[HN Gopher] Google kills free G Suite / Workspace versions for e...
___________________________________________________________________
Google kills free G Suite / Workspace versions for existing
customers
Author : Octopuz
Score : 308 points
Date : 2022-01-19 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
| area51org wrote:
| Boy, you could not dream of a better way to drive people away
| from custom Gmail domain accounts, and into the arms of
|
| * Fastmail
|
| * Protonmail
|
| * Zoho
| nightski wrote:
| It's OK, I began killing Google from my life last year. Excited
| for the last bits to be gone.
| lobsang wrote:
| So, does anyone have a recommended alternative for a mail
| provider with support for custom domain names?
|
| Like a lot of people this is literally the only reason I have a
| legacy workspace account.
|
| Also, I guess, any recommendations for a decent IMAP client for
| Android?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm actually rather salty about this, as a long-time G suite
| user: google has considerably degraded the service over the last
| few years. For example, since a couple of years ago you can't
| rate apps on Google Play and leave reviews if you use a G Suite
| account. You also can't use family subscription/space sharing
| plans, which is especially ironic given that many years ago
| Google was promoting G suite (or whatever it was called back
| then) as a way to run your family emails on your own domain.
|
| So the paid account is in several things worse than a free Gmail
| account.
| sigzero wrote:
| I already pay $99 for Microsoft Office apps. I can move to them
| for the lowest business account which includes that and for just
| a little more get what I currently have. Anyway, I have until May
| to figure out what I want to do.
| binkHN wrote:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-36...
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| I'd like to call myself wise because I've alwayed used a
| "genuine" Google account (@gmail.com) when I needed to purchase
| digital goods. Not that I knew they would stop offering the free
| version of G Suite, but there have always been some strange
| inconsistencies between a genuine Google account and a G Suite
| one, like feature differences and regional availability.
|
| But I'm still using G Suite to forward emails sent to my domain
| to my primary Google account, so I must find some alternatives to
| it.
| gnabgib wrote:
| The article title is "G Suite legacy free edition", and is about
| a service which hasn't been available for 10 years being finally
| sunset, last day of access 30-April. Wouldn't "G Suite legacy
| free edition ends May, 2022" be a less editorialized title?
| q1w2 wrote:
| Seems like the "real" deadline will be July 1st - and possibly
| to the end of that month.
| Malakun wrote:
| Time to get a backup.
|
| takeout.google.com
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further".
|
| The problem here is there's no way out now. If 15 years ago you
| made the mistake of wanting _gasp_ a domain for your email, you
| 're basically roped into paying now.
|
| Almost everything a free G Suite user wants is identical to the
| free @gmail account, which is remaining free. Except the custom
| domain. Fine - but there's no way to just lose the custom domain
| at this point.
|
| Over the years, the Google account has grown in importance and
| things tied to it. It's fairly un-viable to migrate it to an
| @gmail account. Especially for your whole family.
|
| So, the options are nuke all your Google accounts and suffer the
| consequences, or pay up.
|
| Not like we didn't see this coming of course, but still sucks.
| area51org wrote:
| You're not roped in (good, albeit not free, alternatives
| exist), but yeah, this is just a fuckover.
|
| I've been paying google for GDrive for some time now, and
| that's about to end. It's back to Dropbox. I know, I don't
| _have_ to do this, but the hell with google. I 'm done. This is
| nothing short of a needless f---over, and I want as little to
| do with them as possible.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Not _absolutely_ roped in, but practically, yes. The cost of
| switching is ridiculously higher than the cost of just paying
| up - it's not a realistic option. Which, considering they
| also control how hard it is to switch, is a bit artificial.
|
| It would be a little different if they did this to _everyone_
| and completely removed the free @gmail plans. But instead
| they're targeting GSuite users when @gmail plans are _right
| there_, because they know they can get it.
|
| Honestly, if it weren't for the alternatives setting somewhat
| of a market price, little could stop them from charging
| triple. The only comparable plan is the lowest tier of 4
| tiers as it is, and I doubt it's gonna get _cheaper_ over
| time.
| fragmede wrote:
| Not really - that was the whole point of getting my own
| domain, so I could move it over if something like this ever
| happened. Mail to me gets sent to user@domain.name, both
| before and after the switch. You can argue the other
| services like google drive and docs are harder to move, and
| that's true, but those also have their own alternatives
| that aren't quite as reliant as email is in having the same
| user@domain.name forever.
| someguydave wrote:
| I guess Google feels it has enough of a monopoly they can
| afford to piss off any finite number of people (even very early
| peer-to-peer evangelists of their product) and write it off as
| business as usual.
| SergeAx wrote:
| I don't know if it was inevitable, but I do not share a sentiment
| here. Supporting domain mail with web interface and services
| around is costs resources, and Google have no obligation spending
| it forever. It was a nice gift and I feel grateful. I also feel
| it is a perfect time to try out new CloudFlare's domain email
| forwarding service, while it is free.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| Where are you planning to forward email to?
| SergeAx wrote:
| My primary Gmail address.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It costs more for a single user on Google Workspace or MS365
| than it used to cost for shared hosting that came with
| 50-Unlimited email accounts. Small businesses that only need
| email are getting royally screwed by big tech. Everything is
| more complex, has no additional features, and is a solid 10x
| what it should actually cost once you have 10+ users on email.
|
| And before anyone chimes in about needing to deal with backups,
| etc. on shared hosting, go check out all the backup products
| for MS365 and Google Workspace.
|
| And before anyone chimes in about deliverability issues, those
| are _caused_ by Microsoft, Google, etc., not solved by them.
| easton wrote:
| You get Exchange with the Microsoft offering, which offers
| things like (good) calendars and contacts, and push email to
| your mobile phone, which you could do with IMAP but many of
| those shared hosting platforms didn't have to begin with.
