14 ms·

GSuite legacy users can now get a free personal account, includes Gmail

238 points by tekni5 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
grandpoobah 4y ago
Thanks for the unnecessary anxiety Google! I wish I could get back the wasted brain cycles spent contemplating how the fuck I was going to transition my family to something else.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  You probably should still transition your family to something else. Google is not gonna stop being Google because they got a ton of pushback for this stunt.
asd123124 4y ago
meh. this is exactly what was always available. The catch is, as soon as you migrate you will lose your gvoice number, since that is not included in the "all free services will be migrated". And then it will be too late to research alternatives as you lost your number and will start paying (and then realize your old number is long gone :)
- csdvrx 4y ago
  What would you recommend to safeguard the number?
  - djchen 4y ago
    You can transfer your GV number to a consumer Google (@gmail.com) account. https://support.google.com/voice/answer/12083094?hl=en&ref_topic=1708124# https://support.google.com/voice/answer/12083094?hl=en&ref_t... See the section titled: “Transfer to another Google Account (ends in @gmail.com)”
- smileybarry 4y ago
  Not exactly the same as normal Gmail, this option lets you keep using a custom domain at $0/month, which basic Gmail doesn't offer. To me it's 100% worth it as that was my main concern (with so many accounts bound to my domain email).
- greyface- 4y ago
  I just went through the opt-out process and my Google Voice number still works.
- benguild 4y ago
  What? Where does it say you lose GV
- schleyreuth 4y ago
  Post on Reddit states otherwise [1] >I do in fact though still have my google voice on my personal no-cost accounts still working. Logging into each account and going directly to http://voice.google.com http://voice.google.com > >*this seems to work with already established voice accounts, and new ones cant be made for account on suite legacy anymore. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur3hh9/personaly_use_option_is_live/i8vc9h5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur3h...
- artdigital 4y ago
  I finished the personal use thingie and still have access to my GV number
- sigzero 4y ago
  The "fine print" says other business services will be removed in the future.
htrp 4y ago
I'd like to know what exactly was the decisioning around this as it seems like a case study in how not to do product management.
- gushie 4y ago
  Perhaps Google just wanted to scare businesses on the legacy plan into migrating to the paid service, expecting that those who could afford to pay wouldn't leave it to the last minute.
- Nican 4y ago
  Probably trying to get rid of people using their service like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ufa4v4/google_workspace_storage_is_not_being_enforced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ufa4v4/google_...
  - Macha 4y ago
    I think they're pretty justified to block additional uploads for any over their stated (but poorly enforced) quota, and give a window for users to get back under quota then just delete it for the obvious bad actors.
  - ValentineC 4y ago
    G Suite legacy accounts have always been limited to 15GB, and my newsletter inbox has been barred once from receiving further email because I'm always close to the limit.
- coffeefirst 4y ago
  Given how long it took and their original apathy to the negative reaction, I’m guessing a large percentage of users were migrating away rather than paying to upgrade. And now I’m curious what that number is.
jrib 4y ago
I transitioned to fastmail for e-mail and am happy I did. I really like google docs and google sheets, but I'm moving off of google drive for everything else and just using syncthing.
- nexus7556 4y ago
  Same. I recently moved to iOS and I found the Gmail app to be pretty buggy. Staring emails worked about 50% of the time, scrolling in HTML emails was very janky, clicking on a notification and reading an email didn't mark the email as read. This plus the Gsuite transition pushed me to Fastmail. I now use that plus the native iOS mail app and I have no complaints.
meibo 4y ago
This is great, but really should've been done in the first place. Must've been a major PR oversight/disconnect, no clue how that happened.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Just moved my legacy plan over to the 'new' personal use/free plan and it seems fine. Good grief how this wasn't the plan from the very start is just beyond me. I hope the complete trashing of trust and perception with the earliest and most tech connected users was worth it, Google.
- pdw 4y ago
  I guess you weren't a Google Reader user. Join the club :)
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    Oh I was, and I still have never forgiven them for it lol.
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    I still remember the day when I read that, when in a bus. Funny how some (arguably futile) memories stick in.
- interestica 4y ago
  What changed? Does it put an additional limit on users or are you still able to add as you were before (up to your existing limit)? Maybe this really was supposed to be some sort of "shock" to push a certain group over to google's paid services. Or maybe it was just a mismanaged mess.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    I don't have any extra users, other than like a few oauth app keys for random integrations. I just use it for my personal gmail and custom domain, and (unfortunately) all of my Android purchase history over a decade plus of mobile phone usage. Everything seems to be working just as before.
  - Macha 4y ago
    yeah, theory 1 was they thought they could get some money out of pushing users to Workspace and didn't get the conversion rate they hoped for. Theory 2 is they really were developing a GSuite to Google Account migrator and it ended up being way too messy to be workable in the deadline they set themselves.
sputr 4y ago
Load of my shoulders. As much as I hate to be beholden to Google, both my parents (in their 70s) use our gsuit account with custom domain and migrating them to a different service was … well, you know how it goes. The cost was a bit much. So thanks Google.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  Yeah, similar situation here. And yes, trying to explain to others how to use a new email system would probably have been more expensive than just paying but FFS, Google, way to freak out a bunch of kids who have had to be the family IT admin.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    This situation sort-of landed in my lap. My older brother set up custom domain email with the family surname for himself, parents, and another sibling many years ago, but he died a couple of years ago, and as the only other techy person in the family, I've kind of taken on responsibility for these things, even though I don't use it myself. I was putting off migrating to another service, so I'm glad I don't have to worry about it anymore. (I was going to go with Apple iCloud+ because they're all pretty invested in Apple stuff anyway, but the process of manually transfering each person's email archive with Google Takeout was a bit of an unknown for me.)
KerrickStaley 4y ago
Hmm, I already opted in to Google Workspace, even though I only use the account for personal use. I wonder if there will be an option to switch?
- op00to 4y ago
  Same boat, of course not. Google can take a hike.
- theogravity 4y ago
  I would love to know this too. Should have waited it out...
- mongol 4y ago
  Reddit to the rescue: https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur5xsw/you_can_switch_back_to_legacy_if_you_upgraded/?sort=new https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur5x...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jmull 4y ago
Huh. Well, I already moved my custom domain email over to fastmail. Been meaning to for a while anyway... I'd rather pay them a few bucks than keep having Google do whatever it was they were doing with my email (maybe nothing all that bad, but who the hell knows?) The transition was smooth.
- jacamera 4y ago
  I did the same but was already a Fastmail customer. Didn't even realize you could add additional domains to an existing account without any additional charge. Great service!
atestu 4y ago
Good things come to those who procrastinate, I guess.
