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Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

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Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#11
post #2

Is this for real? I've not received that email from Google. If so, I guess it's time to setup my own mailserver. I've been meaning to do it for a long while now anyway, as I'm not comfortable with the thought that Google is data-harvesting all my and my family's emails. But with mailservers being notoriously difficult to setup and configure securely, I keep putting it off. Time to get reading a few tutorials, methink…

Email is increasingly difficult to do yourself with the proliferation of anti-spam and anti-malware protection, combined with consolidated usage of SaaS apps for email across the board. Most of the IP address space in AWS and Azure is blacklisted by spam filters (as is customer IP space from most ISPs if they don’t already filter SMTP traffic), so unless you want to roll the dice on config settings for everyone you send email to, you’re generally going to need an authenticated relay for outgoing mail — and your best option will be one of the big cloud providers.

If you want a secure mail service that won’t read your email, try ProtonMail.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#12
For those not trying to host their own, you might want to look at Migadu[1]. I have quite a lot of domains still running on the legacy GSuite, and a few others on the paid workspace, and the remaining on Migadu (not relations but a happy customer).

1. https://www.migadu.com

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I have been putting off migrating, but this surely is a great motivator to finally get off gsuite.

Agreed.. do you know where you will end up migrating to? I looked into FastMail a long time ago, at that time it was the best replacement for just the Gmail component with custom domain, not sure if it still is.

I looked into FastMail as well about 1-2 years ago. I’d like IMAP PUSH support for iOS, to replace the polling needed for gmail. Good support for iOS search is also needed, I haven’t investigated how FastMail works in that regard yet.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I have been putting off migrating, but this surely is a great motivator to finally get off gsuite.

Agreed.. do you know where you will end up migrating to? I looked into FastMail a long time ago, at that time it was the best replacement for just the Gmail component with custom domain, not sure if it still is.

I moved from gsuite to fastmail about 6 months ago

I'm pretty wary of any "automatic import from $previous_service" tools (having been bitten in the past)

so I ran the fastmail importer against my user's accounts, then later reconciled this against the gmail/fastmail APIs with my own code

... it was completely byte-for-byte perfect (other than "muted" conversations, which weren't imported at all, that I dealt with separately)

I was very impressed indeed

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#15
post #5

Unsure if this is true or not as I haven’t received anything as of yet. Finally, actual motivation to get off google. Probably will go to Outlook premium for my own domain’s email.

Indeed, I have been putting off migrating, but this surely is a great motivator to finally get off gsuite.

Same here. What side-effects such migration would have? Would I lose all the files in my Google Drive? Sure my email@customdomain.com email will still exist as a Google, YouTube account, right? It just won't use Gmail as my email provider?

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#16

For those not trying to host their own, you might want to look at Migadu[1]. I have quite a lot of domains still running on the legacy GSuite, and a few others on the paid workspace, and the remaining on Migadu (not relations but a happy customer). 1. https://www.migadu.com

I really like how they present themselves - with Pros/Cons link in main top nav - with first link being to the drawbacks.

"No bulk messaging You cannot use Migadu to send mails fast. These attempts are monitored and will be quickly sanctioned.

We do not approve of or accept bulk mailing, even if it is not spam. Please use dedicated services for that."

I wonder if CC'ing or BCC'ing a list of 100 or 1,000 people every 3-6 months is included in this - if so that's probably the biggest turnoff so far.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#17
I created a free account many years ago for my family. We've all been using it ever since for everything. So I have a lot of purchases and history in there. All of my YouTube stuff, all of my Android purchases. Everything to do with Google.

And now they're going to start charging me $70 per family member or delete all of their purchases for the last decade or so.

To say I'm aghast is putting it mildly.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#18
I've been meaning to migrate but am more than a little leery of the potential for gotchas and disruption. Any advice from those who have gone through this already?

I understand you just lose all your Google Play purchases and need to re-purchase any apps or subscriptions you want to keep. I'm assuming this will basically require an Android phone factory reset and to be setup fresh with a "new" Google account for the old email address? Is this the case?

I also understand the need to do a Google Takeout and download everything. Already got bit by this once though when I recently did a Takeout to backup all my Google Photos content: a week or so later, after I had already permanently deleted the originals, I received an email from Google saying "sorry there was a bug in Takeout and some of your large videos were omitted from your exported data". I guess you need to comb through and verify everything actually made it to the Takeout to be safe.

When you migrate an email address off of Google Apps for Your Domain to another email host or self-host, what happens to the Google Account for that email address? Is it possible to shut down the Google Apps for Your Domain service for the domain in question and then establish a new fresh Google account for the same email address (not a gmail address) that was formerly part of the Google Apps for Your Domain service?

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#19
Bummer the only value I get out of the service as an individual user over Gmail is a custom domain.

Migration is going to suck only because of stupidly relying on login with Google which won't work after I putge everything google from my life with fire.

I'm presuming this includes paid apps that Google will be stealing when I decline to pay them by the month to keep them.

Lesson learned don't use anything Google.

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