|
| Exchange is $1 per month, which is perhaps a little more than
| shared hosting but you get way more features.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Are you saying office365 email is $1/month? Source please
| as thats way lower than I recall or found in a search.
| Cheapest seems to be $4 US p/m/u
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoft-365/exchange/compa...
| easton wrote:
| That's what I was thinking of, sorry I got it that wrong.
| I could've sworn there used to be a frontline plan that
| was something lower than that, but now I can't find it.
| sschueller wrote:
| Thanks Google, this is the push I need to leave your God damn
| platform for good. Good bye.
| jasonsync wrote:
| A long, long time ago I registered a domain name for a close
| group of friends, and the 4 of us have been happily use the free
| Gsuite for email @thedomain ever since.
|
| From what I can tell we'd will have to start paying CAD $31.20
| per month for 4 users. Seems pricy for our use case?
| dylan604 wrote:
| do the friends only email each other on the domain, or use it
| for all things email? if doing it just amongst the friends, you
| can drop to just one account, then share the credentials
| amongst the group. use it like freedom fighters to just write
| drafts to each other.
| jasonsync wrote:
| It's their primary personal email account for everything.
| Mine too.
| cosmotic wrote:
| My retired mother and retired father are both considered "users"
| and so are my numerous service accounts. This will cost me almost
| a thousand dollars a year for three actual humans that use the
| service for nothing more than gmail.
| laurasia99 wrote:
| I'm in the same position, except 5 warm bodies. Thank you HN
| for this story - at least now I've got a few months to start
| migrating & consolidating these 'users'.
| hnarn wrote:
| Cool, finally an excuse to spend some time to completely exclude
| Google from my life. Get f***ed.
|
| It's been bothering me for years how nothing about Google Apps is
| smooth, the accounts are consistently not treated like "normal"
| Google accounts (for example, you can't buy Youtube Premium even
| if you wanted to), and I guess I should have seen the writing on
| the wall.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Is this google scraping the bottom of the barrel ? That would be
| a worrying sign
|
| And it doesn't help that navigating "google business account" is
| a nightmare. I m looking how to edit aliases to an email account,
| there's no option to edit it.
| SamCritch wrote:
| Oh this is a monster pain in the ass. All 5 family members are
| using this service for mail, Android phones/apps, TV, movies etc,
| plus I have a couple of extra accounts (e.g. separate email
| account for e-commerce orders). I already pay for extra Drive
| space and I buy movies frequently enough.
|
| All I want is to be able to use my own domain for my family, and
| carry on using the current settings on Android etc. Now I'll be
| paying over $40/mo for it.
|
| Can't Google just come up with an "own domain for families"
| version at a lower price, and make it work with the child
| protection features?
| taf2 wrote:
| Interesting my free gmail domain from my company from 15 years
| ago is still alive and well... granted my new company from 12
| years ago is now paying for gmail... but i wonder does this mean
| my old company email will soon vanish?
| msmoke wrote:
| I hope they make a tool to migrate accounts into individual
| Google accounts. I've been using G'Apps to back a family domain
| and will be moving to Fastmail which will leave anyone whose made
| purchases on the Play store or the like in the lurch. Hopefully
| no one has but I'm expecting some awkward conversations over the
| next few months.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| I'm young enough that I missed the free tier however I later
| eventually came across MXRoute [0] which is still offering the
| lifetime promo. Looks like it increased to $175 since I bought
| it. I haven't been disappointed and it is faster than Gmail from
| my experience. I host Cypht [1] for the front-end instead of
| using their webmail.
|
| [0] https://mxroute.com/ [1] https://cypht.org/
| yaacov wrote:
| > As of December 6, 2012, Google stopped offering the free
| edition to new customers.
|
| 10 years of a free product is not bad
| OmegaPG wrote:
| This.
|
| It will definitely hurt us financially as we have around 10
| domains with 20 email ids. We can't delete them due to older
| emails but can't complain as Google did allowed free account
| for 10 years.
|
| I hope there is a service Migration of emails from Gmail to
| other platforms.
| q1w2 wrote:
| 99% of the users of the free product just wanted to have their
| group/family/etc to use gmail with a custom domain.
|
| That product is still free at other providers. We'll just be
| moving.
| tagrun wrote:
| What are those other free providers?
| Alupis wrote:
| What providers offer 10 years of email (guessing many GB in
| size), plus allow using your own domain name for free?
|
| All the one's I'm seeing are paid options, some of which get
| very expensive if you have more than just one or two users.
| edoceo wrote:
| It will cost you dozens of hours to move your 10+ years of
| digital stuff. The big G has done a real pinch here.
| greatpatton wrote:
| Yes but for my family of 4 it would cost me 4 _6_ 12= 288$
| per year! That's about 50% of my yearly unlimited fiber
| internet access (that also come with a free email).
|
| For me that's the last nail in the coffin, will make sure
| in the future to keep away from all Google product (private
| or professional).
|
| What is strange is how in a few year Google went from the
| cool company where everybody wanted to work to something
| that can almost be compared to a tobacco company.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| In my case it won't, because, of course, it's all backed up
| locally. This Google outfit can be pretty sketchy at times
| - needed to make sure they didn't close down and take my
| stuff.
| edoceo wrote:
| rclone FTW!
