs up from my cloud services. Unfortunately Google (and many others) only allow Takeout with a cap of 1 or 2 a year and it is frustratingly manual. I only trust SaaS products when I know I have an alternative and can exfiltrate my data.
• eco 5y ago
  I would have no problems with this if Google just provided a way to convert GSuite accounts into personal Google accounts. In fact, I'd prefer to pay if it means no ads/data gathering in GMail. I've lived in this obnoxious state for a long time where my Google account (with an email address that is nearly as old as Google itself so I'm not switching) sometimes works, sometimes doesn't (and even sometimes works then suddenly stops working one day) for any random Google service. I just want to keep my email address and have a plain old Google account. Is that too much to ask? That's all I ever wanted and that's all I thought I was getting when I signed up so long ago. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and warn myself before I signed up for "Google Apps For Your Domain".
  • notatoad 5y ago
    park your vanity domain on some provider that gives you free or cheap email forwarding. (cloudflare is promoting their offering at the top of this thread) make a plain old google account with a new address. forward your old address to the new one. then set the old address as the send address in your new gmail account. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • eco 5y ago
      Unfortunately that means losing all of my purchases and other data associated with my original account.
• rietta 5y ago
  This impacts me and my family for sure. I'm not so worried about the business implications of going to paid, but I have been providing my family with firstname@ourfamilyname.tld for decades and they now have deep ties with that as their primary email addresses for all manner of things and for Google ecosystem stuff. Am I so generous to pay $72/year per family member and/or I am going to have to figure out out to rebill/resell services to them. This is a major change and is one of the use cases Google marketed this to and has subsequently forgotten about.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• planetjones 5y ago
  Anyone got any experience and tips for migrating a lot gmail e-Mails to iCloud mail? I pay for the 2TB plan with iCloud and I don’t want to pay Google for custom email addresses for all of my family. iCloud mail allows a custom domain now so that’s my migration plan.
  • below43 5y ago
    I'm doing that right now. Run Google Takeout, which exports an mbox file, then import into Mail (on your Mac). Then gradually copy over emails to your iCloud inbox.
• makerofthings 5y ago
  If you told me when I signed up for gsuite that Microsoft would turn into Google and Google would turn into Microsoft and I would have to migrate to o365, I would have laughed at you.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    You're only half right: Google turned into Microsoft, but Microsoft didn't turn into Google. They only turned into Microsoft with an old-Google image.
• modeless 5y ago
  I still haven't received an email about this. Is it confirmed to affect everyone?
• makerofthings 5y ago
  Someone at google needs to have a good think about who they're upsetting with this. Tech people, who early adopted a new product to host vanity email addresses who have been in the industry for 10-20 years+ and are now in decision making positions. I don't think they thought this through.
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  Here's the original 2006 announcement of "Google Apps For Your Domain". (Although personally I could swear I've had a gmail account at a custom domain since even earlier than 2006. Originally via some kind of partnership with... Dreamhost? Something like that? Anyway). http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hosted-communications_28.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host... > Google will provide organizations with two choices of service. > A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service). > A premium version of the product is being developed for organizations with more advanced needs. More information, including details on pricing, will be available soon.
• physhster 5y ago
  Same conundrum... I mostly used Workspace for email functions, never for the actual accounts since they are much more limited than vanilla "consumer" Google Accounts[1]. So I don't really have contents, just a bunch of lists that forward email to gmail accounts. Definitely not worth paying $72 per year. I could move those lists to Google Domains email forwarding[2], but it only supports one recipient per alias. And by foregoing Workspace, I'd lose my ability to send emails. To send emails I could either run my own SMTP (ew!), or use a commercial service such as Mailgun[3], ImprovMX[4] or ForwardMX[5]. If anybody has a better solution, I'm all ears. [1]https://support.google.com/mail/thread/19229800/change-g-suite-with-google-family-and-retain-private-domain?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/thread/19229800/change-g-sui... [2]https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3251241?hl=en https://support.google.com/domains/answer/3251241?hl=en [3]The free plan includes 5000 emails per month [4]Free for one domain but no TLS [5]$60 per year for 25 domains with unlimited everything (fair use)
• glonq 5y ago
  Oh damn, I set my family domain up on google apps back when it was free, and am definitely not paying $X/user/month just for email. I'd like to keep use my me@foo_family.com email address I'd like to keep using gmail. Is it possible to somehow migrate 10+ years of email from me@foo_family.com to me@gmail.com? From there, I just need to somehow point *@foo_family.com emails to something that forwards to the new individual gmail addresses.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Hmm, there is very little information on this. They've sort of botched the operation. I've got no problem paying, but the problem is I don't actually know if I'll keep the functionality since half of what I use is under add-ons. Will I lose my Google Fi phone number? It sounds like I should just migrate away everything I use, but it's going to be a bit of a hassle to actually look up everything I use, hmm. Well, I guess I have to find a weekend sometime between now and June.
