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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

#261

Post by miker64 »

BryanB55 wrote: post #240
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…

Sometimes when reading articles from HN I'll try to guess if the comments will be positive or negative. I guessed that these would be positive. I seem to of been wrong though... It seems like every other day there is an article on HN talking about "google down. no support!" and everyone is always saying the problem with Google products is that if something goes wrong you can't get help. I don't know if they offered 2…

We have a paid for google apps for business account. Every time I've called for support (email from a particular domain never getting to us, emails to a particular domain never getting to them, queries about outages) I've gotten a very pleasant voice who tells me in no uncertain terms that nothing is wrong, everything is okay, and could I please just f*ck on off and be a happy cog now. So, the service is weak to nonexistent, but at least the people on the phone are apologetic and nice.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#262

Post by Gustomaximus »

I hope they don't do this with Google Analytics next. Not just because it is a great product to get for free (I'm a massive fan vs other systems). To me it would seem wrong to come into the market @ free, wipe out or reduce much of the competitors and then expect everyone to pay up now they have a market dominance.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#263

Post by TheCowboy »

blhack wrote: post #245

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)…

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 completely, as they've done with other services people might have been willing to pay for, and that seems worse as you have no choice.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#264

Post by blhack »

TheCowboy wrote: post #263
blhack wrote: post #245

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)…

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.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#265

Post by stock_toaster »

wyck wrote: post #221

Create a start-up with: 3 way email sync (mobile/web/desktop) like exchange server (or other enterprise stuff) A slick feature rich UI Custom domains via MX Solid spam filtering There is nothing out there that does this for under 10$/month per user and I think there is a solid market for a better price point.

  > There is nothing out there that does this for under 10$/month per user and I think there is a solid market for a better price point.
You realize Google Apps is $50/yr (around $4.16 per month) per user, right?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#268

Post by nigelsampson »

blhack wrote: post #245

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)…

I was considering moving from Google Apps to the offering from Microsoft when they released the new outlook.com, however http://domains.live.com doesn't support a catch all email address and I really can't remember all the email addresses I've put out into the wild.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#269

Post by ing33k »

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…

Cannot agree more, I have had similar experiences, my friends used to call me and say, "hey I still didn't get your email". Finally I decided to use a reliable email provider . my choice was Google Apps .

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#270

Post by vidyesh »

blhack wrote: post #245

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)…

But the Microsoft's service is nothing like Google Apps. I use both ( for different domains of course ) and Google Apps' service is still pretty practical. Even if you just compare Gmail and the simple services they provide us with.

Its an annoyance at times setting live domains correctly. Also it doesn't support a catch all email address. :(

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