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| Google Takeout is not even that bad...
| vesinisa wrote:
| Yes, and Hacker News calling it "killing for existing
| customers" is ridiculous. No service or access is being
| "killed" here - they are simply asking to start paying for it
| like everyone else.
| bmarquez wrote:
| One of the problems is that people who paid for Google Play
| purchases and other services have no way of migrating them to
| a free Gmail account.
| edoceo wrote:
| Or from free into the Paid ones - either move you pay
| twice.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Wait, we'll lose our purchases even going from gsuite to
| workspace? Is that confirmed somewhere?
| decrypt wrote:
| I think the parent company misunderstood the process as
| being required to move to a new Google account. That's
| not the case as far as I can tell from the support
| document. The account remains the same, just have to pay
| for the service.
| someguydave wrote:
| "How does the upgrade affect my current G Suite legacy
| free edition subscription?
|
| Your current G Suite legacy free subscriptions and
| related services will continue to function as they do
| today, until you self-upgrade or we upgrade you
| automatically to one of the new editions."
|
| That "until" is really ambiguous - does that mean
| services terminate when you self-upgrade?
| deweywsu wrote:
| Nothing against you, but a clarification here: this is a
| service, not a product.
| dylan604 wrote:
| For the free service, the user was the product.
|
| Now, the service is the product. Only since it's Googs, the
| user will still be a product too. Googs needs to re-watch the
| Seinfeld episode on double dipping.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| It's not just that I can't use them for email anymore. I
| wouldn't mind that.
|
| But now I'll lose access to any purchases on my phone, my
| Youtube purchases and history, I need to create a new account
| for my phone, etc....
| Macha wrote:
| Maybe it's just a relic of me holding out for the Google Plus
| migration so long but my youtube account is a "brand account"
| which is definitely a thing I can transfer to another google
| account (indeed there were a few youtubers who got famously
| scammed last summer into doing this). Maybe yours is set up
| similarly?
|
| Android apps will be a pain. I have apps that are no longer
| sold, or am grandfathered on a premium 1 time purchase for
| stuff that is now subscription based, etc.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| > Maybe it's just a relic of me holding out for the Google
| Plus migration so long but my youtube account is a "brand
| account" which is definitely a thing I can transfer to
| another google account (indeed there were a few youtubers
| who got famously scammed last summer into doing this).
| Maybe yours is set up similarly?
|
| Could be. I'd have to figure this out, thanks for the heads
| up.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Looks like that may not be possible for people in my
| situation. From the youtube docs:
|
| > You can move your channel and its videos over from one
| account to another. Note that if your account is a
| supervised account or a work or school account, you cannot
| move your channel.
|
| So it depends if g suite is considered a "work or school"
| account or not.
| gingerlime wrote:
| Glad I migrated my email off of it to Fastmail (although still
| going through my own email server)
|
| Any tips for downloading google docs and sheets? any online
| alternative for those? (libreoffice or Mac numbers aren't that
| exciting...)
| batrachos wrote:
| 'Google kills' is the information technology equivalent of
| 'Florida man'. Always a fount of disappointed amusement.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Google is really on a killing spree lately. Can any insiders give
| us insight into whether the people at the top of Google are aware
| that they have a strong reputation in the community for killing
| things off?
| joemi wrote:
| I wouldn't really rank this one under "lately" since it's been
| a legacy version for a decade. The writing was on the wall for
| this a long time ago.
| withinboredom wrote:
| not an insider but I don't think they really care.
| dylan604 wrote:
| also not an insider, but it's obvious that Google is running
| out of runway and needs to start making money on its products
| lest it should shutter its doors. /s
| aingisni_del wrote:
| Do you really think they care about that reputation? It's
| simply binary: Product makes money, product does not make
| money. Did you think Google was giving away free stuff for "the
| community"?
| evilduck wrote:
| Loss leaders are a thing. I've had a free GSuite account on
| my personal domain which effectively acted as free job
| training and contributed to choosing them as an email
| provider for two companies I've worked for and clearly
| contributed to vastly more revenue than it would cost to host
| my personal GSuite account for my next 10 lifetimes. Over the
| last decade I've slowly but surely stopped recommending
| Google for anything they offer. It's been a slow attrition
| but I've wound up at zero.
|
| They've very effectively taken a good chunk of their best
| evangelists and turned them into detractors. I have no idea
| if they've done the math and decided that was worth it, but I
| sure hope they have and it's not just total incompetence from
| one of the biggest players in the industry.
| daveloyall wrote:
| Exactly. As an early adopter, I brought who knows how many
| souls to gmail. I set up a couple small companies on Google
| Apps, or whatever they want to call it this year. (Mine is
| called GAFYD...)
|
| When Google gave me a free HTC Magic handset in San
| Francisco, I showed it to everyone. I performed tricks with
| it. I made people want one.
|
| To this day, three members of my immediate family use newer
| models of my old Pixel phone.
|
| I told a man with a lot of CPU heavy jobs that GCE exists.
|
| I'm talking about "influence" a lot.. but let's be clear,
| that's not all.
|
| Google knows me--or at least it had the opportunity to.
| Somewhere between all those referrals and the emails in my
| mbox files at gmail and GAFYD which _pre-date the launch of
| those services by a decade_ or my bug reports, or _working
| in one of their datacenters for a while_ , they should know
| that I helped them be what they are today.
|
| Maybe they do. Maybe this kind of treatment is what I
| deserve.
|
| (to reiterate what others have posted, it isn't about the
| money. It's about the major unplanned migration. Which they
| _still_ have not notified me about.)
| throwoutway wrote:
| Haha! Just yesterday, that is exactly what Google was
| promoting as their first defense against antitrust
| regulation. That "these free services provide thousands of
| dollars a year in value to the average American".
|
| So if they're going to kill the free stuff, then they have no
| ground to stand on.
|
| https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-
| policy/the-h...