trombonechamp 4y ago
36 hours too late for me - I deleted my 14+ year old GSuite account yesterday morning. Oh well, Fastmail seems great so far.
- exikyut 4y ago
  That's definitely within a reasonable deletion windowpz but also maybe up against the edge of it - try yelling really loudly (tweet @AskWorkspace, ask contacts/friends, etc, basically move now) and you very well might be able to get it back. (I see there's an email address at the bottom of the link in your bio FWIW, just in case someone might consider reaching out that way)
  - Bud 4y ago
    Google accounts can be restored for at least 30 days after deletion. Should be quite easy. No yelling necessary.
    - exikyut 4y ago
      A, the contiguous unit is 1 month, not 1 day. That makes things a lot less stressful. Good to know.
      - exikyut 4y ago
        (Wow I tripped over my phone keyboard writing these two comments. lol)
- throwntoday 4y ago
  I had been holding off out of laziness but all this does is give me more time before I transition to fastmail as well. Google is not offering any assurances they won't do something similar in the future. And renegging on the free tier I simply use for email has left a bad taste.
dageshi 4y ago
Whelp screw me for proactively dealing with the situation I guess?
- knorker 4y ago
  "If you transitioned to Google Workspace after January 19, 2022 and used G Suite legacy free edition for personal use, you can contact Support" -- https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#nocost https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#nocost
  - owenwil 4y ago
    Why would they arbitrarily limit this to 2022? I converted my account a while back because I had to in order to get more storage, but now I'm punished for giving them money for a year or two? Google is so bad at this!
    - knorker 4y ago
      You migrated for more service. This is aimed at people who migrated because Google announced that the previously free service would now be paid. You paid because you needed more than the free tier. Not saying you can't feel left out, but this announced path is about undoing a very specific thing, that you were not a part of.
  - dageshi 4y ago
    Ahh ok thank you, I will look into that.
- jw1224 4y ago
  Ugh, same. Edit: I just followed the link from the other comment about contacting support… > To get phone, chat, or email support for your legacy free account at [mydomain.com], you need to upgrade to Google Workspace So I can’t contact them until the “upgrade” takes effect, and I get charged for it?!
  - 4y ago
filmgirlcw 4y ago
This is a relief. I might still move some of my personal domains off of GSuite, but the fact that I don't have to is honestly a real relief. And I wouldn't even mind paying. If you wanted to charge me just for email without any of the other stuff and not offer support, I'd pay $100 a year if you could give me unlimited (or even 25 or whatever the original number of email addresses was) separate inboxes. But when you insist on charging me $5 or $6 a month per address and domain (which for my completely personal use case would be $24 a month), and I'm not ever going to use any of the other stuff -- then I get annoyed. Especially since I could have just set up an alias on a free account, years later, when that became an option. I understand these types of plans keep getting shut down because businesses or spammers or moochers abuse them, I do. But a personal/family targeted plan for hosted email with a custom domain should be something someone can offer that doesn't charge people $25 or $30 a month.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  I seriously doubt GSuite legacy was a huge spam vector. You still have to send mail through Google's gmail infrastructure and be beholden to all the spam, abuse, etc. mitigations in place there. GCE is probably a bigger source of spam with people spinning up a VM, cranking out millions of SMTP requests, and dipping out.
  - advisedwang 4y ago
    GCE blocks outbound port 25 (https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#blockedtraffic https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#blockedtraffic)
  - filmgirlcw 4y ago
    Well, it wasn't just Google. Microsoft cut out the free custom email domain for OneDrive, Zoho cut theirs way down -- so my feeling is that it had to have been abused in some way, even if it wasn't strictly spam.
    - Alupis 4y ago
      That's the thing though... it doesn't need to be free, it can have some cost - just not $6 per user per month. That's difficult to justify for fun/vanity/family email addresses. $6 monthly with unlimited (or some high number) of family member users would be fine. Any cost at all will limit spammers.
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
We need to rise against Google. Google keeps users hostages for more money. It shouldn't be tolerated under any circumstances.
hacker_newz 4y ago
Why did I have to find this out from Twitter rather than Google?
floatinglotus 4y ago
I migrated everything to Zoho already. $1 a month is a fair price.
bragr 4y ago
I'm seeing that option in my account admin page now too. I'm going to confirm mine is for personal use and see how it goes.
- bragr 4y ago
  Quick and painless. I don't notice any immediate difference, but I only use the core features really. Clicked the button and it came back with the following text and that was it: >You have chosen to continue using the Free Legacy Edition of G Suite for personal use. >If you change your mind and want access to premium features, you can take advantage of a special discount by upgrading your subscription in the Google Admin Console. What a self inflicted mess though since this is what should have been announced in the first place.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    Any idea which features are the premium features?
    - bragr 4y ago
      Access to support was the one they specifically called out
Someone1234 4y ago
Anyone know if wildcards still work with this? I mostly make up domain addresses on the fly e.g. hn@example.com
fartcannon 4y ago
Stop letting them push you around like this. Leave, never look back.
- GayforMoleman 4y ago
  No I like it and I never had a problem with it.
- vanous 4y ago
  I am with you on this.I have disabled all features (including Gmail) and migrated my family to self hosting, but you need a Google account/identity when invited to some online webinars, for Android phone (unless you want to jump through huge hoops and use Aurora store, but some apps might still not work (banking...)). Unfortunately.
sfblah 4y ago
I transitioned my family domain name to a small nonprofit that I created to do donations. If you have such an entity, it's an easy way to opt out of this whole problem. I realize this doesn't apply to most people, but I'm just putting it here as an alternative.
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  created to do donations for what causes, if you don't mind my asking?
- ValentineC 4y ago
  > I transitioned my family domain name to a small nonprofit that I created to do donations. If you have such an entity, it's an easy way to opt out of this whole problem. Unless your family has a foundation that's planning to give grants, this sounds like an abuse of Google's goodwill towards nonprofits.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    Also quite possibly not a legal purpose for a nonprofit. There are different sorts of US non-profits, state (various) and federal, and I'm not sure which ones Google means to accept, but "providing email services to one family" is not a valid purpose for many of them. If it's a 501-c-3, "sending donations to whatever my family wants to" may also not be valid, and may be considered a tax dodge. (I am not a lawyer).
knorker 4y ago
What a fucking mess. You make the whole world panic, your migration tools are not ready, and then you say "actually, just kidding" and tell everyone who believed what you said that you would delete their accounts (because you basically said their accounts would be deleted), to "contact support". It's an overused trope, but this was so poorly planned, executed, and communicated and it can only be explained by decision makers actually being on drugs.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  Promotion culture How much impact did you have :/
  - knorker 4y ago
    Multiple people should get demoted for all aspects of this "launch".
cglong 4y ago