• p2t2p 5y ago
  Are they stupid or something? Are those money worth reputation loss? Sometimes it seems as if there are malicious actors in Google that are set on taking it down from the inside.
• anon_np 5y ago
  Source: https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hosted-communications_28.html https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hos... "A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, ORGANIZATIONS THAT SIGN UP DURING THE BETA PERIOD WILL NOT EVER HAVE TO PAY FOR USERS ACCEPTED DURING THAT PERIOD (provided Google continues to offer the service)." and Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20070222003704/http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070222003704/http://www.google... "GOOGLE APPS FOR YOUR DOMAIN BETA AGREEMENT [..] 18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Service is considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion), (ii) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above, and (iii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee." -- Class action lawsuit? -np
• anon_np 5y ago
  Source: https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hosted-communications_28.html https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hos... "A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, ORGANIZATIONS THAT SIGN UP DURING THE BETA PERIOD WILL NOT EVER HAVE TO PAY FOR USERS ACCEPTED DURING THAT PERIOD (provided Google continues to offer the service)." and Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20070222003704/http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070222003704/http://www.google... "GOOGLE APPS FOR YOUR DOMAIN BETA AGREEMENT [..] 18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Service is considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion), (ii) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above, and (iii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee." -- Class action lawsuit? -np
• hbickhofe 5y ago
  Thank you Google for cheap 16 Years! I knew this would happen one day and maybe it's a good time to cleanup some old stuff! But I'll stay at Gmail. But not with all the Accounts I created over the years.
• mvkel 5y ago
  While Google has every right to do this, what's frustrating is it's virtually impossible to host your own email these days. Practically speaking, there's no free option anymore.
• daveloyall 5y ago
  > Questions about Google Workspace? Send us your questions and join live as Google Workspace experts walk through new topics in the coming weeks. Register now[1]. 1. https://events.withgoogle.com/meet-the-expert-webinars/ https://events.withgoogle.com/meet-the-expert-webinars/
• Octopuz 5y ago
  Google Legacy G Suite – Class Action Investigation – Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP https://chimicles.com/google-legacy-g-suite-class-action-investigation/ https://chimicles.com/google-legacy-g-suite-class-action-inv...
• anbotero 5y ago
  It quite pisses me off that some features they've played with, disabled, let me hanging, like Reminders, sometimes it was disabled for Google Apps accounts (even paid ones). I used to be able to leave reminders while using headphones, and one day it stopped working. These days it seems they enabled it again, but seriously, I spent like year and half without being able to set Reminders using OK Google. Someday I stopped being able to review applications on Google Play too. This is not my imagination, I have reviews I can see I made some years ago, and then suddenly... sorry, you can't. What the heck? You're technical geniuses, if you don't really want to associate a domain that I may lose and someone use in the future, hey, use an internal ID instead, but don't screw me over. So I'm screwed because even if I actually pay, they use me as tester for their free service. Truth be told, even if I lose these paid apps, subscriptions, images/videos, history, whatever I lose... I'll just switch to full usage of my personal, not-on-my-own-domain account. How can I be a paying customer if I can't even get same features than non-paying? Come on...
• e-clinton 5y ago
  I host my family’s email on there and have started looking for alternatives. Currently testing out Zoho Mail which looks promising. It will be weird for my primary email not to be a google account after close to 18 years.
• 0668814223 5y ago
• decombec 5y ago
• himstar 5y ago
  Google put users like me in a painful situation, I'm not using more than gmail and now forced to pay for everything they offering. Attracting ppl by offering free eco system and later forcing them to pay isn't something except by Google and must have to support their early adopters.
• eplt 5y ago
• cgradio 5y ago
  This is a shortsighted move by Google. While I understand wanting to charge businesses using G Suite, many of us are individuals wanting to provide family-domain email addresses and nothing more. Please reconsider an option for individuals and families who don't need or want the full suite. Just an email management option would be sufficient. Otherwise, I may have to leave the google platform altogether.