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I'm not necessarily just talking about this particular
| instance, just in general that's definitely been the overall
| theme of the discussion when things like this happen. We're a
| paying G-suite customer so we're not affected, but we HAVE
| been affected by features that users adopt as part of their
| workflow and productivity that Google decides to axe on a
| whim.
|
| It makes us as an IT organization look stupid when our users
| come asking us where the feature they rely on went. I just
| want to know if leadership at Google has any inkling that
| this is their reputation or not.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I wouldn't mind this so much if I didn't have _quite a lot of
| money_ tied up in Android purchases. The fact that they don 't
| offer a migration path for this ought to be criminal.
| greatpatton wrote:
| People are talking about their purchases on Google play, but
| that's not the main point. All the web services where you used
| Google as the IdP are going to be toasted if you move. You will
| to go through all the services you use to see how to transfer
| your account there. It will teach me one thing: never ever use an
| external IdP and always create local account.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I won't be spending 6$/month, that's for sure. I'd rather go
| self-hosting.
|
| I quit Facebook. I can quit Gmail too.
| mike503 wrote:
| Holy shit, this is pathetic. I should be grateful for the years
| I've spent on a grandfathered plan, but it's mostly the same as a
| plain old free gmail account (for anything I use and the hundreds
| of small businesses I helped setup on it) and that's not going
| anywhere. I'm slightly above annoyed for my own personal setup
| (just using it for email, guess I'm going to have to look into
| setting up forwarding instead) but for the hundreds of small
| businesses I setup and have been enjoying it and relying on it
| (and often wouldn't be using it if it was let free) I have no
| idea what to say to them. Most of them are so small $6/month
| simply isn't worth it for the low volume of email they get and
| now they're also going to have to deal with migration.
| babycake wrote:
| So for regular users, does this mean my google docs, sheets,
| photos will be gone? What is G Suite vs Workspace? Or will all my
| docs be ported over and I'll still have access?
| someguydave wrote:
| Yes I would like to know this too. from the fairly useless
| google support doc:
|
| "How does the upgrade affect my current G Suite legacy free
| edition subscription? Your current G Suite legacy free
| subscriptions and related services will continue to function as
| they do today, until you self-upgrade or we upgrade you
| automatically to one of the new editions."
|
| So does this mean I lose all of my google gmail, photos,
| sheets, drive, YouTube etc or not?
| theossuary wrote:
| I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close
| friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps
| instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It
| was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they
| forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do.
|
| Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much
| considering Google doesn't have one). Right now I'm really
| considering moving over to them. But I have no idea what the
| migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like;
| not to mention Calendar and contacts. I used this as my primary
| email on at least 7 android phones (the original Pixel up through
| the Pixel 6 I preordered). The loss of Youtube purchases; android
| play purchases, etc. is going to hurt. I'm sad it isn't illegal
| to turn a free account into a paid one when it means losing
| purchased content like this.
|
| I'm not 100% sure what to do, I don't have dozens of hours to
| walk everyone through a migration; and Google provides absolutely
| no migration tools to help with this. This is the last time I'll
| be burned by Google though. I used to be a huge fan; but at this
| point I'm done. I'm really looking forward to cutting them out
| completely. As an added bonus; I no longer have to worry about
| them deciding to ban my account one day and lose everything.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email
| across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and
| contacts.
|
| Contacts and Email seems to be the easy part: you can download
| the emails via IMAP to a client like Thunderbird, and the re-
| upload them on a new account. Years ago I did this transferring
| from one G Suite account to another for a friend, worked very
| well. Contacts can be exported in CSV and then imported bia
| CSV, no big deal too. I have routinely transferred loads of
| contacts between different systems this way, including Gmail.
| With calendar, I never had a necessity to transfer data, but I
| imagine that there are ways, given that it uses a standard
| iCalendar format.
| digital_voodoo wrote:
| Are you sure about the re-uploading part? I've had an issue
| like that last week, and am currently stuck with my mails
| locally, not able to 'put them back' to the IMAP server. Not
| Gmail though.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I most definitely did re-upload it without any issues to
| another G suite account. It was in 2014 though, maybe
| something did change since then. Here [1] people write that
| there are probably some differences between Gsuite and
| regular gmail accounts.
|
| [1]: https://superuser.com/questions/446135/import-e-mail-
| via-ima...
| vetinari wrote:
| Make sure you are not uploading into the Inbox folder. Any
| other folder should be fine.
| isodude wrote:
| Shameless plug but https://epostflytt.se is a online mail
| transfer tool. Coming to think about it we should add calendar
| and contacts as well.
| criddell wrote:
| What is it? I can't read the page but am interested in
| something that could ease migration.
| isodude wrote:
| You add your credentials for the old and the new account
| and the tool moves the mail between the two. Very easy if
| you don't want the hassle. It should indeed exist an
| english version, I think there's a newer version soon to be
| released.
|
| You can add several mail accounts and get a mail when the
| transfer is complete.
| apohn wrote:
| Something I just discovered is that Office 365 Family only lets
| you use custom domains if they are hosted by GoDaddy. If you
| want to use another domain registrar you have to get Microsoft
| 365 Business, which has a similar price as Google Workspace :(
|
| There's no way I'm moving my domain to GoDaddy.
| wffurr wrote:
| Why would you lose purchases? Can't you continue to log in with
| the same email@domain just with a different provider for mail /
| calendar / etc.?
| someguydave wrote:
| If you migrate to a google workspace subscription wouldn't
| you keep the purchases?
| wffurr wrote:
| I don't even think you have to do that. Your Play account
| is tied to the email address itself, which you can migrate
| to another provider with DNS, not the workspace / gsuite
| stuff.
| theossuary wrote:
| According to what I've read I'll lose access to my google
| play purchases made under my legacy g suite account
| unless I decide to pay $6/month indefinitely. I'm not
| 100% sure, can't be until I do it; but I'm pretty
| certain, after reading through posts like https://support
| .google.com/googleplay/thread/3195114/transfe...
