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Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
131–140 of 475 posts
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#132On a related note could dear hn crowd suggest email provider (maybe paid, say up to 30-40$ annually) caring about my privacy a little bit more? Really delete my messages when I want to is a good start. Google is all good but I feel I should not put all of my emails in one account..
Rackspace mail $2 per month / account
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#133This is unfortunate indeed. The free Google Apps offering was a substantial value. What viable alternatives are there?
Outlook.com has a free service that does precisely the same thing: http://domains.live.com
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Certainly until today the $ size of the addressable market in the small business email space was practically $0 given Google's position. Rackspace Mail (formerly MailTrust) has about 200k paying customers for small business e-mail hosting. I've been paying them to host mail on 8 of my domains for years -- Gmail was never appealing to me for various reasons -- so the 24/7/365 support, daily backups and 100% uptime S…
so, as it happens Bill Boebel (one of the founders of MailTrust/WebMail.us) is an investor and board member of my startup WP Engine ;) To be fair, Google Apps for Business didn't get going until 2007 which is also the year Rackspace acquired WebMai.us. I'd say the market for B2B email contracted severely the moment Google Apps's free offering became established.
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Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#135Not sure how to feel about this. The core feature of the free Google Apps was that you could use GMail with your own domain without having to run a dedicated mail server yourself.
This could be a good thing. If you approach your manager wanting to switch from dedicated to cloud email service, and you tell him it's for free, he's going to be suspicious. If there's a cost involved - no matter how small - it gives the product a degree liability for support.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of services will let you forward your mail to a normal GMail account. Without an SMTP server, your GMail account will still be visible to your recipients, but it's not so bad.
Yes I'm sure people will appreciate getting email back from @gmail.com
Using gmail you can send mail using a different from: address.
The fact you're using gmail will still be obvious to anyone looking at headers, but that's not really a problem.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I'm sure people will appreciate getting email back from @gmail.com
You can send as any email address you have access to. Some email clients show the GMail address as well when the email is sent through GMail's SMTP servers. It's suboptimal, but there are plenty of SMTP services you could use if you want to get around that.
You can also configure it so that Gmail uses the other email address SMTP servers. However, I'm not quite sure whether they still include the originating Gmail address in the email headers.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#138This is really a logical step. If you are an individual and don't really see the value in $50 a year, you can forward your own domain to your regular Gmail account and set the reply to email address to whatever you want. If you run a business and need the Google Apps platform, then $50 a year really shouldn't be a barrier for you. If it is, time to rethink your business priorities.
And you don't need to forward. You can access it with IMAP within Gmail.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#139Google made a mistake initially by 1) Giving too much away for free and 2) Charging too low. It is probably trying to correct these mistakes.
1) On giving too much away…
Remember, Google Apps started with 200 free users, later reduced it to 100, then to 50, then to 10 and now to zero.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/23/google-puts-the-squeeze-on-...
At 200 free users, there was no room for a new entrant in the market. I am glad that didn't last long.
2) On Charging too low...
Back when they launched it, $50/user/year was extremely aggressive pricing. Vendors were charging $50/month. May be Google is realizing they were charging too low. I now see an additional plan with $10/user/month option (which didn't exist earlier).
Disclaimer: I work for Zoho, competition to Google Apps.