Anyone know if this can be used by someone who never used G Suite Legacy but uses Workspace for personal purposes only?
- Alupis 4y ago
  At the moment, it seems no. I tried to follow the "down-grade" path in my Workspace, and it just says "an error occurred".
micromacrofoot 4y ago
If you had any illusions about how Google feels about users this seems to clear it up. Would have transitioned, but I moved away when they announced it as many others did. Good riddance… feelings mutual I guess.
skewbone 4y ago
Does anyone know if there is a limit on the number of users with this free option?
- kelnos 4y ago
  I believe it's 50 users.
- AviationAtom 4y ago
  Was supposed to be for only personal users with under 10, but the plan still allows up to 50.
- riffic 4y ago
  it's variable and depends on when the legacy account was created. I have one domain with 10 users and I have another domain with 200 users.
theogravity 4y ago
For those that selected the paid option like I did before this was available - I DM'd @AskWorkspace on twitter, and they pointed me to this link https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 If you follow the instructions and go to the '?' > 'Contact Support', there is an option for switching back to the legacy edition.
- great_wubwub 4y ago
  I can't find the option. If I go to the google admin console and click (?) I don't have 'Contact Support' because I don't have an expensive enough Google Workspaces subscription. Is there a way to switch back to legacy free from the Workspace Essentials, or do I need to upgrade to an expensive subscription so I can open a case so I can switch back to the free plan?
  - theogravity 4y ago
    I think chat support is a paid option only. When I did the transition option, it put me on "Business Starter", but I wouldn't be charged $3 until next month I think. I posted more details about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/urb8qi/if_your_subscription_status_remains_as_business/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/urb8...
- woranl 4y ago
  I followed the instructions and got the confirmation email. But in Admin console under billing > subscription, my subscription is still showing google workspace business starter. Are you seeing the same?
  - AviationAtom 4y ago
    Pretty sure that's how it's supposed to be, you're just supposed to not get billed for it.
lawgimenez 4y ago
I am on GSuite's Legacy plan because of this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404 and I was very disappointed with them transitioning to paid. I believe their turnaround has something to do with EU/USA government going after big tech?
purplepatrick 4y ago
So first they’re telling people they must upgrade, then they change their mind and add this option. However, people who have already upgraded because they thought it was the only option are getting screwed now, because they no longer are given this option. I feel like this warrants a complaint with a bunch of consumer protection agencies.
lunatuna 4y ago
Big thanks to tekni5. I've been struggling with a move over to iCloud. I will still work through it, but it is no stress now.
sesquipedalian2 4y ago
I closed my GSuite account and migrated to Fastmail when the free tier shutdown was first announced. I’m glad I did. Fastmail does several things better than GSuite/GMail. It has a very nice UI. I was expecting a UI downgrade, but was pleasantly surprised. Also, migrating (including setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) was fast and easy. The $50/year price difference is well worth it. I’m sharing this because I wouldn’t have switched on my own. But I should have migrated even before Google’s changes were announced. The competition has surpassed Google’s offering.
- nvr219 4y ago
  I like the UI other than no popup for new message
- isjamesalive 4y ago
  100% agreed. I switched from Google to Fastmail about 8 years ago and it has been wonderful. In that that time: * I have not had to worry that I’ll inadvertently trigger an account ban and lose my email account/all my email with no recourse. * UI updates have been gradual, subdued and useful. * Support requests have been answered promptly and have been extremely helpful, including one case where the web UI wasn’t loading through the corporate proxy, we determined it was the proxy (not their service) and an engineer STILL helped me with a fix after the ticket was closed. * No significant (if any) price changes. * No significant outages (that I can remember).
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    what prevents account bans?
    - cmeacham98 4y ago
      Nothing _prevents_ it, but 1. Fastmail doesn't have the same reputation as Google of banning accounts with little to no recourse (presumably because their customers pay, thus significantly increasing the cost for spammers to abuse their platform). 2. Even if Fastmail bans me or the company goes under, I still will own the underlying domain and can move somewhere else.
rootsudo 4y ago
The message is clear - you are the product and Google is finding you too expensive. Pay up or move out. We are all aware of how Google treats products they sunset. We are aware how they want to raise their subscription rates and services. I would say besides Fastmail and other email providers, take a look at Microsoft w/ O365. Yes it's pricy, but it offers a full office suite and can be as low as $60/yr for a business premium plan.
joaomeloplus 4y ago
i bought so many apps and games on my legacy account. they should let us migrate these to a gmail account.
alostpuppy 4y ago
Is there a good alternative to google photo?
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  What do you use it for? Just backups, sharing with friends, or what?
  - alostpuppy 4y ago
    All of the above. The “this day X years ago” is my favorite feature right now. In a way they have made my old photos useful.
metadat 4y ago
Still quite shitty of Google to insist on sunsetting this one. God damn, it's infuriating. Never again will I be so naive and trust them. Damn Big-G cold blooded.
gtirloni 4y ago
Do not use a Google Workplace (GSuite) account for personal accounts. Last time I did, many things didn't work (e.g. Google Play, YouTube Premium, etc). They might work now but it was a bad experience (non-paying customers seemed to have better service).
- nfriedly 4y ago
  I just have mine forwarding all email to my regular @gmail.com account. That account is set up to send and receive email for several different addresses, and it's the one I log into to use google services.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  The last big issue I had along those lines was with Pay. Support for Workspace accounts pretty much always lagged behind though.
- kelnos 4y ago
  The things you list do work now, but there are still a lot of things that don't. I really want an option to convert my GSuite account to one of their regular personal Google Accounts without Gmail, as I've already moved my mail over to Fastmail. But I don't want to have to change my Google "identity" away from my custom-domain email address.
themadturk 4y ago
I'm happy to be able to keep one of my personal domains at Google...it's the one the whole family uses, except for me, and none of them wanted to move. My other domain is hosted at POBox.com, which is for all intents and purposes Fastmail.
Cellentel 4y ago
I currently have a legacy account with one user, with a bunch of emails and a handful of other Google data. What happens if I use to transfer to a personal account under my domain (which seems to be how this works?), but then transfer the domain to Fastmail for email? Am I able to create a normal "free" gmail account with the rest, or does transferring email to Fastmail inevitable delete all of the other data on the account? Part of me doesn't want to deal with the risk and hassle tied to all this, but another part of me wants to get as far away from Google as possible as a result of this experience.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  There is no official migration path to a normal consumer Google/Gmail account. That's what they were indicating for quite a while that they would start offering around now, but with today's news it seems like they've had a change of mind. Exporting your email data and importing it into a different provider (and perhaps more importantly, changing the MX DNS record on your domain) should work fine though. Your inbox on the Google side will just cease receiving new email.
kelnos 4y ago