| junar wrote:
| For what it's worth, I came across this passage:
|
| > After 60 days in suspension, you will no longer have
| access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail,
| Calendar, and Meet. You may still retain access to
| additional Google services, such as YouTube and Google
| Photos.
|
| https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217
| jtc331 wrote:
| I've got multiple domains on "G Suite legacy" which the admin
| console claims have been around since March of 2013. Given the
| article references December 6, 2012 as the date they stopped
| offering this I'm wondering if I somehow have a different product
| that wasn't sunset?
|
| The name is exactly what's referenced in this article, but I've
| received no notice, and I don't see any warnings on
| admin.google.com for these accounts.
|
| What gives?
| Strom wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the date shown in admin.google.com is
| incorrect. For me it also shows March 2013, but in reality I've
| had it since 2010 - and I've got e-mails still in my inbox to
| prove it.
|
| The more disturbing part is that I, like you, haven't received
| any notice from Google themselves.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I can't be too mad because I've had 15 or 16 years of free
| service, but I'm now annoyed I have to investigate where I want
| to migrate, since I literally don't use any of the other Google
| services.
|
| And now I get to figure out what happens when a Google account is
| no longer tied to a paid Google account for stuff like calendar
| and document access.
| rndmio wrote:
| If they'd just let me transition my account to a normal one so I
| don't lose everything I've purchased in the play store that'd be
| fine. I don't need everything else, I just don't want to lose
| what I've already paid for.
| daftdoki wrote:
| pitterpatter wrote:
| So what happens if you have Google Voice with a legacy Google
| Apps account?
| https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_us/pricing.html shows that
| Google Voice is a separate add-on from Google Workspace
| bmarquez wrote:
| It's still possible to port-out your Google Voice number for a
| fee. I wouldn't rely on keeping Google Voice after Google kills
| the legacy accounts. If you have to, port out to a different
| SMS service (you could port back in to consumer Gmail if you
| really wanted to).
|
| Back when legacy accounts weren't legacy, Google Voice was free
| for G Suite (I think they are now called "unmanaged") and
| Google is trying to get rid of those accounts in favor of newer
| paid "managed" accounts.
| iamben wrote:
| I'm happy I've been able to use this (for free) for such a long
| time - genuinely great. But I do hope the 'seamless' transition
| will sort the things that just fell by the wayside, like the
| ability to review Play store apps etc.
| pronik wrote:
| I probably have no problem paying for the service (gotta become a
| customer after being a product for 15 years). However, the
| service needs to start being on par with the regular Google
| account offering. Most of current users me included have setup
| family domains, but that's one of the areas which does not work
| with GAFYD/G-Suite/Workspace properly -- no Family Link, not
| Family Sharing in Android etc. The solution according to Google?
| Create a @gmail.com account for these cases. Speaking of which:
| same goes for children's accounts for Family Link -- you can only
| create a @gmail.com one for children, not an account in your
| domain which you control. This needs fixing.
| Apreche wrote:
| I knew something like this would probably come, but it doesn't
| make it any better. Complete BS.
|
| 16 years ago me and my friends signed up for "GMail for your
| domain". That's it. We wanted to use GMail, which was by far the
| best email available at the time, and have email addresses at our
| own domain instead of @gmail.com. That's it.
|
| Since that time several of us have been using our
| GFYD/GSuite/Workspaces accounts as our primary Google accounts.
| We're not a business. We don't use any business features. We just
| use them as our personal Google accounts. We use them for
| YouTube, Photos, everything. Our entire digital identities are
| bound to these accounts.
|
| Yet, over the years, these accounts are just worse than free
| personal Google accounts. Because we are not a business, there is
| absolutely no benefit to these accounts whatsoever other than the
| custom domain. In fact, we can't even use the new version of
| Google Pay. It only works with free accounts! We all had to
| switch to other payment platforms to split bills. Ironically,
| we'll have to use one of those non-Google platforms to split the
| Google Workspaces bill as well.
|
| And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone
| else gets for free. I'd be less angry if we got some kind of
| benefit above and beyond normal free Google accounts. I'd be less
| angry if the price wasn't a ridiculous per-user rate. I'd be less
| angry if we weren't forced into this against our will. This is
| not what we signed up for 16 years ago. I'd be less angry if they
| offered some way to escape. Let use merge/transition our accounts
| with personal Google accounts. Let us have personal accounts with
| custom domain, iCloud offers that feature now.
|
| Nope. Just looks like most of our accounts are going to get
| deleted or are going to have to pay $6/month for nothing.
| cromka wrote:
| > I'd be less angry if they offered some way to escape. Let use
| merge/transition our accounts with personal Google accounts.
| Let us have personal accounts with custom domain, iCloud offers
| that feature now.
|
| Same exact story, although we have been using it like this
| closer to 20 years now.
| mixologic wrote:
| yep. Set mine up in 2004. I would _gladly_ switch over to a
| normal gmail account with a custom domain name, yet there is
| no way to preserve any of my existing google identity.
| boringg wrote:
| I mean have you used Microsoft suite these days? If you don't
| renew your subscription they lock you out - terrible business
| practice but I guess a "brilliant" way to ensure you get paid
| for your product. Drives me crazy because my parents are
| confused and then I have to go rescue their documents. I think
| that's one reason why everyone was using G-suite ... now where
| will they go. Latex (/S .. latex is great but not practical for
| business users).
| fragmede wrote:
| That's an interesting decision on Microsoft's part. If you're
| locked out from your email, it makes it _really_ hard to get
| into the system in order to pay your bill.
| vxNsr wrote:
| If you still want the domain email address you can register the
| domain with either google or cloudflare and then set up email
| forwarding to a personal email of your choice.
