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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

#91

Post by rgsteele »

spankalee wrote: post #22

As a Googler and for much longer, a Google Apps user for my family, this is sad news. I wish they had just fixed the experience for "vanity domains" so that they didn't require all the enterprise features, and didn't let administrators have complete control of users accounts. Then they could roll out new features to vanity users without needing the enterprise controls. I understand that this is a little tricky, and i…

I completely agree with this. I signed up for Google Apps for the sole purpose of having an email address at my own domain, and I always wished I could just have that email address supported by my existing Gmail account, rather than having to deal with the hassle of yet another account somewhere. I would gladly have paid for that.

Google's always been pretty good about making sure you aren't locked in to their services, likely due to the efforts of their Data Liberation Front[1], but it always seemed to me that being locked in to using an @gmail.com email address was a big exception to this.

[1] http://www.dataliberation.org/

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#92

Post by rdl »

I gave up on Google Apps for your Domain for email a while ago (security, bugs, and the general black box nature of the product).

Right now, my favorite solution is Kerio Connect, which you can either self-host or purchase as a cloud solution. There are hosting providers who will handle all of this for you, but having the option to bring mail fully in house is really nice.

It's essentially Exchange, but much easier to manage, and far cheaper.

They also have a Sharepoint/Box alternative, Workspace, that I now love.

I'm more than happy paying $555 for a server and then $45/user for license, $15/user/year maintenance, and hosting costs. I really don't think $50-100/mo/user (once you factor in admin/hosting costs...you could do it for $20-30/mo but $50-100 is a safer budget) is an unreasonable amount for top quality email and collaboration tools.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#93

Post by alanctgardner2 »

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.

For most people, the time and effort of setting up and maintaining an email server is probably worth more than $5 per user per month. For a company of 100 people, that's about 10 person hours every month, without considering the initial cost to buy the hardware. Not to mention the risk of something going horribly wrong and blacking out your email, unless you've co-located the mail server on enterprise grade hardware (which will eat all your savings anyways).

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#94

Post by rdl »

ams6110 wrote: post #54
dbuxton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, $50/user/year doesn't give you that much room for manoeuvre as a startup...

Compared to what? You can provision your own apps and run your own services for less?

I think he means as a vendor of mail services, $50/year/mailbox means you can't make enough profit unless you're huge, and even mid-sized, $50/year/mailbox might not let you provide very good service.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#95

Post by larsberg »

Ugh. The worst thing is that I've been relying on my personal domain e-mail address _also_ being a valid google address. So I have to either pony up for my family's accounts or move us all and re-create logins on a page or so of "authorized apps."

Still, the huge amount of spam that's been getting through (10-15 per day, despite always logging in to the gmail web interface and clicking Report Spam) has been encouraging me to consider a move anyway. This change is just the nudge I needed to finally make it happen...

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#96

Post by brown »

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.

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.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#97

Post by digikata »

edj wrote: post #71

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…

I think you missed this sentence. "Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version." Still, I'm on free google apps mostly for a personal email domain too and will likely start considering alternatives just in case.

I'd also note that the $50/year is also per user, so there's sort of an opening to offer a family, personal domain type service. For a family of a maybe 2-6 users, the $50/year-user is a bit steep if you're mostly looking for a small group email + calendaring. Maybe that would even be an interesting vector for starting a new family-based social networking service.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#98

Post by [deleted] »

edj wrote: post #71

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#99

Post by tiziano88 »

edj wrote: post #71

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…

From the post: "Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#100

Post by dlaw »

larsberg wrote: post #95

Ugh. The worst thing is that I've been relying on my personal domain e-mail address _also_ being a valid google address. So I have to either pony up for my family's accounts or move us all and re-create logins on a page or so of "authorized apps." Still, the huge amount of spam that's been getting through (10-15 per day, despite always logging in to the gmail web interface and clicking Report Spam) has been encouragi…

The article says: """ Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version. """
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