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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

#191

Post by notatoad »

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…

Sure there's an upside. There's no upside if you want google apps for free, but legions of free users make products harder to develop. It's likely that paying customers will be seeing faster development and better service.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#192

Post by notatoad »

yanw wrote: post #167
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…

Judging from this and previous threads people here are either distrusting of free services or aren't willing to pay for the goods (not everyone obviously) which is quite the paradox. I'll chalk this one down to the startup nature of this community, seeing as some are probably involved with competing products or are developing some, but the matter of fact is that this announcement is perfectly reasonable: “vanilla” gm…

>Judging from this and previous threads people here are either distrusting of free services or aren't willing to pay for the goods (not everyone obviously) which is quite the paradox.

There is no paradox. Some people are distrusting of free services, others are unwilling to pay. HN isn't one person's opinion, there are many diverse opinions represented in this community.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#194

Post by indiecore »

jrockway wrote: post #181
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 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…

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.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#195

Post by niketdesai »

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.

Sorry, but even for a team of 6 people if you can't muster $300/yr (breaking down to $25/mo or $4/user-mo) you aren't bootstrapping. You're being inefficient, and perhaps even reckless with your endeavor. (Unless you're building a competitor).

Sometimes it's about the pennies. But other times, especially early, it won't be these types chunks of money that kill you. I used to go on CL and do user-studies for $50 a pop and resell the gift cards for cash or amazon credit. So it's hard for me to believe that what you are building can't spare an hour of work to fund baseline communication systems that are pretty well supported.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#196

Post by Tortoise »

gtt wrote: post #72

On a related note could dear hn crowd suggest email provider (maybe paid, say up to 30-40$ annually) caring about my privacy a little bit more? Really delete my messages when I want to is a good start. Google is all good but I feel I should not put all of my emails in one account..

I've been using https://www.fastmail.fm/ forever, nothing but good things to say

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#197

Post by Karunamon »

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.

Most people pay more than $50 (or even $100 or $200) a year for far less useful services than a managed collaboration suite with full support.

To put it in perspective, Netflix costs ~$108 a year. People have no issues spending $4 a day on a latte, but just 13 lattes costs more than a year of Google Apps. A single latte or a big mac meal at mcdonalds costs more than an entire month of google apps for you.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#198

Post by cwb71 »

z-factor wrote: post #147

For people who just need email forwarding https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ work great. They charge $0.02/forwarded domain/day. So ~7USD per year per domain. I'm a customer for 5+ years, no complaints.

Elephant killing and hideous website aside, GoDaddy forwards up to 100 addresses for free with domain registration.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#199

Post by znowi »

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…

Reality check :) Google isn't a small, open startup anymore. There are layers of corporate bureaucracy that distance public from the company. You happen to deal less with people and more with the system. The focus has long shifted away from users. As a result, we see new features, offerings, and policies gently forced upon for our own good and a better experience.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#200

Post by Karunamon »

pfisch wrote: post #114
zmmmmm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I'm not so upset about them killing the free version (although I do think it's sad - all the startups I've been in got our google apps accounts before we even had a bank account - because it was free! I wonder what will happen in the future). I mainly dislike the style of communication here. It really wouldn't be so terrible for Google to say: While it was very popular we found it was quite costly and we…

I absolutely agree with this. If they are going to dick us over I can understand that because they were offering us something free that costs money to run, but just be straight with us. I don't think the google apps business customers are this dumb. They aren't going to trick us with this kind of obvious double talk. We are just going to think they are being deceptive and be less understanding.

"Dicking us over"

Really? * really? * Choosing to stop offering a free service while allowing people who already have it to keep it is dicking you over?

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