I'm still holding out for an account conversion to a non-GSuite personal Google Account without Gmail. I've been constantly annoyed over the past few years over features that are missing from GSuite accounts. To name a few: you can't invite people to your Google Home household, you can't start or join a YouTube Premium family plan, you can't add Nest devices to your account. I think some parts of the calendar integration still don't work with Google Home if you're using a GSuite account. It's been pretty frustrating, honestly. And you can't really use Takeout to download data, delete the account, and then re-create it as a non-Gmail Google Account without it being super lossy. Things like docs and photos sharing settings would have to be manually recreated (or I suppose I could try to write a script that uses the GDrive API, but who has time for that). YouTube watch history and subscriptions can't be imported. The worst bit: Google Play purchases are just gone. Etc., etc. So if they actually offered the ability to convert my account, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I've already moved my email over to Fastmail, so I don't need Gmail anymore.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  It seems like the subtext of the way this has gone over the last few months is that they tried to develop a process to migrate users in a Workspace to individual consumer Google accounts, but it turned out to be too difficult to do losslessly, and so now they have thrown in the towel and recommitted to free Workspaces having a future.
- jrib 4y ago
  You reminded me that I canceled my Google music and moved to Spotify because it was impossible to use the Google music account I had on my own domain instead of Gmail with a Google home. I was really happy with the service. I liked not having ads on YouTube. Still dumbfounded by that.
ibejoeb 4y ago
Folks seem to be favoring fastmail above most of the other options. Does anyone like ProtonMail? Any particularly compelling pros or cons for either?
- newscracker 4y ago
  Both Fastmail and ProtonMail are quite expensive if you need more than one mailbox (user account). ProtonMail offers IMAP only through its own bridge application, and that’s only for paid accounts. Fastmail offers IMAP without any additional software requirements. I would suggest looking at options like Mailbox.org, Runbox, Mailfence, and a few others that I don’t recall right now. For a pricing scheme that’s not based on number of mailboxes but on other parameters like storage and mails sent, there are options like mxroute and Migadu. I don’t prefer either of these for different reasons (the former is in the U.S. and the latter left me with a bad taste when it moved from a free plan to paid).
- nix23 4y ago
  ProtonMail (Switzerland) and especially Ctemplar (Iceland) are my favorites. I always recommend Ctemplar (even if i am swiss)....however i have my own mail-server..so there's that ;) EDIT: OHDAMN READ THIS!!!: https://ctemplar.com/ctemplar-is-shutting-down/ https://ctemplar.com/ctemplar-is-shutting-down/ Now i have to make some calls
  - ibejoeb 4y ago
    >Remember to change your email information to your new service. Yeah exactly what I'm afraid of. I don't want to do more than one migration.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rendall 4y ago
I literally just yesterday pointed that domain at ProtonMail.
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
I closed my 1 user my-domain email account due to this, and now I didnt even have to? Great thanks. I’ll remember this when the GCP sales people call at work
nix23 4y ago
Thank you google, but i already made my own mailserver on vultr. Deliver-ability is perfect, rspam is just great and it's fast.
- ValentineC 4y ago
  > Deliver-ability is perfect, rspam is just great and it's fast. You should write a blog post about it!
  - nix23 4y ago
    >You should write a blog post about it! Are you a mindreader? That's exactly what i do ATM ;-) It's essentially: You need a DKIM, SPF and DMARK and some let's-encrypt-certs, additionally you can make a "site-verification"-key for google and ms, those two want to be threaded special ;) Hmm i thinks that's it more or less, for reliable delivery. You can test your mail with those "tool's": https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://glockapps.com/ https://glockapps.com/ and some more... I post it here if i finished the blog entry. You need about 2 days to set it up, and a reminder for those who wants to go that path...keep all your spam mails (you need them to train rspamd later) The parts are FreeBSD13, blacklistd, pf, OpenSMTPD, Rspamd, Redis and Dovecot
    - ValentineC 4y ago
      Thanks, did you try sending emails to Microsoft as well? I've heard they tend to penalise smaller operations more compared to Gmail.
      - nix23 4y ago
        Yes no problem at all, however Microsoft is more focused on the DMARC policy so something like this a good idea: _dmarc.contoso.com 3600 IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=reject" The p=reject is here the important thing. For google this is important: https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895?hl=en#zippy= https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895?hl=en#zippy= >>Google gives you a TXT verification record to add to your domain host’s DNS records. When Google sees the record exists, your domain ownership is confirmed. The verification record does not affect your website or email.
koliber 4y ago
I switched yesterday to the paid Workspace account. It was weird needing to come up with a company name to do it. I'm glad Google offers this option now for people who've used the legacy GSUite in order to be able to have a custom domain name for email. It looks like I may be able to undo this switch: > If you transitioned to Google Workspace after January 19, 2022 and used G Suite legacy free edition for personal use, you can [contact Support](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213)
- knorker 4y ago
  1. Go to admin.google.com logged in as your domain admin 2. Click the question mark in a circle, at the top right 3. Click buttons named as seen in this screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/VxluEzc https://imgur.com/a/VxluEzc 4. Confirm that you got the email that explicitly says no cost, and no further action required on your part
  - phaedrus441 4y ago
    Thanks for this. Worked like a charm! (Though I am another user that switched to Fastmail and so far enjoy it)
  - bombcar 4y ago
    This should be the top Comment!
  - theogravity 4y ago
    I noticed it says "You may be eligible". My live chat convo with CS says the same blurb. I'm guessing this may be a manual process where they need to evaluate if you're eligible or not.
    - knorker 4y ago
      Possibly, I don't know. I read the "possibly" as "if you answer this long-ass question about our definition of 'not a business'".
jrochkind1 4y ago
I find it somewhat odd (or disturbing?) that they spent months telling us this wouldn't be an option; then a couple months telling us it would be an option but without custom domain email; then now, just weeks before the former June 1 deadline, custom domain email is an option too? So the option is available to those who were waiting until the last minute to do anything about it -- which is probably quite a lot of people actually. (It is me, but I still will probably use the push to get off google finally). I wonder what's going on within Google.
- knorker 4y ago
  If you did not wait until the last minute you can still undo it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409611
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
Took them awhile and it's a mystery why they had no foresight to know this option was needed or at least a way to move laterally, but good that they did something. Anyone that managed to get over the initial freaking out and decide to wait to see should be able to sort something out with this, and I read that they are providing good support helping people with questions.
akor 4y ago
Does anyone know if after switching to "personal use" if you can swap the domain? That's not allowed with the legacy edition so I'm guessing the answer is no but wondered if anyone tested that theory. So I want to switch to "personal" and then change the "primary domain".
- AviationAtom 4y ago
  Probably still can't do it. You COULD try upgrading to the Google Workspace offering, then seeing if it would let you chat, to get the plan set to free, but no guarantees still.

