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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

#71

Post by edj »

I'm not sure if I'm parsing this correctly, but it sounds like people who use Google Apps as an email backend for personal email on custom domains will now have to pay $50/year.

If so, that's a huge bummer. I only recently switched to running my email this way and I don't relish the thought of migrating elsewhere so soon.

I would happily pay $50/year (or perhaps more... I don't know how high I'd go) for email that's not only convenient and spam free, but also well protected from governments and the provider's employees, and not data mined.

I have absolutely no use for phone support or 99.9 uptime for my personal email. So the businessification of Google mail is not a win for me. Privacy and convenience or what I'm after.

Anyone working on something like this?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#72

Post by gtt »

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..

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#73

Post by indiecore »

natrius wrote: post #60
revelation wrote: post #2

Not sure how to feel about this. The core feature of the free Google Apps was that you could use GMail with your own domain without having to run a dedicated mail server yourself.

Plenty of services will let you forward your mail to a normal GMail account. Without an SMTP server, your GMail account will still be visible to your recipients, but it's not so bad.

Yes I'm sure people will appreciate getting email back from @gmail.com

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#74

Post by toomuchtodo »

dangrossman wrote: post #49
dotBen wrote: post #8

Contrarian view... by offering One could argue that the removal of the free tier at this point is simply because they've created an entrenched position, but one could also suggest that this creates a modicum of opportunity for another player to try to enter this space. Certainly until today the $ size of the addressable market in the small business email space was practically $0 given Google's position. [discuss :)]

> Certainly until today the $ size of the addressable market in the small business email space was practically $0 given Google's position. Rackspace Mail (formerly MailTrust) has about 200k paying customers for small business e-mail hosting. I've been paying them to host mail on 8 of my domains for years -- Gmail was never appealing to me for various reasons -- so the 24/7/365 support, daily backups and 100% uptime S…

I just helped several companies move to Google Apps from Rackspace over the weekend; their web interface is horrible and Google provides a much better experience on mobile (both iOS and Android) than Rackspace ever could.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#75

Post by zmmmmm »

jxi wrote: post #44
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…

I understand you're upset, but that's probably a really naive view. Maybe it seems to you that there is no DIRECT upside for you personally, but there's always an upside, just like there's always a downside for every good thing that happens. This looks to me just synonymous to killing a high maintenance, low returns project so that they can focus better on either the business version or other stuff. The "indirect" up…

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 are not able to justify offering it as a free service on
    an ongoing basis. Further we found that people who signed up 
    under free accounts often had false expectations about the 
    level of service and support we were able to give them and it 
    contributed to a negative overall perception of the service.
    We apologize to those who are unable to use Google Apps in the
    future because of this, but we feel it is an important change
    to keep the service profitable and well supported into the future.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#76

Post by jeremyjh »

aeturnum wrote: post #48
indiecore wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When I see ridiculous sugar coating it breeds distrust and disbelief - congratulations, I now believe every single future thing you say a little less, well done. And I will especially distrust any new "free" services you decide to offer.

It seems like the current free customers are just fine ("Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."), so how would it cause you to distrust their offers in the future?

What he's talking about about is not Google's new pricing/business model, or even how they treat their customers. What he is talking about is that this announcement contains several statements that are complete bullshit. But, that is pretty much required for big corporate PR people. It isn't their fault that this is how they have to express themselves: " but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn't quite right for either group."

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#77

Post by loceng »

indiecore wrote: post #66
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

They can play the game though, too. Offer good discounts for onloading users; First year or two free, etc.. Hell, first 5 years free. What do they care if they get you used to their products, and then stay a client for 15 years after the 5 year trial?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#78

Post by pepr »

aeturnum wrote: post #48
indiecore wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When I see ridiculous sugar coating it breeds distrust and disbelief - congratulations, I now believe every single future thing you say a little less, well done. And I will especially distrust any new "free" services you decide to offer.

It seems like the current free customers are just fine ("Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."), so how would it cause you to distrust their offers in the future?

Well, that's for now. How is it going to be in 3 years? Is this just a grace period? Obviously it affects new signups first, they can't just cut off everybody and force to migrate to the paid version.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#79

Post by dangrossman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #74
dangrossman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Certainly until today the $ size of the addressable market in the small business email space was practically $0 given Google's position. Rackspace Mail (formerly MailTrust) has about 200k paying customers for small business e-mail hosting. I've been paying them to host mail on 8 of my domains for years -- Gmail was never appealing to me for various reasons -- so the 24/7/365 support, daily backups and 100% uptime S…

I just helped several companies move to Google Apps from Rackspace over the weekend; their web interface is horrible and Google provides a much better experience on mobile (both iOS and Android) than Rackspace ever could.

That only matters if you care about the web interface. Lots of businesses don't, they're all on Outlook. I use Thunderbird (IMAP); I've literally never logged into Rackspace's webmail client.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#80

Post by loceng »

lawdawg wrote: post #55
georgemcbay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the support costs were very much. As with all things Google other than being an adsense buyer, support was basically "send us an email and we'll respond with a robo-faq that may or may not have anything to do with your question". And Google Apps was actually quite easy to setup, partly because Google documented it pretty well but mostly because many DNS providers would basically do a one-click Google Apps set…

Google Apps for Business has 24/7 phone support. Maybe you would know that if you actually used Google Apps for Business or read the blog post.

This is likely primarily an opportunity to upsell other services - great opportunity to chat with people, make a connection, build a relationship, etc..
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