7 ms·

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 do

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.
- xeromal 5y ago
  That's what I'm doing. I wanted a vanity domain, but didn't want to deal with email server BS so I got a Google Workspace. The 1TB of cloud storage helps too.
- grishka 5y ago
  You can have this exact thing cheaper if you set up a server and forward your mail to Gmail. And you'll also have a server to host a website or whatever else.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Isn't it a pain to avoid getting your outgoing emails marked as spam, if you aren't using one of the established providers (google, microsoft, fastmail etc)?
    - dtparr 5y ago
      So, what I did for a similar use case: -Buy domain from name cheap -Setup email forwarding to my gmail account with namecheap -Setup gmail to optionally send as dtparr@domain.name (I forget the steps, but I think it's under settings -> accounts) So although the email comes to/from my custom domain, gmail is the real sender so I've not had any trouble with delivery (that I've noticed, at least)
      - thebean11 5y ago
        Oh cool, didn't realize that last step was possible with free gmail.
      - throwaway829 5y ago
        I'm planning a similar setup. Cloudflare now as email forwarding in beta and then use my personal Gmail account to send mail as by custom domain. Here's a tutorial on setting up Gmail's "Send Mail As": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEheS8gM4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEheS8gM4Xs
      - 5y ago
ryandvm 5y ago
Same boat. I set up a Google domain for family many years ago. It's been somewhat convenient when it comes to sharing Google docs with each other and managing their email accounts for them, but that's about it. Everything else has been a continual pain in the ass. So many services are not supported by the custom Google domains or if we're lucky we get access years after they're introduced. It's always been remarkable to me how badly Google shits on the people that are obviously its biggest boosters. I was personally responsible for multiple paid Google Workspace accounts. I can't imagine it makes financial since for them to axe the grandfathered plans. As a free service, it was bearable that my custom account was a little flaky, but there is no way I'm going to pay for a shittier version of their free product. On top of that, now I have to figure out if it's possible to transfer movie/app purchases. Thanks a fucking ton, Google.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  Well, the movie/app purchase story is the same everywhere. You don't buy anything, merely rent it under extremely restrictive conditions.
- angus-prune 5y ago
  I've dug into this through the documentation and in discussions with workspace support and its not as bad as we fear, at least in terms of purchases. If you cancel your workspace account, then the individual user accounts will still have access to non-workspace services [0], which importantly includes Google Play and all access to your purchases will be retained. Any other google services which aren't core apps will also work as normal. Any former GFYD account becomes a semi-account with access to a subset of google services but not all. Since the account exists, it cannot be used to sign up for a free personal account, and you can never use google docs or have google docs shared with any former GFYD account. Overall, this is a better resolution than I'd feared, but it seems ridiculous that being a loyal google customer for over 15 years leaves you disadvantaged. [0] Core workspace apps: Calendar, Currently, Drive & Docs, Gmail, Chat, Meet, Groups for business, Jamboard, Keep, Sites, Tasks
  - tr4656 5y ago
killerdhmo 5y ago
I'm in the same boat as you. Including being unable to use Assistant features or access my calendar on the Google Home devices. When I worked there, there was a google doc that outlined all the different features GSuite users like us didn't have. and the list got longer, not shorter :( What's the alternative? Can I switch to a personal gmail and keep my personal email/domain?
boringg 5y ago
I mean have you used Microsoft suite these days? If you don't renew your subscription they lock you out - terrible business practice but I guess a "brilliant" way to ensure you get paid for your product. Drives me crazy because my parents are confused and then I have to go rescue their documents. I think that's one reason why everyone was using G-suite ... now where will they go. Latex (/S .. latex is great but not practical for business users).
- fragmede 5y ago
  That's an interesting decision on Microsoft's part. If you're locked out from your email, it makes it really hard to get into the system in order to pay your bill.
acdha 5y ago
> 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! I now feel that this was a favor in disguise: Google spent so many years blocking Domains accounts from new services that I never developed habits around using them. Switching away is just migrating email since they made it hard to develop any other source of inertia.
- fitblipper 5y ago
  I am kind of in the same position. I have 4 people using our custom domain for email only given the pain google put on these accounts. They've each setup their custom domain email account to forward to their individual free gmail accounts. Does anyone have a recommendation for a new email service I can point my domain MX records at? I only need email forwarding for these 4 users using my domain and a catchall email forwarder for the rest.
