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

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#241

Post by X-Istence » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:08 AM UTC

callmevlad wrote: post #223

foxylad wrote: post #216

I have no problem paying for a Google Apps account where I actually use Google apps, but at the moment you have to have a Google Apps account to link a domain to an Appengine app. Some of our apps have two or three domains showing the same app, and because you need to have an account for each email address that Appengine sends email from, we have three or four accounts (support, noreply, accounts per domain. So this…

From the post: > Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version.

He is specifically stating that as of right now if you want to use Google AppEngine to send email you need to have a Google Apps account.

So after today (no more free accounts) if I want to set up example.com as a domain to send email from on my Google AppEngine webapp, I will have to fork over X amount of money a year to have those essentially non-existent users that are valid mailboxes.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#242

Post by chimpscanfly » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:11 AM UTC

shuzchen wrote: post #161

brown wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that for a couple years. I highly recommend it as a learning experience, but I concluded that $50/year is absolutely 100% worth it.

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.

$50 "feels" like a lot because it's been given away free all this time. But our industry has spoiled us. We can hop from one free product to the next free product, but really we just need to determine if that one product is valuable enough to justify paying for it.

In the case of email, it's obviously valuable. While there are other options out there, ultimately you have to determine the cost of researching, testing, setting up, and switching over you and your employees. All this time is spent away from your money making activities.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#243

Post by gregd » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:12 AM UTC

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…

I believe that you can accomplish what you need using domain aliases (which google apps for business makes use of). You can have up to 20 domain aliases that all point to one mailbox: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#244

Post by acchow » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:12 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #90

ams6110 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "nines" of uptime on a typical corporate desktop? By my back of the envelope calculations it's worse than 3.

Even so, it's not like they're replacing the desktop. This is in addition to the downtime they can already expect.

No. If your computer needs a restart, or an OS update, or a reformat, or got run over by a car you have downtime.

With Google Apps, you just keep going on your other laptop/tablet/smartphone/friend's computer/etc.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#245

Post by blhack » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:13 AM UTC

Huh. Just want to point out that one of the main reasons we're using google apps at my company is that I use google apps for hosting my personal email. When it came time to make a decision on that, and I am the one who makes that decision, I chose google apps because it was already familiar to me.

Poor choice, imho. I'm curious what the actual overhead is for people like me. I have 1 account (as in: 1 email address) that is hosted by google apps. I was going to set up an account for one of my other domains, but not for $50/year. (Per account!)

So full snark here, but it was between google apps, and office 365. I chose GA because o my familiarity with it.

But look here, Microsoft's equivalent offering is free: https://domains.live.com/ I wonder what things will look like when we evaluate google apps next year?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#246

Post by thisisdallas » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:14 AM UTC

benaiah wrote: post #144

Outlook.com's equivalent offering, https://domains.live.com , is free (Hotmail also offered it, but they've changed the branding). I've been running my email on there for the better part of a decade. To those who point at Office 365, that's similar but different, and it costs money. If you want a guide, this one seems pretty good: http://www.omegaweb.com/2012/09/how-to-configure-a-custom-do... Between the mistaken de…

I just read a couple of blog posts saying that there is a 500 user limit per domain on outlook.com. Is that right??

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#247

Post by blhack » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #206

indiecore wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Per account.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#248

Post by blhack » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:16 AM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #149

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'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. And? Free users threatening to leave are hilarious (even better when they campaign against ad targeting and AdBlock everything). Google's decision pretty clearly signals that users like you aren't worth it to the company any more than Google Apps are worth $50 to you. Don…

What you're missing here is that the free google apps was a way for admins to get their hands into the GA ecosystem. Google already offers the product for free, just so long as you use an @gmail.com address.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#249

Post by acchow » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:17 AM UTC

chrisblackwell wrote: post #152

Margh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly puts me off. $5/10 per user per year, wouldn't think twice about it (even though the money would be paid grudgingly). With the number of users we have that would end up being around $50/year; but $500/year to host some email and store spreadsheets? No thanks.

Let's imagine your company has 100 employees in it. So at $5/user a month, you are paying $500 a month. Now, the median salary for thos 100 employees is most likely at least $3000, so you are paying them collectively $300,000 a month. That represents 0.016% of their salary. Do you get where I'm going with this?

You're off by an order of magnitude. There's also a shorter way to compute percentages since (5x100)/(3000x100) = 5/3000

5/3000 = 0.16%.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#250

Post by Osiris » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 4:19 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.

I'm glad I already have my Google Apps accounts setup. I rarely even use the web interface except from work. At home it's all IMAP and Android.

At $50 / year for Google it's cheaper to buy a domain from GoDaddy and pay for email services (webmail + IMAP) that are automatically tied to your domain.