| acdha wrote:
| > Yet, over the years, these accounts are just worse than free
| personal Google accounts. Because we are not a business, there
| is absolutely no benefit to these accounts whatsoever other
| than the custom domain. In fact, we can't even use the new
| version of Google Pay. It only works with free accounts!
|
| I now feel that this was a favor in disguise: Google spent so
| many years blocking Domains accounts from new services that I
| never developed habits around using them. Switching away is
| just migrating email since they made it hard to develop any
| other source of inertia.
| fitblipper wrote:
| I am kind of in the same position. I have 4 people using our
| custom domain for email only given the pain google put on
| these accounts. They've each setup their custom domain email
| account to forward to their individual free gmail accounts.
| Does anyone have a recommendation for a new email service I
| can point my domain MX records at? I only need email
| forwarding for these 4 users using my domain and a catchall
| email forwarder for the rest.
| thiele wrote:
| I forward emails for custom domains from my registrars
| (Namecheap and GoDaddy) to Gmail. Then you can use a free
| Zoho account that lets you send email from your custom
| domain from within you Gmail account (sent via Zoho's email
| servers). It's a bit of work to set up but then you can do
| everything from within Gmail seamlessly.
|
| I think this is the tutorial I followed years ago:
| https://medium.com/@raymondgh/how-to-set-up-a-free-custom-
| do...
| ralferoo wrote:
| Some domain registrars provide this service for free.
|
| I've always used a this setup, have my personal domain
| forward all mail to google, and I have my address with
| domain set up in gmail. Also, I think that's no longer an
| option - I realised a while ago, I couldn't add any more...
| ryandvm wrote:
| Same boat. I set up a Google domain for family many years ago.
| It's been somewhat convenient when it comes to sharing Google
| docs with each other and managing their email accounts for
| them, but that's about it. Everything else has been a continual
| pain in the ass. So many services are not supported by the
| custom Google domains or if we're lucky we get access years
| after they're introduced.
|
| It's always been remarkable to me how badly Google shits on the
| people that are obviously its biggest boosters. I was
| personally responsible for multiple paid Google Workspace
| accounts. I can't imagine it makes financial since for them to
| axe the grandfathered plans. As a free service, it was
| _bearable_ that my custom account was a little flaky, but there
| is no way I 'm going to pay for a shittier version of their
| free product. On top of that, now I have to figure out if it's
| possible to transfer movie/app purchases. Thanks a fucking ton,
| Google.
| angus-prune wrote:
| I've dug into this through the documentation and in
| discussions with workspace support and its not as bad as we
| fear, at least in terms of purchases.
|
| If you cancel your workspace account, then the individual
| user accounts will still have access to non-workspace
| services [0], which importantly includes Google Play and all
| access to your purchases will be retained. Any other google
| services which aren't core apps will also work as normal.
|
| Any former GFYD account becomes a semi-account with access to
| a subset of google services but not all. Since the account
| exists, it cannot be used to sign up for a free personal
| account, and you can never use google docs or have google
| docs shared with any former GFYD account.
|
| Overall, this is a better resolution than I'd feared, but it
| seems ridiculous that being a loyal google customer for over
| 15 years leaves you disadvantaged.
|
| [0] Core workspace apps: Calendar, Currently, Drive & Docs,
| Gmail, Chat, Meet, Groups for business, Jamboard, Keep,
| Sites, Tasks
| bubblethink wrote:
| Well, the movie/app purchase story is the same everywhere.
| You don't buy anything, merely rent it under extremely
| restrictive conditions.
| notyourwork wrote:
| > And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone
| else gets for free.
|
| What we get for free is a <something>@gmail.com address and the
| associated services. We DON'T get yourcustomer@domain.com or
| anything like that on top of Google's infrastructure.
|
| I can appreciate your frustration but these threads always come
| full circle to if you aren't paying for something you are the
| product and have much less control over your fate. Google's
| willingness to kill things is why I avoid coupling things like
| that to them.
| gowld wrote:
| > personal accounts with custom domain, iCloud offers that
| feature now.
|
| For $1/month
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238
|
| Cheaper than Google's $6/month but not free.
| jahlove wrote:
| > And now we're being forced to pay for something that everyone
| else gets for free.
|
| > Just looks like most of our accounts are going to get deleted
| or are going to have to pay $6/month for nothing.
|
| Am I wrong or are you paying that $6/mo for having the gmail UI
| in front of your custom domain? Doesn't really seem like
| nothing.
| xeromal wrote:
| That's what I'm doing. I wanted a vanity domain, but didn't
| want to deal with email server BS so I got a Google
| Workspace. The 1TB of cloud storage helps too.
| grishka wrote:
| You can have this exact thing cheaper if you set up a server
| and forward your mail to Gmail. And you'll also have a server
| to host a website or whatever else.
| bdamm wrote:
| Back in 2010 this was reasonable. Now? Anti-spam functions
| have become quite the specialty, with DNS and email
| strongly intertwined. And that's all on top of the already
| significant burdens to run a non-relay hacker-proof server.
| There's a lot going on to operate reliable basic services
| on the Internet today.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| This is true. I tried forwarding email going to my domain
| to Gmail, but it keeps getting flagged as spam despite
| setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. I ended up just setting
| up a filter to never send email addressed to
| @mydomain.com as spam and hope SpamAssassin catches most
| spam before Postfix forwards it.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > Anti-spam functions have become quite the specialty,
| with DNS and email strongly intertwined.
|
| Hmm, almost like Google have managed to make non-Google
| email impossible to do (excepting a few other very large
| outfits like Microsoft). What a happy accident that the
| de-facto answer is "give all your email to the
| advertising company".
| thebean11 wrote:
| Isn't it a pain to avoid getting your outgoing emails
| marked as spam, if you aren't using one of the established
| providers (google, microsoft, fastmail etc)?