  - ralferoo 5y ago
    Some domain registrars provide this service for free. I've always used a this setup, have my personal domain forward all mail to google, and I have my address with domain set up in gmail. Also, I think that's no longer an option - I realised a while ago, I couldn't add any more...
  - thiele 5y ago
    I forward emails for custom domains from my registrars (Namecheap and GoDaddy) to Gmail. Then you can use a free Zoho account that lets you send email from your custom domain from within you Gmail account (sent via Zoho's email servers). It's a bit of work to set up but then you can do everything from within Gmail seamlessly. I think this is the tutorial I followed years ago: https://medium.com/@raymondgh/how-to-set-up-a-free-custom-domain-email-address-with-gmail-inbox-7e8cb8574c3e https://medium.com/@raymondgh/how-to-set-up-a-free-custom-do...
    - 5y ago
austhrow743 5y ago
Are they holding your domain hostage somehow?
- network2592 5y ago
  They make it incredibly difficult to manage domains. DNS is managed via a third party like enom. Enom itself just had an outage recently that affected all G Suite users [0]. Transferring your domain to another registrar is opaque to say the least. Arguably, these things, in combination, could be considered a dark pattern. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963713
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    My email provider doesn’t have control of my domain. In my registrars settings I just put my email providers server addresses where they told me to and I’m under the impression that if my email provider ever jerked me around I could just go in there and change those server addresses to someone else’s with no input needed from my email provider. Did google do something different with these accounts? I didn’t even think they offered a registrar service when they stopped letting you register free custom domain gmails accounts.
    - network2592 5y ago
      Google is a domain registrar since 2005 [0]. But that service was launched for public use in 2015. Before that though, Google used third parties (mainly Enom and GoDaddy) to provide domain registration for the public. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains
- deburo 5y ago
  The rant is probably around convenience. How hard is it to offer one-click migration of your data from one account to the other? I guess pretty hard, since they don't support it. My example is Google Play Music, which they migrated to Youtube Music. They probably offered to merge accounts at the time, I don't remember, but I ended up with two Youtube accounts with different playlists that I couldn't merge or transfer data easily. I had to do an annoying dance to recreate my playlists from one account in the other.
cromka 5y 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. Same exact story, although we have been using it like this closer to 20 years now.
- mixologic 5y ago
  yep. Set mine up in 2004. I would gladly switch over to a normal gmail account with a custom domain name, yet there is no way to preserve any of my existing google identity.
notyourwork 5y ago
> And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone else gets for free. What we get for free is a <something>@gmail.com address and the associated services. We DON'T get yourcustomer@domain.com or anything like that on top of Google's infrastructure. I can appreciate your frustration but these threads always come full circle to if you aren't paying for something you are the product and have much less control over your fate. Google's willingness to kill things is why I avoid coupling things like that to them.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > What we get for free is a <something>@gmail.com address and the associated services. We DON'T get yourcustomer@domain.com or anything like that on top of Google's infrastructure. As I understood it, that -- yourcustomer@domain.com or something like that on top of Google's infrastructure -- was exactly what GFYD users were supposed to get for free. Forever, according to Google's original promises.
vxNsr 5y ago
If you still want the domain email address you can register the domain with either google or cloudflare and then set up email forwarding to a personal email of your choice.
gowld 5y ago
> personal accounts with custom domain, iCloud offers that feature now. For $1/month https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 Cheaper than Google's $6/month but not free.
structural 5y ago
I'm in the exact same boat. What's funny is that I would probably pay a reasonable annual cost for the service (I'm already paying an annual fee for the domain), but the way this is announced is enough to lose me as a customer, permanently. - No links to the information in my admin.google.com panel - No personal notification at all to the billing contact - An automated "upgrade" to paying a monthly cost for a formerly free product Yeah, no. This is borderline scammy, not the way to treat people who have been your customers for 15-20 years, and who disproportionately are responsible for spending decisions at their companies. Any competitors to Gmail want my business and support custom domains / have a reasonable strategy for migrating data away from G Suite accounts?

