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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

#451

Post by sabat »

dotBen wrote: post #31
Steveism wrote: post #6

This is unfortunate indeed. The free Google Apps offering was a substantial value. What viable alternatives are there?

"Google Apps offering was a substantial value" ...yet you are not prepared to pay financially in exchange for that value, and even convey disappointment when the free provision of that value is ceased. blowing your comment out of context, but this misalignment with value and $ spend is a huge problem in our industry today.

It's just too goddamned much money for organizations that are small and are not funded startups. $50 per user per year -- if it was $5, they might have a deal, but having to cough up $500 annually for something that was originally free?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#452

Post by fusiongyro »

wildcard0 wrote: post #426
jeltz wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all SSH attacks are of the nature mysql:mysql or mysql:password, so you should be safe as long as you can trust your users not to be stupid. The attackers prefer quantity over quality when looking for targets. And if you use SSH keys you should be totally safe. Remember to apply security fixes though since the automatic attacks also probe for ancient versions of SSH servers.

If you're worried about ssh brute force or just don't like all the noise in your logs, moving the port tends to drop off about 95% of them. In addition, running iptables tarpit rules (or your OS equivalent) tends to kill the rest fairly quickly.

I've been using sshguard, but I like the sound of these.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#453

Post by ferdinandp »

benaiah wrote: post #144

Outlook.com's equivalent offering, https://domains.live.com , is free (Hotmail also offered it, but they've changed the branding). I've been running my email on there for the better part of a decade. To those who point at Office 365, that's similar but different, and it costs money. If you want a guide, this one seems pretty good: http://www.omegaweb.com/2012/09/how-to-configure-a-custom-do... Between the mistaken de…

sorry but honestly, i aint like subdomain (subdomain.live.com) let's just drop it.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#454

Post by munger »

meaty wrote: post #438
wildcard0 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're worried about ssh brute force or just don't like all the noise in your logs, moving the port tends to drop off about 95% of them. In addition, running iptables tarpit rules (or your OS equivalent) tends to kill the rest fairly quickly.

Annoyingly I did this once and then promptly forgot the port number, resulting in nmap time :(

I put info like this in a password manager for sanity (Keepass, I work on a PC).

One easy way to manage it is make a folder for each hostname, and add things like mysql root password, ssh port, public IP, pivate IP as different entries relating to the all aspects of managing the host.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#455

Post by munger »

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…

Good starting point for this stuff:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/so-youd-like-to-sen...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#456

Post by corin_ »

riobard wrote: post #401
corin_ wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not the point. The point is NO ONE can promise 100% uptime. One can promise a 99.999% uptime and refund for the downtime. If one promises 100% uptime, either he's lying or he's just stupid.

An SLA isn't about promising what they will deliver, not really, it's about what they will deliver if they want to keep 100% of the customer's payments.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#457

Post by munger »

msy wrote: post #319
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.

Rackspace email. Equally good experience IMHO, absolutely fantastic support, $12 a year per mailbox. Best purchase of a web service I've ever made. Your email is the skeleton key and core of your online existence, that's far too important to leave to a company that considers support an exercise in statistic management.

Our experience with Rackspace email at $12 per user per year has also been great. Although I suspect our pricing is grandfathered in, looks like they have doubled their price in recent times to $24 per user per year:

http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/rackspace_email/

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#458

Post by mokash »

mcherm wrote: post #364
mokash wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought about using Google Apps like this. It actually sounds pretty cool to be honest. If my whole family was using it, then I'd probably consider paying $50/year for the service.

But would you pay $50/family-member? (Which is presumably a significantly bigger amount of money.)

Oh yeah, I completely forgot that it was $50/year/person. It would have been nice to have an option for $50/year for an account equivalent to the free version that they're taking away.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#459

Post by white_devil »

gfosco wrote: post #228
wbillingsley wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need is a forwarding service to forward the incoming mail to your gmail account, as regular personal gmail can handle sending out email with a different from address. No exim4, no spamassassin, no clam-av, no figuring out which indexer to use, or any of that. Just a forward on the incoming mail.

I think most people would consider that cheating... You're hardly running your own email server, and still using Google. I actually miss running my own email domain, the privacy of it, not the actual administration. I stopped when I had gotten so crazy with aliases and disposable addresses that the spam overwhelmed me. Wasn't worth the time to 'do it right,' and I gave up my privacy for the simplicity of GMail. I wou…

If you get a domain at Gandi.net, it comes with a free e-mail service for 5 accounts. You could see if that suits your needs.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#460

Post by thenomad »

kalleboo wrote: post #389
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 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…

Yeah, this exactly mirrors my experience. I used to run my own mailserver, but it'd kill about 2 days a year for me with server problems.

I earn more than $25 per day, therefore $50 per year for mail hosting is worth it!

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