| dtparr wrote:
| So, what I did for a similar use case:
|
| -Buy domain from name cheap
|
| -Setup email forwarding to my gmail account with
| namecheap
|
| -Setup gmail to optionally send as dtparr@domain.name (I
| forget the steps, but I think it's under settings ->
| accounts)
|
| So although the email comes to/from my custom domain,
| gmail is the real sender so I've not had any trouble with
| delivery (that I've noticed, at least)
| thebean11 wrote:
| Oh cool, didn't realize that last step was possible with
| free gmail.
| throwaway829 wrote:
| I'm planning a similar setup. Cloudflare now as email
| forwarding in beta and then use my personal Gmail account
| to send mail as by custom domain. Here's a tutorial on
| setting up Gmail's "Send Mail As":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEheS8gM4Xs
| jahlove wrote:
| Most things are cheaper if you do them yourself. I'm not
| sure that is much of an argument against what Google is
| doing.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Regular gmail supports pop for this. I set up the email
| accounts on my web host, and then put the credentials into
| gmail.
| notyourwork wrote:
| 100% this... there is a product definition and the free bring
| your own domain model is not part of the free product
| definition any more. I'm having trouble understanding how
| technically literate people are grumpy about this. It was
| only a matter of time. Google is a business, not your friend
| and you should treat interaction with them in this lens. It's
| not 2002 when Google was the cool hip thing to use and they
| seemed to demonstrate the do no evil mantra. It's a publicly
| trading business, one of the largest in world by revenue and
| market position and financial tactical decisions will trump
| your feelings for what you think they owe you.
| johnebgd wrote:
| People got a decade or more of free email hosting from
| Google and now need to pay for it. I know one small
| business that sells physical products and got 200 free
| accounts through this program. To this day they never
| delete old employees accounts as a result because it had
| zero cost to them to keep it around (not that they cared
| about security).
|
| I kind of chuckled reading this thinking about how Google
| even bothered to spend resources closing this legacy
| service. I wondered what metric they used to determine it
| was worth spending effort to shut this down.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I recall at one point they were offering large
| (unlimited) storage quotas for these business accounts.
| Some groups were using rclone to interface for Google
| Drive to store warez and other large ticket items like
| pirated audio/video.
|
| Even if the cap was 1TB I imagine there is a large amount
| of unused but occupied hot storage that is part of the
| equation. Not sure what others but in general there has
| to be some financial sheet indicating that this is
| costing money and offering no value so it is time to
| sunset it.
| mnahkies wrote:
| I wish mine had 1tb - I was already considering paying as
| I'm forever bumping up against a ~20gb limit with Google
| photos contributing most.
|
| To be fair I think that was per user on the domain, so
| probably could've created additional users to cycle
| through.
|
| Main thing that was holding me back was losing the
| grandfathered free plan should I change my mind / find an
| alternative for photos (I'd quite like to keep Google
| docs etc), but I guess that's no longer a consideration
| killerdhmo wrote:
| I'm in the same boat as you. Including being unable to use
| Assistant features or access my calendar on the Google Home
| devices. When I worked there, there was a google doc that
| outlined all the different features GSuite users like us didn't
| have. and the list got longer, not shorter :(
|
| What's the alternative? Can I switch to a personal gmail and
| keep my personal email/domain?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Are they holding your domain hostage somehow?
| network2592 wrote:
| They make it incredibly difficult to manage domains. DNS is
| managed via a third party like enom. Enom itself just had an
| outage recently that affected all G Suite users [0].
| Transferring your domain to another registrar is opaque to
| say the least. Arguably, these things, in combination, could
| be considered a dark pattern.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963713
| austhrow743 wrote:
| My email provider doesn't have control of my domain. In my
| registrars settings I just put my email providers server
| addresses where they told me to and I'm under the
| impression that if my email provider ever jerked me around
| I could just go in there and change those server addresses
| to someone else's with no input needed from my email
| provider.
|
| Did google do something different with these accounts? I
| didn't even think they offered a registrar service when
| they stopped letting you register free custom domain gmails
| accounts.
| network2592 wrote:
| Google is a domain registrar since 2005 [0]. But that
| service was launched for public use in 2015. Before that
| though, Google used third parties (mainly Enom and
| GoDaddy) to provide domain registration for the public.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Domains
| deburo wrote:
| The rant is probably around convenience. How hard is it to
| offer one-click migration of your data from one account to
| the other? I guess pretty hard, since they don't support it.
|
| My example is Google Play Music, which they migrated to
| Youtube Music. They probably offered to merge accounts at the
| time, I don't remember, but I ended up with two Youtube
| accounts with different playlists that I couldn't merge or
| transfer data easily. I had to do an annoying dance to
| recreate my playlists from one account in the other.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Same here. Set this up for my family, and really the only thing
| I wanted was a gmail account with my own domain.
|
| Ideally I'd like to have some self-hosted solution though -
| will be looking at options...
| seanwilson wrote:
| Hmm, if you're using x@example.com via G Suite, how do you
| transition away from G Suite but still use x@example.com to login
| to your Android phone and other Google sign-in related stuff?
| Anything you need to be careful of so you don't get locked out?
| Octopuz wrote:
| Either become a nonprofit or delete the account in G Suite and
| recreate it as a free regular Google account after the domain
| name has been removed from G Suite.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > recreate it as a free regular Google account after the
| domain name has been removed from G Suite
|
| How though? Create x@gmail.com and copy your old emails into
| it, change your domain settings to stop pointing to G Suite
| and forward x@example.com to x@gmail.com instead, cancel your
| example.com G Suite and your email should still be
| working....
|
| But then what happens to apps and Android login that are
| connected to your x@example.com Google SSO login? You can
| connect this up to x@gmail.com?