238 points by tekni5 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Thanks for the unnecessary anxiety Google! I wish I could get back the wasted brain cycles spent contemplating how the fuck I was going to transition my family to something else.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
You probably should still transition your family to something else. Google is not gonna stop being Google because they got a ton of pushback for this stunt.

asd123124 4y ago

meh. this is exactly what was always available. The catch is, as soon as you migrate you will lose your gvoice number, since that is not included in the "all free services will be migrated". And then it will be too late to research alternatives as you lost your number and will start paying (and then realize your old number is long gone :)

csdvrx 4y ago
What would you recommend to safeguard the number?
- djchen 4y ago
  You can transfer your GV number to a consumer Google (@gmail.com) account. https://support.google.com/voice/answer/12083094?hl=en&ref_topic=1708124# https://support.google.com/voice/answer/12083094?hl=en&ref_t... See the section titled: “Transfer to another Google Account (ends in @gmail.com)”
smileybarry 4y ago
Not exactly the same as normal Gmail, this option lets you keep using a custom domain at $0/month, which basic Gmail doesn't offer. To me it's 100% worth it as that was my main concern (with so many accounts bound to my domain email).
greyface- 4y ago
I just went through the opt-out process and my Google Voice number still works.
benguild 4y ago
What? Where does it say you lose GV
schleyreuth 4y ago
Post on Reddit states otherwise [1] >I do in fact though still have my google voice on my personal no-cost accounts still working. Logging into each account and going directly to http://voice.google.com http://voice.google.com > >*this seems to work with already established voice accounts, and new ones cant be made for account on suite legacy anymore. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur3hh9/personaly_use_option_is_live/i8vc9h5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur3h...
artdigital 4y ago
I finished the personal use thingie and still have access to my GV number
sigzero 4y ago
The "fine print" says other business services will be removed in the future.

htrp 4y ago

I'd like to know what exactly was the decisioning around this as it seems like a case study in how not to do product management.

gushie 4y ago
Perhaps Google just wanted to scare businesses on the legacy plan into migrating to the paid service, expecting that those who could afford to pay wouldn't leave it to the last minute.
Nican 4y ago
Probably trying to get rid of people using their service like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ufa4v4/google_workspace_storage_is_not_being_enforced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ufa4v4/google_...
- Macha 4y ago
  I think they're pretty justified to block additional uploads for any over their stated (but poorly enforced) quota, and give a window for users to get back under quota then just delete it for the obvious bad actors.
- ValentineC 4y ago
  G Suite legacy accounts have always been limited to 15GB, and my newsletter inbox has been barred once from receiving further email because I'm always close to the limit.
coffeefirst 4y ago
Given how long it took and their original apathy to the negative reaction, I’m guessing a large percentage of users were migrating away rather than paying to upgrade. And now I’m curious what that number is.

jrib 4y ago

I transitioned to fastmail for e-mail and am happy I did. I really like google docs and google sheets, but I'm moving off of google drive for everything else and just using syncthing.

nexus7556 4y ago
Same. I recently moved to iOS and I found the Gmail app to be pretty buggy. Staring emails worked about 50% of the time, scrolling in HTML emails was very janky, clicking on a notification and reading an email didn't mark the email as read. This plus the Gsuite transition pushed me to Fastmail. I now use that plus the native iOS mail app and I have no complaints.

meibo 4y ago

This is great, but really should've been done in the first place. Must've been a major PR oversight/disconnect, no clue how that happened.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Just moved my legacy plan over to the 'new' personal use/free plan and it seems fine. Good grief how this wasn't the plan from the very start is just beyond me. I hope the complete trashing of trust and perception with the earliest and most tech connected users was worth it, Google.

pdw 4y ago
I guess you weren't a Google Reader user. Join the club :)
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Oh I was, and I still have never forgiven them for it lol.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  I still remember the day when I read that, when in a bus. Funny how some (arguably futile) memories stick in.
interestica 4y ago
What changed? Does it put an additional limit on users or are you still able to add as you were before (up to your existing limit)? Maybe this really was supposed to be some sort of "shock" to push a certain group over to google's paid services. Or maybe it was just a mismanaged mess.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  I don't have any extra users, other than like a few oauth app keys for random integrations. I just use it for my personal gmail and custom domain, and (unfortunately) all of my Android purchase history over a decade plus of mobile phone usage. Everything seems to be working just as before.
- Macha 4y ago
  yeah, theory 1 was they thought they could get some money out of pushing users to Workspace and didn't get the conversion rate they hoped for. Theory 2 is they really were developing a GSuite to Google Account migrator and it ended up being way too messy to be workable in the deadline they set themselves.

sputr 4y ago

Load of my shoulders. As much as I hate to be beholden to Google, both my parents (in their 70s) use our gsuit account with custom domain and migrating them to a different service was … well, you know how it goes. The cost was a bit much. So thanks Google.

filmgirlcw 4y ago
Yeah, similar situation here. And yes, trying to explain to others how to use a new email system would probably have been more expensive than just paying but FFS, Google, way to freak out a bunch of kids who have had to be the family IT admin.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  This situation sort-of landed in my lap. My older brother set up custom domain email with the family surname for himself, parents, and another sibling many years ago, but he died a couple of years ago, and as the only other techy person in the family, I've kind of taken on responsibility for these things, even though I don't use it myself. I was putting off migrating to another service, so I'm glad I don't have to worry about it anymore. (I was going to go with Apple iCloud+ because they're all pretty invested in Apple stuff anyway, but the process of manually transfering each person's email archive with Google Takeout was a bit of an unknown for me.)

