Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#201

Post by rhizome » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:40 AM UTC

indiecore wrote: post #66

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty pessimistic view. Customers are self-interested too: they want free content and services, but they also want absolute privacy, to ad-block everything, and generally cut off any possible revenue stream. This seems like it leads to a sort of local maxima where you produce the minimum quality required to drive users, with as little cost as possible. By cutting off ad-supported free users, Google is atte…

by cutting off free users they just opened themselves to getting undercut by a smaller company that can offer fewer, cheaper, targeted options. I just wanted an email for my domain and that's not worth 50 bucks a year. I'll just set up my own email system at this point, call it a learning experience and never be exposed to the rest of whatever was in Google Apps.

$50/yr is less than $5/mo, what is the convenience of email hosting worth to you?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#202

Post by kristofferR » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:41 AM UTC

Wow, I'm so glad I'm grandfathered in! I have 8 users, just for me.

Having to spend $400 on my email (or spend a lot of time either switching or combining mail accounts) every year would be hell.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#203

Post by natrius » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:41 AM UTC

jlmendezbonini wrote: post #137

natrius wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it uses the other addresses's SMTP server, it displays like a normal email would.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#204

Post by wbillingsley » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:44 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #181

indiecore wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by cutting off free users they just opened themselves to getting undercut by a smaller company that can offer fewer, cheaper, targeted options. I just wanted an email for my domain and that's not worth 50 bucks a year. I'll just set up my own email system at this point, call it a learning experience and never be exposed to the rest of whatever was in Google Apps.

I used to run my own one-user email system. The hosting alone cost $240 a year. And I had to spend a lot of time configuring exim4 (and spamassassin and clam-av), figuring out which email indexer to use, setting up offlineimap, running cron jobs to archive mailing lists, coercing a friend to run a secondary MX for me, etc., etc. I didn't enjoy it all. And no matter what I did to reduce spam, about 10 messages a day a…

All you need is a forwarding service to forward the incoming mail to your gmail account, as regular personal gmail can handle sending out email with a different from address.

No exim4, no spamassassin, no clam-av, no figuring out which indexer to use, or any of that. Just a forward on the incoming mail.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#205

Post by coopdog » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:45 AM UTC

I wonder how this will effect the Google Apps Marketplace https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/?pli=1

At the very least there will be less potential customers now. I imagine some people would have been willing to pay $0 to Google and $15 per user per month for some kind of project management offering, now it's $65 per month, which is really going to hurt new sign ups.

Also for anyone with an existing free account who wants to add new domains, don't forget you can add domain alias's. So you keep the same account but just make it so email from two+ different domains can come in. For tiny ideas that always have the same 1-2 employees it's almost preferable to a whole new account anyway.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#206

Post by mkr-hn » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:46 AM UTC

indiecore wrote: post #194

jrockway wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to run my own one-user email system. The hosting alone cost $240 a year. And I had to spend a lot of time configuring exim4 (and spamassassin and clam-av), figuring out which email indexer to use, setting up offlineimap, running cron jobs to archive mailing lists, coercing a friend to run a secondary MX for me, etc., etc. I didn't enjoy it all. And no matter what I did to reduce spam, about 10 messages a day a…

You might be right. I'm just steamed about a nice tidy free option being swept right out from under me with no warning at all. Sleep on it I guess, see how it looks in the morning.

$5 a month for world-class email on your domain seems like a minor burden.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#207

Post by timv » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:49 AM UTC

confluence wrote: post #41

So for hackers it's what? $50 a year for hosting + $10 a year of domain registration for vanity URLs - that's $5 a month. Don't see much of a problem here - I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner - I'm happy to pay for this service at that price - no problem.

Depends what you need to host. If you just want email & a blog, gandi.net will providing hosting for those as part of their domain registration (~$15 per year, depending on which TLD you want).

They also include minimal web hosting with registration too, but last I looked their (free) offering was so bad it didn't really count as a feature.

I imagine some other domain registrars have similar options.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#208

Post by Locke1689 » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:55 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #113

dangrossman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only matters if you care about the web interface. Lots of businesses don't, they're all on Outlook. I use Thunderbird (IMAP); I've literally never logged into Rackspace's webmail client.

One of the companies specifically migrated to avoid MS licensing costs (i.e. moving from Outlook to Chrome for the mail interface, Docs on the web/LibreOffice on the desktop).

The take away? You're always gonna pay. Somehow, somewhere, you're gonna pay. Might as well make sure you're getting a good deal rather than hunt for the free lunch.

I expect Google will find some way to encourage me to upgrade my legacy free Apps account over the next year.

Edit: And I just realized that my Google Plus account is tied to my Google Apps account. If they raise prices on me I'm screwed.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#209

Post by wbillingsley » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 2:57 AM UTC

indiecore wrote: post #66

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty pessimistic view. Customers are self-interested too: they want free content and services, but they also want absolute privacy, to ad-block everything, and generally cut off any possible revenue stream. This seems like it leads to a sort of local maxima where you produce the minimum quality required to drive users, with as little cost as possible. By cutting off ad-supported free users, Google is atte…

by cutting off free users they just opened themselves to getting undercut by a smaller company that can offer fewer, cheaper, targeted options. I just wanted an email for my domain and that's not worth 50 bucks a year. I'll just set up my own email system at this point, call it a learning experience and never be exposed to the rest of whatever was in Google Apps.

Or you could cross to the dark side https://domains.live.com/Signup/SignupDomain.aspx

I'm lucky in that I already have Google Apps and they're not starting to charge me. But if I didn't I'd look at whether there are reasonable free/cheap alternatives out there.

For customers it looks like the end of free Gmail-for-your-domain. But for competitors I imagine it looks like the end of price gouging.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#210

Post by napoleond » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

dholowiski wrote: post #127

napoleond wrote: post #112

I think it's time for a dedicated email service provider with full search functionality and tools to migrate the old inbox from Google Apps. I would gladly pay more than $50/year for a simple, rock solid service like this if it had an excellent web client, real customer support, and cared about my privacy.

I would too. Does such a service exist right now?

Nope, not that I know of. Closest thing is probably http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/rackspace_email/ which is painful to use in a browser.

I'm seriously considering starting such a service.