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This is great news for those folks that already were on the GSuite Legacy plan... but it's of zero help for folks looking to set something like this up now for

by Alupis 4y ago

This is great news for those folks that already were on the GSuite Legacy plan... but it's of zero help for folks looking to set something like this up now for personal reasons. I own my last name as a domain, and always thought it would be fun to use it for my primary email as firstname@lastname.com. Well... $6 a month for an individual "vanity" email address is already hard enough to justify once you realize Workspaces doesn't give you a "real" gmail account (google assistant, google one, etc... meaning you still need to maintain another gmail address, defeating the point), and then once you have 2, 3, 6 family members also wanting a vanity email address, the cost is just insane. How is this not something anyone at Google have thought of? Gmail or use business accounts that come with a ton of strings attached.

mikewave 4y ago
You can easily get hosting for ~$20/yr from classic web hosts like Hostineer and just set up email forwarding to people's personal Gmail and get the same functionality with a little bit more control and flexibility on your part.
- ISL 4y ago
  Email aliasing is more annoying/error-prone than directly hosted GSuite. I've done both.
  - mikewave 4y ago
    Sure, but unless your family is growing rapidly, it shouldn't be something you have to do very often.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    Ya, aliasing is certainly not a replacement - particularly for non-tech savvy family members. I've also been around long enough to know not to try running my own email server anymore... been there, done that (Zimbra & Exchange). While possible, it will consume more of your time than you want. It's just beyond me why the likes of Google and Microsoft have not come up with a Family plan for bringing your own domain name... one that doesn't cost $5-6+ per month per user.
    - mikewave 4y ago
      I'm not suggesting running your own mail server. Hosts like Hostineer do that for you. Setting up forwarding takes three seconds in a web UI.
      - Alupis 4y ago
        I understand, but forwarding in my experience is brittle and rife with it's own problems. The point of paying an email service is to make me not have to worry about it anymore. Gmail is free, and Workspace is $6 per user, Fastmail is $5 per user, etc. If I'm anywhere near $20 monthly, I'd rather pay it to someone to have proper email and no "hacks". I just think it's absurd there is no "family & personal" option for any of these services... particularly Google where they could hoover up everyone's inbox like they already do in Gmail, plus make a few bucks monthly for the privilege of allowing me to use my own domain name. That's literally all everyone wants here... GMail + Custom Domain Name. Google One should have this an a paid option and support X number of other users you can invite (family members with their own Gmail accounts). Families don't need retention policies, GDPR accreditation, etc.
        Fileformat 4y ago
        https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ $19/year
    - fuzzzerd 4y ago
      Microsoft has a family plan, it's 99/year, includes five or six accounts and a few TB of onedrive storage along with a vanity domain.
      - Alupis 4y ago
        The vanity domain must be registered with GoDaddy, and doesn't provide attachment screening nor email encryption. So... It's artificially gimped for no real reason.
        4y ago
- riffic 4y ago
  cloudflare is doing forwarding for free now.
renewiltord 4y ago
I haven't had any trouble with Google Domains' built-in forwarding but I don't do anything complex.
windexh8er 4y ago
I don't think you should conflate those two things. I've run GSuite for a number of vanity domains since they started offering it way back when and have always had my actual Google account tied to my OG Gmail ([name]@gmail.com). In this way I don't have to worry about dealing with a split-horizon type situation if I ever decide to pull those vanity domains down and move them elsewhere. That and I don't trust Google to not do something evil (intentional or otherwise). I don't want to be in a situation where I'm locked out of things I paid for or payment accounts AND be locked out of the vanity domain(s) email. The other nice side effect is I only use my gmail.com address for Google account related things. I don't get personal email there anymore and that inbox is pristine which is impressive since I've had it since Gmail launched. My GSuite account, on the other hand, is quite a dumpster fire from years of personal email, aliases, and adding in other domains from time to time. Part of me would just like to walk away from it but too many things are tied to a number of email addresses in those domains. I really do prefer Fastmail at this point, but I don't want to move these particular domains given how much junk gets sent to those addresses. But... I wouldn't suggest using a vanity address as a primary Google account. Managing the two is worth the overhead and risk avoidance.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  I did almost exactly the same thing.
kej 4y ago
You might be interested in Migadu or MXRoute. They both offer email hosting but billing is based on total storage and sent messages instead of per user, which makes it feasible for things like family vanity addresses.
filmgirlcw 4y ago
Yah, I totally agree. As I said, I’m willing to pay. I’ll even pay $100 a year. Shoot, $150 if you want to include some cloud storage I won’t touch because I hate how Google Drive works. But $25-$30 a month, is just obscene for this sort of thing. Because I’m not a business. I’m an individual who would like my own domain name, the same way I’ve been using my own domain names since I was 14 years old. If in 2007 or 2008, Google had positioned this as a business product (and they didn’t. It was literally called Google Apps For Your Domain, promoted as a free service, and people were told to sign up their families or use it for their websites to get all the benefits of Gmail (which was and remains free) but on your own domain), that would be one thing. If in 2012 when they made it a legacy service, they’d told us, you can continue to pay but it’ll be “$X per domain and you won’t get any of these extra business features,” that would have been fine. If in February or March or whenever this was announced, they had said, “if you want to convert this to a personal Gmail account that has aliasing setup” or you want to again, pay per domain (not per account) and not get certain Workspace features and zero support, that would have been fine. Instead, we were told a bunch of conflicting things, we were encouraged to upgrade to accounts we didn’t need or to migrate to other providers, or those of us procrastinators (me) held out some hope we’d get a solution like we got. And I’m genuinely thankful for that decision. But I still agree that there is a market — maybe not a huge one, but a market, for hosted email on a custom domain aimed at individuals and families that doesn’t charge per address. I’m sure you would risk cannibalizing some business sales for people who would want to be cheap and claim to be a family, but businesses too cheap to pay for email accounts usually just use regular gmail accounts anyway. And with the right restrictions (on number of accounts and of message volume sent), I think you could still have a profitable endeavor. At least I’d like to think so. Alas.
- riffic 4y ago
  > But I still agree that there is a market — maybe not a huge one, but a market, for hosted email on a custom domain aimed at individuals and families that doesn’t charge per address. Migadu, MXroute, or one other which is a YC company that I fail to remember the name of (ImprovMX I think?). Cloudflare is doing forwarding too now.
  - 4y ago
chrisweekly 4y ago
Fastmail really is a grest alternative.

