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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

#381

Post by meaty »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #365
meaty wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for this. I've run my own mail server for 15 years, since I got my first permanent connection. I host on the end of it as I have a large distrust of "the cloud". It is cost effective for me as it has increased my merchantable skill portfolio. I've ended up designing some mail systems (50k+ users) for some large ISPs in the past thanks to my accumulated knowledge. Debian is probably the easiest to get off the groun…

I've thought about doing this. Last time I tried to set up a mail server on a cheap VPS I didn't have enough memory, ClamAV was the biggest culprit. But I think the new 512 RPis would work quite well.

TBH we don't use AV on the server. Tend do do it on the client machines or not at all if it's a Linux machine (mutt).

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#382

Post by Nux »

napoleond wrote: post #112

I think it's time for a dedicated email service provider with full search functionality and tools to migrate the old inbox from Google Apps. I would gladly pay more than $50/year for a simple, rock solid service like this if it had an excellent web client, real customer support, and cared about my privacy.

https://www.fastmail.fm/ is probably the closest thing to it

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#383

Post by pfisch »

Karunamon wrote: post #200
pfisch wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You know what, you are right.

I think the only reason I felt that way was because of how they told us what they were doing. Like they were doing us some kind of favor instead of the exact opposite.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#384

Post by mnutt »

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…

Google Maps has started trying to monetize, and I don't think that has positively impacted their sales or service.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#385

Post by fusiongyro »

Nursie wrote: post #333
fusiongyro wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this. It's not easy, but it's not as bad as most of the comments here would lead you to believe. If you have the wherewithal to run things on a server it's definitely within reach, albeit probably not a cost-effective way to spend your time. Let me make a few recommendations. I'm not a sysadmin by trade but I know a few things you can do that will improve your lot in life running mail. - Postfix and Dovecot. The…

I've done this and I'd recommend getting rDNS set up if you can, on top of your SPF and DKIM, though it sounds like maybe it's not entirely necessary. I ran a linksys NSLU2 as my mail server for a few years, with a USB stick as its storage. With Debian linux with Dovecot, Postfix, spamassassin, and the Spamhaus DNSBLs set up I managed to keep the signal to noise ratio pretty damn high too. It was fun, and remarkably…

+1 to rDNS. Very important.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#386

Post by napoleond »

Nux wrote: post #382
napoleond wrote: post #112

I think it's time for a dedicated email service provider with full search functionality and tools to migrate the old inbox from Google Apps. I would gladly pay more than $50/year for a simple, rock solid service like this if it had an excellent web client, real customer support, and cared about my privacy.

https://www.fastmail.fm/ is probably the closest thing to it

That does look pretty good, thanks! I'd heard of fastmail before, but thought they were just a hotmail clone (personal, not business).

EDIT: https://www.zoho.com/mail looks pretty good, too, and is the least expensive of the pack.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#387

Post by alanctgardner2 »

squidsoup wrote: post #213
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.

If Heroku can afford to support free users on it's PaaS, it surprises me that it isn't feasible for a giant like Google. I can't see this move doing anything to improve what is arguably an already unpopular service.

Just a note, you outgrow the free Heroku implementation pretty quickly. Do you need SSL on a custom domain? You're now paying. Do you need more than a small number of DB connections simultaneously? The smallest production psql tier is $50 a month, or the annual fee for one seat on Gmail.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#388

Post by mavhc »

j_s wrote: post #353
Strom wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still create a free Google Apps account, limited to a single user, through App Engine [1], Google just doesn't want to advertise this fact to everyone. [1] - https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/pVZfdeky-ow...

Just wanted to say thanks so much for sharing this; kind of a big deal! Now to figure out which email should be 'real' for Google App Engine - maybe the 1 user will be 'noreply'!

Just did this and was able to create 10 users

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#389

Post by kalleboo »

fusiongyro wrote: post #292
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 do this. It's not easy, but it's not as bad as most of the comments here would lead you to believe. If you have the wherewithal to run things on a server it's definitely within reach, albeit probably not a cost-effective way to spend your time. Let me make a few recommendations. I'm not a sysadmin by trade but I know a few things you can do that will improve your lot in life running mail. - Postfix and Dovecot. The…

I ran my own email server at home for many years, but in the end I switched to Gmail/Google Apps about two years ago since

- I kept a mostly "if it works don't break it" approach, but about once a year there'd be some alert about security issues with some specific software and I'd run a "aptitude update". Invariably it'd update the packages out of order, libc would get screwed up, and I'd have to reinstall the whole server.

- I could never get the spam filtering up to snuff. I had daily auto-training spam+ham folders etc set up, the works, but I'd always get a a few spam messages in my inbox, and a handful of false positives. Used SPF but it had to be softfail since someone I visit friends/relatives who's ISPs have blocked SMTP ports aside from their own relay.

- My fault, but I ran a forwarding address for a friend, and I got blocked by my ISP since it forwarded some spam messages that got flagged.

- I don't feel properly equipped to deal with backups. (sure you can set up an rsync to somewhere else [that you have to pay for], but you also want to keep monitoring that they're good, test restores, etc)

Easily worth $50/year for me to not have to think about it.

edit: forgot the biggest reason I switched: I got an iPhone, and iOS doesn't do push email over IMAP. Gmail supports Exchange, and there's no way I'm going to be hosting that myself...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#390

Post by [deleted] »

alexenko wrote: post #355
4lun wrote: post #309

Found a workaround to still sign up for the standard plan, modify the following URL to include your domain: http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/selectDomain?existin... Likely to be disabled very soon.

Instead of giving you a free plan, it gives you a 30 day trial :(

[deleted]
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