• whygoogle 5y ago
  Little late to the party but there is a law firm that is investigating a class action lawsuit if it's interesting to anybody else https://chimicles.com/google-legacy-g-suite-class-action-investigation/ https://chimicles.com/google-legacy-g-suite-class-action-inv...
• tsbs 5y ago
  i have registered in google apps in 2007 and stil using it with my family. 4 persons is about 288$ anualy (( It's OK to pay 5$ per month for ALL G Workspace account, but not for every user.
• triod44677 5y ago
  I'm using the legacy free edition since 2010 for personal/family propose. When I signed it I don't remember any legal note that Google can close my accounts and send me to the hell. It's a really nightmare!
• MoreCookies 5y ago
  Much the same as others' experience here, I have a legacy account that has been used for nothing other than email on a custom domain, and in recent years with only one user account. GSuite hosts my primary email address for many years and I feel like I'm being extorted to keep it. What next? Will they some day be telling regular GMail users that their accounts will be deleted unless they pay for 'GMail+'? I feel like Eleanor in "The Good Place". I can completely appreciate that Google doesn't have to provide indefinitely free email for my custom domain, but I also feel like the other options are completely unfair. Google only seem interested in offering business plans. I'm an individual, not a business. I'm not a non-profit organisation, but I'm an individual who is not using my account for profit. There needs to be a 'Medium Place' - or in this case some way of keeping hosted email with a custom domain. I'm not against paying something, but the long term price they're seeking to extort from me is about four times as much as would be fair and reasonable for email hosting. I'd be happy with all of the non-mail services stripped out - call it a 'Legacy Mail Plan' or something. Moreover, I'd even be happy to pay for it, if it were say $15/$20 a year. I don't need a million extra services and features for my non-existent business.
• superchicken 5y ago
  Whether Google Workspace costs $6 per user/mo. of 6¢ per user/mo., that really isn't the point. When Google Apps started, to attract users and gain insight for product development, Google offered free service to anyone who was interested. A lot of us have friends and family in our Google Workspace. We have years worth of email with Google, and now Google is saying, "Too bad. We want money. We know it will be really, really difficult for you to migrate all of your email and the email of your friends and family members to a new provider. They all use the email address you created for them to login to their bank, Amazon, social networks, etc. They'll never be able to change all their logins everywhere. They don't keep track. Most of your relatives don't know where they even have logins. So, we've got you. Pay us. Pay us for yourself. Pay us for everyone you know. You can call it extortion. It is! But we just showed you a disclaimer that lets us do this to you without consequence. Anything that's legal is morally right. We can do whatever we want to you. How does it feel to be powerless? Thanks for the money, sucker. Love, Google. :-)"
• sunmac 5y ago
• homero 5y ago
  This is absurd, can't I suspend service but keep my emails? Or will they delete everything?
• MrFreePress 5y ago
  The freemium marketing method attracted enough paying customers to add billions to Google's bottom line. Pulling the freemium accounts now removes trust from the fremium marketing method for everyone, every company.
• MrFreePress 5y ago
  Avoid converting all freemium accounts and just add the Google Apps marketing tag line to every email. I'd be good with that.
• angrygsuiteuser 5y ago
  My family uses it, but now we have to pay after they said "free forever". That's how much their word is worth.
  • dspearson 5y ago
    I received the email on Monday. I, too, was in the boat of having friends & family using it. It was a mistake to trust their promises, but this was from back in the day of "do no evil." They said free forever, now ask me for >$1000 a year. The insane thing is that almost everyone affected by this is likely to be highly technical, and in positions in which they have a say in how corporate spend happens. I migrated away this week. I had to explain to my friends and family about this bait-and-switch, and have them all using Google Takeout. C'est la vie. I had not self-hosted mail infrastructure since I was a teeanger, but here I am again. Thanks, I guess?
    • fbnlsr 5y ago
      I'm in the same boat as you, as my whole family has been using a custom domain for 15 years. What did you migrate your users to? Did you manage to transfer emails/calendars?
      • dspearson 5y ago
        iRedMail stack on a hetzner machine. Migrated mails with getmail and dovecot import, but it isn't perfect, and no calendar etc. But nobody is ever kicking me off a platform again.
  • Cybr 5y ago
    This is straight up extortion. Either you start paying for a "free forever" service, or you lose access to every account you registered using Google OAuth with your custom domain email address. You can migrate your domain and email, but you CAN'T MIGRATE your Google OAuth, and without that you lose access to all your accounts ON OTHER THIRD PARTY SITES.