by Alupis 4y ago

mikewave 4y ago

You can easily get hosting for ~$20/yr from classic web hosts like Hostineer and just set up email forwarding to people's personal Gmail and get the same functionality with a little bit more control and flexibility on your part.

ISL 4y ago
Email aliasing is more annoying/error-prone than directly hosted GSuite. I've done both.
- mikewave 4y ago
  Sure, but unless your family is growing rapidly, it shouldn't be something you have to do very often.
- Alupis 4y ago
  Ya, aliasing is certainly not a replacement - particularly for non-tech savvy family members. I've also been around long enough to know not to try running my own email server anymore... been there, done that (Zimbra & Exchange). While possible, it will consume more of your time than you want. It's just beyond me why the likes of Google and Microsoft have not come up with a Family plan for bringing your own domain name... one that doesn't cost $5-6+ per month per user.
  - mikewave 4y ago
    I'm not suggesting running your own mail server. Hosts like Hostineer do that for you. Setting up forwarding takes three seconds in a web UI.
    - Alupis 4y ago
      I understand, but forwarding in my experience is brittle and rife with it's own problems. The point of paying an email service is to make me not have to worry about it anymore. Gmail is free, and Workspace is $6 per user, Fastmail is $5 per user, etc. If I'm anywhere near $20 monthly, I'd rather pay it to someone to have proper email and no "hacks". I just think it's absurd there is no "family & personal" option for any of these services... particularly Google where they could hoover up everyone's inbox like they already do in Gmail, plus make a few bucks monthly for the privilege of allowing me to use my own domain name. That's literally all everyone wants here... GMail + Custom Domain Name. Google One should have this an a paid option and support X number of other users you can invite (family members with their own Gmail accounts). Families don't need retention policies, GDPR accreditation, etc.
      - Fileformat 4y ago
        https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ $19/year
  - fuzzzerd 4y ago
    Microsoft has a family plan, it's 99/year, includes five or six accounts and a few TB of onedrive storage along with a vanity domain.
    - Alupis 4y ago
      The vanity domain must be registered with GoDaddy, and doesn't provide attachment screening nor email encryption. So... It's artificially gimped for no real reason.
      - 4y ago
riffic 4y ago
cloudflare is doing forwarding for free now.

