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

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

#681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. OK, that's actually terrible. Is there any way to delete the account and start fresh clean slate, so you can use that email address for an ordinary free google account that's just like any other? The whole reason I had a custom domain was to b…

Yeah, I'm wondering if I can rename my workspace account so that I can add my primary email to my old account.

Of course now I'll have split-brain because my photos are locked into the old account (trying to share and save doesn't work because Google forgets that they are supposed to be zero-rated because they came from a pixel).

I'll see if this rename works, then I can slowly migrate off of the other Google services. For services that I still want I think you can transfer YouTube accounts between Google accounts. Same with Play accounts (you need to pay but apparently you can ask for a refund for a transfer).

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

#682
post #254

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 ou…

> 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 t…

> Google spent so many years blocking Domains accounts

This wasn't "blocking". IIUC the problem is that these accounts have tigher data use restrictions so a lot of Google services never bothered to support them.

For example I believe that one restriction is that data can't be used to train ML models for other users. So if a service created one big ML model it needed to exclude these accounts. Instead of doing that and an audit they often just blocked those users.

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

#683

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 ou…

Are they holding your domain hostage somehow?

No, the domain is trivial to move.

The problem is Google Docs which you have shared with many people, Google Photos which has zero rated all my Pixel uploads and will become crazy expensive if manually migrated to a new account. My YouTube channels are tied to this account and a couple of Android Apps.

Calendar is maybe slightly difficult to move. But Email contacts and calendar aren't the problem. In general the problem isn't actually the "Workspace Core Services" that have the lock in. Somewhat funny because they are the ones going away. It is all of the other services attached to the Google account that don't have a migration path like Webmaster and Postmaster tools and Play purchases.

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

#684
post #675
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google employees are entitled to a discounted tier ($0.75 per user per year, I think), and that will continue even if you leave the company.

"that will continue even if you leave the company" - yeah, just like the free email on custom domains forever...

It's not guaranteed, but it's going to last longer than the current free tier, so?

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

#685

Hmm, if you're using x@example.com via G Suite, how do you transition away from G Suite but still use x@example.com to login to your Android phone and other Google sign-in related stuff? Anything you need to be careful of so you don't get locked out?

When you cancel GSuite you can enable Cloud Identity Free. That will keep all your accounts, just the GSuite functionality will be dropped. At least that was the way it worked a while ago.

Thanks, can you explain "keep your account"? Don't you use lose Gmail access? How would you get email receiving and sending working again without breaking any Gmail logins?

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

#686

People are talking about their purchases on Google play, but that's not the main point. All the web services where you used Google as the IdP are going to be toasted if you move. You will to go through all the services you use to see how to transfer your account there. It will teach me one thing: never ever use an external IdP and always create local account.

I think almost all of these will allow password reset by email. So you should be able to get in again.

I'm more worried about the Google services that provide absolutely no support for migrating between different accounts.

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

#687
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC migadu.com is $9/month, but that includes essentially unlimited domains and mailboxes (but only mail, nothing else, which seems to fit your use case). Which means, if you like to set up new domains for specific projects, there's no extra cost (other than registering the domain of course). Have never had a spam problem, but they stress that they don't consider themselves mission critical. I went with fastmail for…

>but they stress that they don't consider themselves mission critical I'm new to shopping for email hosting and using your own domain. I know sending emails and not get flagged as spam is a hard, but is there any risks when it comes to receiving emails?

Only operational risks as far as I know (uptime, routings, network speed, tls certificate validity, ….)

How hard it is depends on how many nines you want in the uptime guarantee.

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

#688
post #621

Hmm… Is there a good way to export all the email across all the accounts and move it to another more sanely priced service? I have been using this since it was “gmail for your domain” and have a number of old addresses I’d like to keep for history but am unwilling to pay $6 a month for, not to mention many friends having long neglected addresses I’m sure they’d like to keep.

Email is trivial. You can either drank+drop in a client like thunderbird, Google Takeout all your mail and upload, or many providers will support a direct server-to-server POP or IMAP import.

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

#689

I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do. Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much considering Google doesn't have one). Right now…

Your use-case could be well solved by Cloudflare's email forwarding[1]. I'm contemplating switching since I'm already on Google One.

[1][https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/email-forwarding]

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

#690

I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do. Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much considering Google doesn't have one). Right now…

I'm guessing tutanota is cheapest - $1/month. But there's no easy, automatic way to migrate from gmail.

Protonmail is more expensive at $5/month and provides migration from Gmail.

There are also other options - like Zoho.

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