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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

#301

Post by mokash »

I use Google Apps with my personal domain. A lot of people are recommending alternatives but the main reason why I like Google Apps is that I can use it to easily sign into YouTube, Google Docs and various other services that they provide with my personal, official email address.

I use Google Apps for a small blog that I run and I gave out email addresses to all of the writers. Eventually we had 11 writers and they only allow 10 free so I upgraded that one. People can't do that now. It's either all or nothing.

Meh, their loss. May have to go with Microsoft's alternative or something.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#302

Post by laureny »

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…

> When I see ridiculous sugar coating

What are you talking about? There is no sugar coating in this announcement, they just explain loud and clear what they are doing:

> With this in mind, we’ve decided to make things very straightforward. Starting today for all new customers:

Doesn't get more sugar free than this.

Maybe you were referring to Apple a few months ago when they announced their new maps?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#303

Post by vacri »

jrockway wrote: post #288
vacri wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've never had any problems with mail delivery and I've never paid anyone a dime. I even violated one of rfc-ignorant's rules (a fake tertiary MX record) and still didn't get blacklisted :) There are no internet authorities that control mail delivery, either, BTW. Many sites use heuristics to control mail acceptance, however, including third-party whitelists and blacklists. It can suck if you get on a blacklist, but…

Hrm. Perhaps it was a certificate issue with SSL which the guy uses on his mailserver? I'm really not up to speed with configuring much beyond msmtp.

In any case, from a decade of listening to the random things he's had to deal with, I certainly have to agree with your final comment.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#304

Post by corin_ »

riobard wrote: post #224
dangrossman wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

100% uptime SLA? Really?

Why not? SLA generally just means they'll pro-rate a refund for the downtime, so even if they only achieve 99% over a year it won't cost them a huge amount.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#305

Post by andrewhillman »

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.

you can still get one free account https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-appengine/pVZfd...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#307

Post by xentronium »

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.

There are alternatives to google that are free of charge.

For example, Live (Microsoft service)[1] or Yandex (Russian google vis-a-vis). [2][3]

[1] https://domains.live.com/

[2] http://pdd.yandex.ru

[3] Major caveat: the interface is in Russian only now, but after initial setup it shouldn't be a big deal;

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#308

Post by johnsea »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #51
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…

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…

The argument is not 'cutting off ad-supported free users' but 'sugarcoating'.

Blabling 'but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn't quite right for either group' when a statement about ~ we are sorry to remove the free ad supported option would have been the honest way.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#310

Post by roel_v »

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.

If you can't afford 0.15 % worth of overhead, using very conservative numbers, you need to rethink your business model. To break out that tired old analogy again - you're spending more than that on coffee for each of them, when you make it yourself and don't even factor in the depreciation of the coffee machine.
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