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Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

googleenterprise.blogspot.com

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Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#231

Post by modeless »

antihero wrote: post #169
modeless wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still use GMail with any domain: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe... This method is actually far more convenient than setting up Google Apps. You can both send and receive mail at the other domain, and you get a unified inbox (which Google Apps never provided).

Yet this doesn't appear to be any sort of mail-hosting thing, so you'd still have to sort out mail with an entirely different provider to receive e-mails on your domain. This is pretty awful.

You're going to need a hosting provider to host your website anyway; mail service is probably included. How is that awful?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#232

Post by medell »

2011-07-20: Announces Google Labs will be shutdown 2012-07-03: iGoogle will be "retired" on 2012-11-01 2012-12-06: Google Apps no longer free

I'm not liking the direction they're going as I use all of the above frequently (including signing up new domains for GApps regularly). It always comes down to money at the end of the day.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#233

Post by Strom »

jtbarrett wrote: post #87

I have a free Google Apps account mostly so that I can have a custom domain for my small (free) App Engine site: https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/domain It's sad that now attaching a custom domain will cost a lot more than the domain itself.

You can still create a free Google Apps account, limited to a single user, through App Engine [1], Google just doesn't want to advertise this fact to everyone.

[1] - https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/pVZfdeky-ow...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#234

Post by acchow »

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.

Will your own email system have 99.9% uptime, two-step authentication, an amazing web interface, blazing speed, and IMAP/Exchange/POP3 access?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#235

Post by throwawaay »

squidsoup wrote: post #213
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.

If Heroku can afford to support free users on it's PaaS, it surprises me that it isn't feasible for a giant like Google. I can't see this move doing anything to improve what is arguably an already unpopular service.

Seriously? You're actually saying that a service[1] with millions of customers and still growing is "already unpopular"?

Show your work, please.

[1] http://www.google.com/intl/en/enterprise/apps/business/custo...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#236

Post by X-Istence »

Locke1689 wrote: post #208
toomuchtodo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I decided fairly early on to not use my Google Apps account for my Google+ because I figured that in the future I'd want to have the ability to migrate elsewhere without losing all my Google+ stuff...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#238

Post by X-Istence »

edj wrote: post #182
digikata wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed this sentence. "Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version." Still, I'm on free google apps mostly for a personal email domain too and will likely start considering alternatives just in case. I'd also note that the $50/year is also per user, so there's sort of an opening to offer a family, personal domain type service. For a family of a m…

I did miss that. Thanks for pointing that out. I actually considered an email address like firstname@lastname.com. I figured I could add my parents, or future children. But this only works for obscure last names or unusual TLDs. There's also the issue of family relationships - people get divorced, grow up and want more independence, etc. Marrying email to a family domain could be messy.

I do exactly that, bertjw@regeer.org. I've set up accounts for everyone else in the family, but most if not all just have it set up as a forwarder to another gmail account.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#239

Post by chimpscanfly »

zaphoyd wrote: post #185
shuzchen wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's $50/year for each user. Easy to stomach if it's only yourself, but add even a partner (not to mention a small team with a bootstrapped product) and it starts to make less sense financially.

This. I've been looking for a good email solution for personal+freelance work with decent privacy, security, and reliability. I don't need 24/7 support. I am absolutely willing to pay for it. But pricing per mailbox with Google apps adds up really quickly even with just 4-5 boxes. I'd like to be able to make separate mailboxes for my partner and to separate several different classes of email (personal, business, limi…

Have you considered using aliases in GApps? Different than the catch all, but allows you to setup specific email addresses. I use them for accounts, newsletters, etc and then create filters and labels in my one apps email.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#240

Post by BryanB55 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #24

I really hate it when companies try to sugar coat a decision that is all downside for their customers. It may be really hard to do, but Google should just come out and say it: there is no upside for this to anyone except Google . It is not about giving you a better experience or making things more straightforward . It is all about Google deciding to maximize their profits at the expense of their users. That's fine, i…

Sometimes when reading articles from HN I'll try to guess if the comments will be positive or negative. I guessed that these would be positive. I seem to of been wrong though... It seems like every other day there is an article on HN talking about "google down. no support!" and everyone is always saying the problem with Google products is that if something goes wrong you can't get help. I don't know if they offered 24/7 phone support before but to me, it sounded like this was new and they are focusing on offering a service with support and making sure it stays up and reliable for more serious businesses.
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