KerrickStaley 4y ago

Hmm, I already opted in to Google Workspace, even though I only use the account for personal use. I wonder if there will be an option to switch?

op00to 4y ago
Same boat, of course not. Google can take a hike.
theogravity 4y ago
I would love to know this too. Should have waited it out...
mongol 4y ago
Reddit to the rescue: https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur5xsw/you_can_switch_back_to_legacy_if_you_upgraded/?sort=new https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur5x...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jmull 4y ago

Huh. Well, I already moved my custom domain email over to fastmail. Been meaning to for a while anyway... I'd rather pay them a few bucks than keep having Google do whatever it was they were doing with my email (maybe nothing all that bad, but who the hell knows?) The transition was smooth.

jacamera 4y ago
I did the same but was already a Fastmail customer. Didn't even realize you could add additional domains to an existing account without any additional charge. Great service!

atestu 4y ago

Good things come to those who procrastinate, I guess.

trombonechamp 4y ago

36 hours too late for me - I deleted my 14+ year old GSuite account yesterday morning. Oh well, Fastmail seems great so far.

exikyut 4y ago
That's definitely within a reasonable deletion windowpz but also maybe up against the edge of it - try yelling really loudly (tweet @AskWorkspace, ask contacts/friends, etc, basically move now) and you very well might be able to get it back. (I see there's an email address at the bottom of the link in your bio FWIW, just in case someone might consider reaching out that way)
- Bud 4y ago
  Google accounts can be restored for at least 30 days after deletion. Should be quite easy. No yelling necessary.
  - exikyut 4y ago
    A, the contiguous unit is 1 month, not 1 day. That makes things a lot less stressful. Good to know.
    - exikyut 4y ago
      (Wow I tripped over my phone keyboard writing these two comments. lol)
throwntoday 4y ago
I had been holding off out of laziness but all this does is give me more time before I transition to fastmail as well. Google is not offering any assurances they won't do something similar in the future. And renegging on the free tier I simply use for email has left a bad taste.

dageshi 4y ago

Whelp screw me for proactively dealing with the situation I guess?

knorker 4y ago
"If you transitioned to Google Workspace after January 19, 2022 and used G Suite legacy free edition for personal use, you can contact Support" -- https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#nocost https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#nocost
- owenwil 4y ago
  Why would they arbitrarily limit this to 2022? I converted my account a while back because I had to in order to get more storage, but now I'm punished for giving them money for a year or two? Google is so bad at this!
  - knorker 4y ago
    You migrated for more service. This is aimed at people who migrated because Google announced that the previously free service would now be paid. You paid because you needed more than the free tier. Not saying you can't feel left out, but this announced path is about undoing a very specific thing, that you were not a part of.
- dageshi 4y ago
  Ahh ok thank you, I will look into that.
jw1224 4y ago
Ugh, same. Edit: I just followed the link from the other comment about contacting support… > To get phone, chat, or email support for your legacy free account at [mydomain.com], you need to upgrade to Google Workspace So I can’t contact them until the “upgrade” takes effect, and I get charged for it?!
- 4y ago

filmgirlcw 4y ago

This is a relief. I might still move some of my personal domains off of GSuite, but the fact that I don't have to is honestly a real relief. And I wouldn't even mind paying. If you wanted to charge me just for email without any of the other stuff and not offer support, I'd pay $100 a year if you could give me unlimited (or even 25 or whatever the original number of email addresses was) separate inboxes. But when you insist on charging me $5 or $6 a month per address and domain (which for my completely personal use case would be $24 a month), and I'm not ever going to use any of the other stuff -- then I get annoyed. Especially since I could have just set up an alias on a free account, years later, when that became an option. I understand these types of plans keep getting shut down because businesses or spammers or moochers abuse them, I do. But a personal/family targeted plan for hosted email with a custom domain should be something someone can offer that doesn't charge people $25 or $30 a month.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
I seriously doubt GSuite legacy was a huge spam vector. You still have to send mail through Google's gmail infrastructure and be beholden to all the spam, abuse, etc. mitigations in place there. GCE is probably a bigger source of spam with people spinning up a VM, cranking out millions of SMTP requests, and dipping out.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  GCE blocks outbound port 25 (https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#blockedtraffic https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#blockedtraffic)
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  Well, it wasn't just Google. Microsoft cut out the free custom email domain for OneDrive, Zoho cut theirs way down -- so my feeling is that it had to have been abused in some way, even if it wasn't strictly spam.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    That's the thing though... it doesn't need to be free, it can have some cost - just not $6 per user per month. That's difficult to justify for fun/vanity/family email addresses. $6 monthly with unlimited (or some high number) of family member users would be fine. Any cost at all will limit spammers.

johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago

We need to rise against Google. Google keeps users hostages for more money. It shouldn't be tolerated under any circumstances.

hacker_newz 4y ago

Why did I have to find this out from Twitter rather than Google?

floatinglotus 4y ago

I migrated everything to Zoho already. $1 a month is a fair price.

bragr 4y ago

I'm seeing that option in my account admin page now too. I'm going to confirm mine is for personal use and see how it goes.

bragr 4y ago
Quick and painless. I don't notice any immediate difference, but I only use the core features really. Clicked the button and it came back with the following text and that was it: >You have chosen to continue using the Free Legacy Edition of G Suite for personal use. >If you change your mind and want access to premium features, you can take advantage of a special discount by upgrading your subscription in the Google Admin Console. What a self inflicted mess though since this is what should have been announced in the first place.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Any idea which features are the premium features?
  - bragr 4y ago
    Access to support was the one they specifically called out

Someone1234 4y ago

Anyone know if wildcards still work with this? I mostly make up domain addresses on the fly e.g. hn@example.com

fartcannon 4y ago

Stop letting them push you around like this. Leave, never look back.

GayforMoleman 4y ago
No I like it and I never had a problem with it.
vanous 4y ago
I am with you on this.I have disabled all features (including Gmail) and migrated my family to self hosting, but you need a Google account/identity when invited to some online webinars, for Android phone (unless you want to jump through huge hoops and use Aurora store, but some apps might still not work (banking...)). Unfortunately.

sfblah 4y ago

I transitioned my family domain name to a small nonprofit that I created to do donations. If you have such an entity, it's an easy way to opt out of this whole problem. I realize this doesn't apply to most people, but I'm just putting it here as an alternative.

arthurcolle 4y ago
created to do donations for what causes, if you don't mind my asking?
ValentineC 4y ago
> I transitioned my family domain name to a small nonprofit that I created to do donations. If you have such an entity, it's an easy way to opt out of this whole problem. Unless your family has a foundation that's planning to give grants, this sounds like an abuse of Google's goodwill towards nonprofits.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Also quite possibly not a legal purpose for a nonprofit. There are different sorts of US non-profits, state (various) and federal, and I'm not sure which ones Google means to accept, but "providing email services to one family" is not a valid purpose for many of them. If it's a 501-c-3, "sending donations to whatever my family wants to" may also not be valid, and may be considered a tax dodge. (I am not a lawyer).

knorker 4y ago

What a fucking mess. You make the whole world panic, your migration tools are not ready, and then you say "actually, just kidding" and tell everyone who believed what you said that you would delete their accounts (because you basically said their accounts would be deleted), to "contact support". It's an overused trope, but this was so poorly planned, executed, and communicated and it can only be explained by decision makers actually being on drugs.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
Promotion culture How much impact did you have :/
- knorker 4y ago
  Multiple people should get demoted for all aspects of this "launch".

cglong 4y ago

Anyone know if this can be used by someone who never used G Suite Legacy but uses Workspace for personal purposes only?

