I am confused, if I am google apps oldfag and have 20 accounts. According to http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=29... can I still use it like before or I must remove 10 mailboxes to fit 10 requirement to continue free usage?
Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
271–280 of 475 posts
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#272Earlier 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…
Not to mention that you have to pay to be 'recognised' so that your emails aren't autobounced by some enterprises. I have a friend that runs his own domain email for himself and friends and it's surprising to hear just how complex it can be just to get mail accepted. I can't recall if it was a whitelist or a certificate or what, but I do remember at one stage he was happy because he found a way around having to pay a five-figure sum to some internet authority to stop some hosts bouncing his domain (the workaround only cost a couple of hundred instead).
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can still setup a forwarding address and change the reply-to address, so users can use regular Gmail for free. It just means that your company will not have control over the account. Unfortunately, I don't think threatening to leave when you're not paying anything is really a threat at all. $50/year per year is still pretty reasonable for the services provided. The other option is that Google retires this feature…
We're not paying nothing per year, we're paying almost $10,000 per year. I understand this is effectively nothing for google; my point was that the reason we signed up for GA to begin with was directly related to my experience with it as a free way of hosting my personal domains' email.
I doubt google would have made the decision without considering the advertising impact of the free product.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#274Wow, 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.
I have grandfathered 50 users account. No idea what to do with it.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think most people would consider that cheating... You're hardly running your own email server, and still using Google. I actually miss running my own email domain, the privacy of it, not the actual administration. I stopped when I had gotten so crazy with aliases and disposable addresses that the spam overwhelmed me. Wasn't worth the time to 'do it right,' and I gave up my privacy for the simplicity of GMail. I wou…
"cheating"? people are claiming that you now need to configure your own smtp server with delivery, spam filtering etc. that's simply not true. most web hosting comes with an smtp server; you likely need web hosting anyway and pointing the smtp server at google is trivial.
i fail to see how making good use of available resources is "cheating". the idea isn't to win some geek hair-shirt contest; it is to get email delivered to your domain.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#276Google under Larry Page is obsessed with short-term revenue. They did the same with AppEngine, Maps and now Apps.
Not to mention that I cringed throughout this announcement. They are doing it because it benefits users? C'mon, just tell us you love the money, nothing wrong with that.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#277Outlook.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…
When I last looked, IMAP was not available on the free custom domains. Is that still the case?
IMAP is not, but the superior Exchange ActiveSync protocol is, through m.outlook.com - despite the name, it's just Exchange, so it works anywhere. See http://help.outlook.com/en-gb/140/bb896613.aspx for more details.
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#278Does this mean that some of my domains that are going expire might be worth money as they have google apps?
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#279Crap, ALL our customers use google apps for email (because we don't want to host email on our servers and it's free).
All our customers are small businesses (photographers, designers) and usually just make 1 to 3 mailboxes.
Any alternative out there?
Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups
#280Outlook.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??
It appears that there is, but this is still more than twice as many as the free version Google Apps offered even at the beginning, and far more than it offered when it closed. The closest MS equivalent to paid Google Apps is Office 365 (it offers more than Apps does, but it's actually cheaper on the basic plan), which has its own limits and pricing structure.