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.

xeromal 5y ago
That's what I'm doing. I wanted a vanity domain, but didn't want to deal with email server BS so I got a Google Workspace. The 1TB of cloud storage helps too.
grishka 5y ago
You can have this exact thing cheaper if you set up a server and forward your mail to Gmail. And you'll also have a server to host a website or whatever else.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Isn't it a pain to avoid getting your outgoing emails marked as spam, if you aren't using one of the established providers (google, microsoft, fastmail etc)?
  - dtparr 5y ago
    So, what I did for a similar use case: -Buy domain from name cheap -Setup email forwarding to my gmail account with namecheap -Setup gmail to optionally send as dtparr@domain.name (I forget the steps, but I think it's under settings -> accounts) So although the email comes to/from my custom domain, gmail is the real sender so I've not had any trouble with delivery (that I've noticed, at least)
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Oh cool, didn't realize that last step was possible with free gmail.
    - throwaway829 5y ago
      I'm planning a similar setup. Cloudflare now as email forwarding in beta and then use my personal Gmail account to send mail as by custom domain. Here's a tutorial on setting up Gmail's "Send Mail As": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEheS8gM4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEheS8gM4Xs
    - 5y ago

ryandvm 5y ago

Same boat. I set up a Google domain for family many years ago. It's been somewhat convenient when it comes to sharing Google docs with each other and managing their email accounts for them, but that's about it. Everything else has been a continual pain in the ass. So many services are not supported by the custom Google domains or if we're lucky we get access years after they're introduced. It's always been remarkable to me how badly Google shits on the people that are obviously its biggest boosters. I was personally responsible for multiple paid Google Workspace accounts. I can't imagine it makes financial since for them to axe the grandfathered plans. As a free service, it was bearable that my custom account was a little flaky, but there is no way I'm going to pay for a shittier version of their free product. On top of that, now I have to figure out if it's possible to transfer movie/app purchases. Thanks a fucking ton, Google.

bubblethink 5y ago
Well, the movie/app purchase story is the same everywhere. You don't buy anything, merely rent it under extremely restrictive conditions.
angus-prune 5y ago
I've dug into this through the documentation and in discussions with workspace support and its not as bad as we fear, at least in terms of purchases. If you cancel your workspace account, then the individual user accounts will still have access to non-workspace services [0], which importantly includes Google Play and all access to your purchases will be retained. Any other google services which aren't core apps will also work as normal. Any former GFYD account becomes a semi-account with access to a subset of google services but not all. Since the account exists, it cannot be used to sign up for a free personal account, and you can never use google docs or have google docs shared with any former GFYD account. Overall, this is a better resolution than I'd feared, but it seems ridiculous that being a loyal google customer for over 15 years leaves you disadvantaged. [0] Core workspace apps: Calendar, Currently, Drive & Docs, Gmail, Chat, Meet, Groups for business, Jamboard, Keep, Sites, Tasks
- tr4656 5y ago

killerdhmo 5y ago

I'm in the same boat as you. Including being unable to use Assistant features or access my calendar on the Google Home devices. When I worked there, there was a google doc that outlined all the different features GSuite users like us didn't have. and the list got longer, not shorter :( What's the alternative? Can I switch to a personal gmail and keep my personal email/domain?

boringg 5y ago

I mean have you used Microsoft suite these days? If you don't renew your subscription they lock you out - terrible business practice but I guess a "brilliant" way to ensure you get paid for your product. Drives me crazy because my parents are confused and then I have to go rescue their documents. I think that's one reason why everyone was using G-suite ... now where will they go. Latex (/S .. latex is great but not practical for business users).

fragmede 5y ago
That's an interesting decision on Microsoft's part. If you're locked out from your email, it makes it really hard to get into the system in order to pay your bill.

acdha 5y ago

> 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! I now feel that this was a favor in disguise: Google spent so many years blocking Domains accounts from new services that I never developed habits around using them. Switching away is just migrating email since they made it hard to develop any other source of inertia.