renewiltord 4y ago

I haven't had any trouble with Google Domains' built-in forwarding but I don't do anything complex.

windexh8er 4y ago

I don't think you should conflate those two things. I've run GSuite for a number of vanity domains since they started offering it way back when and have always had my actual Google account tied to my OG Gmail ([name]@gmail.com). In this way I don't have to worry about dealing with a split-horizon type situation if I ever decide to pull those vanity domains down and move them elsewhere. That and I don't trust Google to not do something evil (intentional or otherwise). I don't want to be in a situation where I'm locked out of things I paid for or payment accounts AND be locked out of the vanity domain(s) email. The other nice side effect is I only use my gmail.com address for Google account related things. I don't get personal email there anymore and that inbox is pristine which is impressive since I've had it since Gmail launched. My GSuite account, on the other hand, is quite a dumpster fire from years of personal email, aliases, and adding in other domains from time to time. Part of me would just like to walk away from it but too many things are tied to a number of email addresses in those domains. I really do prefer Fastmail at this point, but I don't want to move these particular domains given how much junk gets sent to those addresses. But... I wouldn't suggest using a vanity address as a primary Google account. Managing the two is worth the overhead and risk avoidance.

chrisweekly 4y ago
I did almost exactly the same thing.

kej 4y ago

You might be interested in Migadu or MXRoute. They both offer email hosting but billing is based on total storage and sent messages instead of per user, which makes it feasible for things like family vanity addresses.

filmgirlcw 4y ago

Yah, I totally agree. As I said, I’m willing to pay. I’ll even pay $100 a year. Shoot, $150 if you want to include some cloud storage I won’t touch because I hate how Google Drive works. But $25-$30 a month, is just obscene for this sort of thing. Because I’m not a business. I’m an individual who would like my own domain name, the same way I’ve been using my own domain names since I was 14 years old. If in 2007 or 2008, Google had positioned this as a business product (and they didn’t. It was literally called Google Apps For Your Domain, promoted as a free service, and people were told to sign up their families or use it for their websites to get all the benefits of Gmail (which was and remains free) but on your own domain), that would be one thing. If in 2012 when they made it a legacy service, they’d told us, you can continue to pay but it’ll be “$X per domain and you won’t get any of these extra business features,” that would have been fine. If in February or March or whenever this was announced, they had said, “if you want to convert this to a personal Gmail account that has aliasing setup” or you want to again, pay per domain (not per account) and not get certain Workspace features and zero support, that would have been fine. Instead, we were told a bunch of conflicting things, we were encouraged to upgrade to accounts we didn’t need or to migrate to other providers, or those of us procrastinators (me) held out some hope we’d get a solution like we got. And I’m genuinely thankful for that decision. But I still agree that there is a market — maybe not a huge one, but a market, for hosted email on a custom domain aimed at individuals and families that doesn’t charge per address. I’m sure you would risk cannibalizing some business sales for people who would want to be cheap and claim to be a family, but businesses too cheap to pay for email accounts usually just use regular gmail accounts anyway. And with the right restrictions (on number of accounts and of message volume sent), I think you could still have a profitable endeavor. At least I’d like to think so. Alas.

riffic 4y ago
> But I still agree that there is a market — maybe not a huge one, but a market, for hosted email on a custom domain aimed at individuals and families that doesn’t charge per address. Migadu, MXroute, or one other which is a YC company that I fail to remember the name of (ImprovMX I think?). Cloudflare is doing forwarding too now.
- 4y ago

chrisweekly 4y ago

Fastmail really is a grest alternative.