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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

#931

Post by cx42net »

techsupporter wrote: post #331
dekoruotas wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case for a personal email account I'll try DNS email forwarding: https://improvmx.com/

This looks a lot like a direct clone of https://forwardemail.net/ , except that ImprovMX isn't open source. I wonder which came first? I like simplelogin.io (also open source, so can be selfhosted) because the aliases can be used to send and receive, though you do have to set the domain up on their platform first.

I can answer that easily (I'm the founder of ImprovMX). Forwardemail was created well after us (ImprovMX goes back to 2013).

We are not Opensource, but that doesn't mean we track user's email (we don't, we wrote about it: https://improvmx.com/are-you-reading-my-emails/). On the contrary, screaming to anyone that one uses Opensource doesn't mean they respect user's privacy (like Forwardemail does): take their way of forwarding for instance: you need to add your email in the DNS settings, publicly available... they have a odd definition of privacy.

And don't get me started on their homepage full of misleading messages ... ;)

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

#932

Post by rssoconnor »

SergeAx wrote: post #287
herodoturtle wrote: post #91

What are some (paid) alternatives to using G-Suite for emails? Context: We're a small but relatively old SaaS company. Been happily using G Suite's free tier since day 1 - only for email. This announcement is a tad disappointing, but as other commenters have said, 10 years of a free product is pretty great. We'll likely upgrade to Google's paid tier, but out of curiosity, since we're switching to a paid service, we m…

G Suite Business Starter is $6/user. Even if you find something viable for, say, $3/user (and I really doubt so), it just not worth the fuss with migration.

From what I've read, Rackspace Email is $3 per user per month.

And iCloud+ is $1/month for up to 5 users for 5 domains with up to 3 addresses per domain per user.

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

#933

Post by SergeAx »

rssoconnor wrote: post #932
SergeAx wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G Suite Business Starter is $6/user. Even if you find something viable for, say, $3/user (and I really doubt so), it just not worth the fuss with migration.

From what I've read, Rackspace Email is $3 per user per month. And iCloud+ is $1/month for up to 5 users for 5 domains with up to 3 addresses per domain per user.

Is it available for customers without iPhones?

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

#934

Post by herodoturtle »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #864
blakesterz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps I'm on yet another different legacy thing. I keep wondering the same thing. Haven't seen any communication at all from Google, so maybe for some reason I don't fall into this thing that is no longer free? They can't possibly do this to me and not even tell me... can they?

Same. I think they aren't actually emailing us. Lucky I saw it here! We have until May 1st. It definitely applies to you, if you think it might. There aren't different legacy things like this, just this one. Go to to admin.google.com, click on Billing / Manage Subscriptions. You'll see your subscription is "G Suite legacy"/"Free plan". And you'll see a message "You are on the G Suite Legacy free edition. Consider upg…

This comment was very helpful, thank you!

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

#935

Post by lmz »

mikevo wrote: post #905
tyingq wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yandex Mail for Domains [0] which [at least last time I checked] was still free It looks like it's not free anymore. I used to see a free plan, now there are only paid ones.

It's still free, the link is a bit "hidden" under the paid options

Does this even work for non-Russian businesses? I tried to register a business in "Yandex 360" and it asks for a Russian phone number and some identity numbers?

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

#936

Post by lmz »

SergeAx wrote: post #933
rssoconnor wrote: post #932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, Rackspace Email is $3 per user per month. And iCloud+ is $1/month for up to 5 users for 5 domains with up to 3 addresses per domain per user.

Is it available for customers without iPhones?

You'll need an Apple device to set up Family Sharing (for the 5 users part), but if you don't need that you can set it up in a browser.

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

#938

Post by drivebycomment »

Aloha wrote: post #589
nighthawk454 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not _absolutely_ roped in, but practically, yes. The cost of switching is ridiculously higher than the cost of just paying up - it's not a realistic option. Which, considering they also control how hard it is to switch, is a bit artificial. It would be a little different if they did this to _everyone_ and completely removed the free @gmail plans. But instead they're targeting GSuite users when @gmail plans are _right…

I will literally go pay someone else more money a year, than pay google for the same services, because of how difficult they make it difficult to migrate my data out.

I am curious which other provider has a better, easier migration. Any particular you can recommend ?

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

#939

Post by pandemicsoul »

l33tman wrote: post #485
theossuary wrote: post #226

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…

You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month? I'm all about Google being evil and all that, but spending valuable aggression on this seems a bit excessive.. The Google Takeout system gives you all of your email in a format you might be able to import into another system?

I'm in a different boat than OP so maybe I can also provide a different perspective. I have a half-dozen legacy free G Suite accounts that I set up way back in the day. One was sort of a "junk email" domain that I used for logins on sites I registered for to try out and whatnot. Another was for my main personal domain. Another was for a family domain. A couple others were projects that then got retired. Now I'm down to two personal Google Workspace accounts and I probably will pay for one of them, while closing the other.

But the biggest issue for me right now is the club I run, which has nearly 30 accounts on our Google Workspace domain. The only reason I did this, way back when, was because of the promise of "free forever."

While we have about 30 people on Google Workspace, we have another 70 or so "non-staff" members. Our entire group of about 100 fundraises for our website costs every year, which are considerable for an all-volunteer group ($2000-ish) because we have a pretty resource intensive MediaWiki installation, and other resources.

We've spent 10 years integrating with Google. All of our other resources use Google login. Our group has dozens of Google Groups used for sub-committees. We use Google Drive/Docs excessively. And so on.

But there's no way we can afford to DOUBLE our costs just for Google Workspace. And we can't get a non-profit discount because we're not a charitable organization – we're just a club of writers.

So for us, this is a huge nuisance because not only is Google breaking the agreement it made with us ("FREE FOREVER"), but I don't have the time or resources to manage this kind of transition to something else. And... what, even? If we had known from the beginning they'd break their promise of being free forever, I just wouldn't have built so much infrastructure on top of this system.

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

#940

Post by unionpivo »

p2t2p wrote: post #921
apohn wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I just discovered is that Office 365 Family only lets you use custom domains if they are hosted by GoDaddy. If you want to use another domain registrar you have to get Microsoft 365 Business, which has a similar price as Google Workspace :( There's no way I'm moving my domain to GoDaddy.

Just use iCloud. It allows you to setup custom domains no worries and give emails to everyone who’s included into your family plan. I’ve got two custom domains setup that I share with my wife.

Don't have any apple devices, not sure if i even can.
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