Alupis 4y ago
At the moment, it seems no. I tried to follow the "down-grade" path in my Workspace, and it just says "an error occurred".

micromacrofoot 4y ago

If you had any illusions about how Google feels about users this seems to clear it up. Would have transitioned, but I moved away when they announced it as many others did. Good riddance… feelings mutual I guess.

skewbone 4y ago

Does anyone know if there is a limit on the number of users with this free option?

kelnos 4y ago
I believe it's 50 users.
AviationAtom 4y ago
Was supposed to be for only personal users with under 10, but the plan still allows up to 50.
riffic 4y ago
it's variable and depends on when the legacy account was created. I have one domain with 10 users and I have another domain with 200 users.

theogravity 4y ago

For those that selected the paid option like I did before this was available - I DM'd @AskWorkspace on twitter, and they pointed me to this link https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 If you follow the instructions and go to the '?' > 'Contact Support', there is an option for switching back to the legacy edition.

great_wubwub 4y ago
I can't find the option. If I go to the google admin console and click (?) I don't have 'Contact Support' because I don't have an expensive enough Google Workspaces subscription. Is there a way to switch back to legacy free from the Workspace Essentials, or do I need to upgrade to an expensive subscription so I can open a case so I can switch back to the free plan?
- theogravity 4y ago
  I think chat support is a paid option only. When I did the transition option, it put me on "Business Starter", but I wouldn't be charged $3 until next month I think. I posted more details about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/urb8qi/if_your_subscription_status_remains_as_business/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/urb8...
woranl 4y ago
I followed the instructions and got the confirmation email. But in Admin console under billing > subscription, my subscription is still showing google workspace business starter. Are you seeing the same?
- AviationAtom 4y ago
  Pretty sure that's how it's supposed to be, you're just supposed to not get billed for it.

lawgimenez 4y ago

I am on GSuite's Legacy plan because of this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689404 and I was very disappointed with them transitioning to paid. I believe their turnaround has something to do with EU/USA government going after big tech?

purplepatrick 4y ago

So first they’re telling people they must upgrade, then they change their mind and add this option. However, people who have already upgraded because they thought it was the only option are getting screwed now, because they no longer are given this option. I feel like this warrants a complaint with a bunch of consumer protection agencies.

lunatuna 4y ago

Big thanks to tekni5. I've been struggling with a move over to iCloud. I will still work through it, but it is no stress now.

sesquipedalian2 4y ago

I closed my GSuite account and migrated to Fastmail when the free tier shutdown was first announced. I’m glad I did. Fastmail does several things better than GSuite/GMail. It has a very nice UI. I was expecting a UI downgrade, but was pleasantly surprised. Also, migrating (including setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) was fast and easy. The $50/year price difference is well worth it. I’m sharing this because I wouldn’t have switched on my own. But I should have migrated even before Google’s changes were announced. The competition has surpassed Google’s offering.

nvr219 4y ago
I like the UI other than no popup for new message
isjamesalive 4y ago
100% agreed. I switched from Google to Fastmail about 8 years ago and it has been wonderful. In that that time: * I have not had to worry that I’ll inadvertently trigger an account ban and lose my email account/all my email with no recourse. * UI updates have been gradual, subdued and useful. * Support requests have been answered promptly and have been extremely helpful, including one case where the web UI wasn’t loading through the corporate proxy, we determined it was the proxy (not their service) and an engineer STILL helped me with a fix after the ticket was closed. * No significant (if any) price changes. * No significant outages (that I can remember).
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  what prevents account bans?
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    Nothing _prevents_ it, but 1. Fastmail doesn't have the same reputation as Google of banning accounts with little to no recourse (presumably because their customers pay, thus significantly increasing the cost for spammers to abuse their platform). 2. Even if Fastmail bans me or the company goes under, I still will own the underlying domain and can move somewhere else.

rootsudo 4y ago

The message is clear - you are the product and Google is finding you too expensive. Pay up or move out. We are all aware of how Google treats products they sunset. We are aware how they want to raise their subscription rates and services. I would say besides Fastmail and other email providers, take a look at Microsoft w/ O365. Yes it's pricy, but it offers a full office suite and can be as low as $60/yr for a business premium plan.

joaomeloplus 4y ago

i bought so many apps and games on my legacy account. they should let us migrate these to a gmail account.

alostpuppy 4y ago

Is there a good alternative to google photo?

frosted-flakes 4y ago
What do you use it for? Just backups, sharing with friends, or what?
- alostpuppy 4y ago
  All of the above. The “this day X years ago” is my favorite feature right now. In a way they have made my old photos useful.

metadat 4y ago

Still quite shitty of Google to insist on sunsetting this one. God damn, it's infuriating. Never again will I be so naive and trust them. Damn Big-G cold blooded.

gtirloni 4y ago

Do not use a Google Workplace (GSuite) account for personal accounts. Last time I did, many things didn't work (e.g. Google Play, YouTube Premium, etc). They might work now but it was a bad experience (non-paying customers seemed to have better service).

nfriedly 4y ago
I just have mine forwarding all email to my regular @gmail.com account. That account is set up to send and receive email for several different addresses, and it's the one I log into to use google services.
zerocrates 4y ago
The last big issue I had along those lines was with Pay. Support for Workspace accounts pretty much always lagged behind though.
kelnos 4y ago
The things you list do work now, but there are still a lot of things that don't. I really want an option to convert my GSuite account to one of their regular personal Google Accounts without Gmail, as I've already moved my mail over to Fastmail. But I don't want to have to change my Google "identity" away from my custom-domain email address.

themadturk 4y ago

I'm happy to be able to keep one of my personal domains at Google...it's the one the whole family uses, except for me, and none of them wanted to move. My other domain is hosted at POBox.com, which is for all intents and purposes Fastmail.