fitblipper 5y ago
I am kind of in the same position. I have 4 people using our custom domain for email only given the pain google put on these accounts. They've each setup their custom domain email account to forward to their individual free gmail accounts. Does anyone have a recommendation for a new email service I can point my domain MX records at? I only need email forwarding for these 4 users using my domain and a catchall email forwarder for the rest.
- ralferoo 5y ago
  Some domain registrars provide this service for free. I've always used a this setup, have my personal domain forward all mail to google, and I have my address with domain set up in gmail. Also, I think that's no longer an option - I realised a while ago, I couldn't add any more...
- thiele 5y ago
  I forward emails for custom domains from my registrars (Namecheap and GoDaddy) to Gmail. Then you can use a free Zoho account that lets you send email from your custom domain from within you Gmail account (sent via Zoho's email servers). It's a bit of work to set up but then you can do everything from within Gmail seamlessly. I think this is the tutorial I followed years ago: https://medium.com/@raymondgh/how-to-set-up-a-free-custom-domain-email-address-with-gmail-inbox-7e8cb8574c3e https://medium.com/@raymondgh/how-to-set-up-a-free-custom-do...
  - 5y ago

austhrow743 5y ago

Are they holding your domain hostage somehow?

network2592 5y ago
They make it incredibly difficult to manage domains. DNS is managed via a third party like enom. Enom itself just had an outage recently that affected all G Suite users [0]. Transferring your domain to another registrar is opaque to say the least. Arguably, these things, in combination, could be considered a dark pattern. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963713
- austhrow743 5y ago
  My email provider doesn’t have control of my domain. In my registrars settings I just put my email providers server addresses where they told me to and I’m under the impression that if my email provider ever jerked me around I could just go in there and change those server addresses to someone else’s with no input needed from my email provider. Did google do something different with these accounts? I didn’t even think they offered a registrar service when they stopped letting you register free custom domain gmails accounts.
  - network2592 5y ago
    Google is a domain registrar since 2005 [0]. But that service was launched for public use in 2015. Before that though, Google used third parties (mainly Enom and GoDaddy) to provide domain registration for the public. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains
deburo 5y ago
The rant is probably around convenience. How hard is it to offer one-click migration of your data from one account to the other? I guess pretty hard, since they don't support it. My example is Google Play Music, which they migrated to Youtube Music. They probably offered to merge accounts at the time, I don't remember, but I ended up with two Youtube accounts with different playlists that I couldn't merge or transfer data easily. I had to do an annoying dance to recreate my playlists from one account in the other.

cromka 5y 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. Same exact story, although we have been using it like this closer to 20 years now.

mixologic 5y ago
yep. Set mine up in 2004. I would gladly switch over to a normal gmail account with a custom domain name, yet there is no way to preserve any of my existing google identity.

notyourwork 5y ago

> And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone else gets for free. What we get for free is a <something>@gmail.com address and the associated services. We DON'T get yourcustomer@domain.com or anything like that on top of Google's infrastructure. I can appreciate your frustration but these threads always come full circle to if you aren't paying for something you are the product and have much less control over your fate. Google's willingness to kill things is why I avoid coupling things like that to them.

CRConrad 5y ago
> What we get for free is a <something>@gmail.com address and the associated services. We DON'T get yourcustomer@domain.com or anything like that on top of Google's infrastructure. As I understood it, that -- yourcustomer@domain.com or something like that on top of Google's infrastructure -- was exactly what GFYD users were supposed to get for free. Forever, according to Google's original promises.

vxNsr 5y ago

If you still want the domain email address you can register the domain with either google or cloudflare and then set up email forwarding to a personal email of your choice.

gowld 5y ago

> personal accounts with custom domain, iCloud offers that feature now. For $1/month https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 Cheaper than Google's $6/month but not free.

structural 5y ago

I'm in the exact same boat. What's funny is that I would probably pay a reasonable annual cost for the service (I'm already paying an annual fee for the domain), but the way this is announced is enough to lose me as a customer, permanently. - No links to the information in my admin.google.com panel - No personal notification at all to the billing contact - An automated "upgrade" to paying a monthly cost for a formerly free product Yeah, no. This is borderline scammy, not the way to treat people who have been your customers for 15-20 years, and who disproportionately are responsible for spending decisions at their companies. Any competitors to Gmail want my business and support custom domains / have a reasonable strategy for migrating data away from G Suite accounts?