Cellentel 4y ago

I currently have a legacy account with one user, with a bunch of emails and a handful of other Google data. What happens if I use to transfer to a personal account under my domain (which seems to be how this works?), but then transfer the domain to Fastmail for email? Am I able to create a normal "free" gmail account with the rest, or does transferring email to Fastmail inevitable delete all of the other data on the account? Part of me doesn't want to deal with the risk and hassle tied to all this, but another part of me wants to get as far away from Google as possible as a result of this experience.

frou_dh 4y ago
There is no official migration path to a normal consumer Google/Gmail account. That's what they were indicating for quite a while that they would start offering around now, but with today's news it seems like they've had a change of mind. Exporting your email data and importing it into a different provider (and perhaps more importantly, changing the MX DNS record on your domain) should work fine though. Your inbox on the Google side will just cease receiving new email.

kelnos 4y ago

I'm still holding out for an account conversion to a non-GSuite personal Google Account without Gmail. I've been constantly annoyed over the past few years over features that are missing from GSuite accounts. To name a few: you can't invite people to your Google Home household, you can't start or join a YouTube Premium family plan, you can't add Nest devices to your account. I think some parts of the calendar integration still don't work with Google Home if you're using a GSuite account. It's been pretty frustrating, honestly. And you can't really use Takeout to download data, delete the account, and then re-create it as a non-Gmail Google Account without it being super lossy. Things like docs and photos sharing settings would have to be manually recreated (or I suppose I could try to write a script that uses the GDrive API, but who has time for that). YouTube watch history and subscriptions can't be imported. The worst bit: Google Play purchases are just gone. Etc., etc. So if they actually offered the ability to convert my account, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I've already moved my email over to Fastmail, so I don't need Gmail anymore.

frou_dh 4y ago
It seems like the subtext of the way this has gone over the last few months is that they tried to develop a process to migrate users in a Workspace to individual consumer Google accounts, but it turned out to be too difficult to do losslessly, and so now they have thrown in the towel and recommitted to free Workspaces having a future.
jrib 4y ago
You reminded me that I canceled my Google music and moved to Spotify because it was impossible to use the Google music account I had on my own domain instead of Gmail with a Google home. I was really happy with the service. I liked not having ads on YouTube. Still dumbfounded by that.

ibejoeb 4y ago

Folks seem to be favoring fastmail above most of the other options. Does anyone like ProtonMail? Any particularly compelling pros or cons for either?

newscracker 4y ago
Both Fastmail and ProtonMail are quite expensive if you need more than one mailbox (user account). ProtonMail offers IMAP only through its own bridge application, and that’s only for paid accounts. Fastmail offers IMAP without any additional software requirements. I would suggest looking at options like Mailbox.org, Runbox, Mailfence, and a few others that I don’t recall right now. For a pricing scheme that’s not based on number of mailboxes but on other parameters like storage and mails sent, there are options like mxroute and Migadu. I don’t prefer either of these for different reasons (the former is in the U.S. and the latter left me with a bad taste when it moved from a free plan to paid).
nix23 4y ago
ProtonMail (Switzerland) and especially Ctemplar (Iceland) are my favorites. I always recommend Ctemplar (even if i am swiss)....however i have my own mail-server..so there's that ;) EDIT: OHDAMN READ THIS!!!: https://ctemplar.com/ctemplar-is-shutting-down/ https://ctemplar.com/ctemplar-is-shutting-down/ Now i have to make some calls
- ibejoeb 4y ago
  >Remember to change your email information to your new service. Yeah exactly what I'm afraid of. I don't want to do more than one migration.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rendall 4y ago

I literally just yesterday pointed that domain at ProtonMail.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

I closed my 1 user my-domain email account due to this, and now I didnt even have to? Great thanks. I’ll remember this when the GCP sales people call at work

nix23 4y ago

Thank you google, but i already made my own mailserver on vultr. Deliver-ability is perfect, rspam is just great and it's fast.

ValentineC 4y ago
> Deliver-ability is perfect, rspam is just great and it's fast. You should write a blog post about it!
- nix23 4y ago
  >You should write a blog post about it! Are you a mindreader? That's exactly what i do ATM ;-) It's essentially: You need a DKIM, SPF and DMARK and some let's-encrypt-certs, additionally you can make a "site-verification"-key for google and ms, those two want to be threaded special ;) Hmm i thinks that's it more or less, for reliable delivery. You can test your mail with those "tool's": https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://glockapps.com/ https://glockapps.com/ and some more... I post it here if i finished the blog entry. You need about 2 days to set it up, and a reminder for those who wants to go that path...keep all your spam mails (you need them to train rspamd later) The parts are FreeBSD13, blacklistd, pf, OpenSMTPD, Rspamd, Redis and Dovecot
  - ValentineC 4y ago
    Thanks, did you try sending emails to Microsoft as well? I've heard they tend to penalise smaller operations more compared to Gmail.
    - nix23 4y ago
      Yes no problem at all, however Microsoft is more focused on the DMARC policy so something like this a good idea: _dmarc.contoso.com 3600 IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=reject" The p=reject is here the important thing. For google this is important: https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895?hl=en#zippy= https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895?hl=en#zippy= >>Google gives you a TXT verification record to add to your domain host’s DNS records. When Google sees the record exists, your domain ownership is confirmed. The verification record does not affect your website or email.

koliber 4y ago

I switched yesterday to the paid Workspace account. It was weird needing to come up with a company name to do it. I'm glad Google offers this option now for people who've used the legacy GSUite in order to be able to have a custom domain name for email. It looks like I may be able to undo this switch: > If you transitioned to Google Workspace after January 19, 2022 and used G Suite legacy free edition for personal use, you can [contact Support](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213)

knorker 4y ago
1. Go to admin.google.com logged in as your domain admin 2. Click the question mark in a circle, at the top right 3. Click buttons named as seen in this screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/VxluEzc https://imgur.com/a/VxluEzc 4. Confirm that you got the email that explicitly says no cost, and no further action required on your part
- phaedrus441 4y ago
  Thanks for this. Worked like a charm! (Though I am another user that switched to Fastmail and so far enjoy it)
- bombcar 4y ago
  This should be the top Comment!
- theogravity 4y ago
  I noticed it says "You may be eligible". My live chat convo with CS says the same blurb. I'm guessing this may be a manual process where they need to evaluate if you're eligible or not.
  - knorker 4y ago
    Possibly, I don't know. I read the "possibly" as "if you answer this long-ass question about our definition of 'not a business'".

jrochkind1 4y ago

I find it somewhat odd (or disturbing?) that they spent months telling us this wouldn't be an option; then a couple months telling us it would be an option but without custom domain email; then now, just weeks before the former June 1 deadline, custom domain email is an option too? So the option is available to those who were waiting until the last minute to do anything about it -- which is probably quite a lot of people actually. (It is me, but I still will probably use the push to get off google finally). I wonder what's going on within Google.

knorker 4y ago
If you did not wait until the last minute you can still undo it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409611

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

Took them awhile and it's a mystery why they had no foresight to know this option was needed or at least a way to move laterally, but good that they did something. Anyone that managed to get over the initial freaking out and decide to wait to see should be able to sort something out with this, and I read that they are providing good support helping people with questions.

akor 4y ago

Does anyone know if after switching to "personal use" if you can swap the domain? That's not allowed with the legacy edition so I'm guessing the answer is no but wondered if anyone tested that theory. So I want to switch to "personal" and then change the "primary domain".

AviationAtom 4y ago
Probably still can't do it. You COULD try upgrading to the Google Workspace offering, then seeing if it would let you chat, to get the plan set to free, but no guarantees still.