| easton wrote:
| > But then what happens to apps and Android login that are
| connected to your x@example.com Google SSO login? You can
| connect this up to x@gmail.com?
|
| At this point you cannot. You will have to create a new
| Google Account, and none of your purchases will go across.
|
| I'm guessing that whoever signed off on this didn't
| remember that Google sells movies and Android apps, or else
| they would've put a FAQ telling people this on the page.
| Octopuz wrote:
| It is said that the core services will stop working. Google
| Photos, YouTube and purchases/subscriptions are not
| considered as core services.
| miken123 wrote:
| When you cancel GSuite you can enable Cloud Identity Free. That
| will keep all your accounts, just the GSuite functionality will
| be dropped. At least that was the way it worked a while ago.
| webmaven wrote:
| I have a few legacy Google Apps for Your Domain accounts, but
| lost the domains per-se several years ago during a perfect storm
| of clinical depression and financial hardship (which hasn't
| really ended, just tapered off a bit) where I let the
| registrations expire. The domains are now being squatted on. The
| legacy accounts still work for things other than email like
| Drive, but I've mostly switched to using my Gmail account on
| Android and elsewhere.
|
| I'll have to think hard about whether I want to start paying for
| the custom domain accounts, to preserve the option of eventually
| registering new domains to associate with them (I'm unlikely to
| pay what the squatters are asking for the original domains I
| lost), or just do my best to migrate all the old data off,
| finally.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I'm affected and will move to another provider; does anybody has
| tips/insights how to export all those Emails and make them
| searchable - probably offline only, I just still want to be able
| to access 10+ years of mails. Moving them over to another email
| provider is not required.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Using Thunderbird, create a new local mail account.
|
| Connect to your gmail account using IMAP.
|
| Drag & drop your emails from the original account to your local
| mailbox in Thunderbird. This process may require a little bit
| of babysitting, or work flawlessly without a hitch, I've seen
| both outcomes doing this for folks over the years.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I'm surprised so many of you are upset by this. I use a paid
| email for the custom domain (not gmail) but I feel like they're
| requesting a pretty reasonable fee after such a long time of free
| usage.
| chrishas35 wrote:
| I think the issue is that so many of us were brought in on
| something pretty simple, "GMail for Domains", that has become
| so much more than we ever asked for. And in return we've gotten
| a lesser product (the Google accounts are handicapped in many
| ways) and a painful migration experience to leave (see
| inability to take Google Play purchases as one example). It's a
| terrible bait and switch now that they have years of history to
| amplify the pain of leaving.
|
| You're right the fee is not unreasonable for the services
| offered, especially compared to the competition. But given it's
| not really what many were actually after (we just wanted a
| @example.com gmail account!) and are left with a handicapped
| account, why would we want to pay up?
| criddell wrote:
| I think the big outrage is directed at losing all the apps,
| movies, books, etc... that you purchased from Google using that
| account. It feels like they should provide some way of
| transferring those purchases to another account.
| blip54321 wrote:
| I think a class action is in order here. Two claims:
|
| 1) False advertising. A lot of it....
|
| 2) All those Google purchases....
| ryan29 wrote:
| It's the purchases for me. I'd be ok with every user in my
| domain getting converted into standalone Google accounts.
|
| If they don't do something, I'm going to think about emailing
| every developer I've ever bought an app from and asking them if
| they can move my purchase to an alternate GMail account. I'll
| at least do it for anything expensive that I still use.
|
| I'd love to see a class action lawsuit for Google Play
| purchases that get usurped.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Why alternative G-mail? Pick a different company to reduce
| the chance of the rug being pulled again.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I have a hard time remembering the last time something positive
| came from G. - a former Internet darling company that could do no
| wrong.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Their maps and turn-by-turn navigation are still the best.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Not where I live: it often tries to lead me on the one way
| lane in the opposite direction. In Russia, Yandex Maps
| navigation is _far_ superior.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Check out HERE maps. Solid.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Guessing you're not a cyclist!
| herodoturtle wrote:
| What are some (paid) alternatives to using G-Suite for emails?
|
| Context:
|
| We're a small but relatively old SaaS company.
|
| Been happily using G Suite's free tier since day 1 - only for
| email.
|
| This announcement is a tad disappointing, but as other commenters
| have said, 10 years of a free product is pretty great.
|
| We'll likely upgrade to Google's paid tier, but out of curiosity,
| since we're switching to a paid service, we may as well explore
| alternatives too.
|
| Just need cloud email accounts for around 8 users, and with
| minimal risk of being flagged as spam.
|
| Thanks!
| wodenokoto wrote:
| If you're not using the productivity suite (docs, drive, sheets
| and whatnot) why not go with the little guy and use Fastmail?
| $5/user with 30gb or 100gb per user for $9/month
|
| Their support replies faster than google :)
| grey-area wrote:
| +1 for FastMail, been a happy user for a while.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah I'm happy with fastmail and it just makes it less
| confusing when I'm doing stuff online. Instead of having 2
| google accounts, one legacy and one custom domain. My custom
| domain is a completely different site unattached to the
| entire google ecosystem.
|
| I already deal with this enough at work. I don't like having
| to switch between g accounts all the time.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Why migrate to Fastmail for $5/user, if one can keep their
| installation of G Suite for $6/user?
| nacs wrote:
| 1) You can stop feeding personal data into the Google
| (advertisement) ecosystem
|
| 2) Google is notorious for killing off services or changing
| their agreements at a moments notice like here so there is
| a chance they'll drop their offering or increase prices.
|
| 3) Google support is either terrible or nonexistent (unless
| you're lucky enough to get your complaint to the HN
| frontpage).
|
| I'm an affected user and I plan to put in the effort to
| migrate -- I only use it for email on a custom domain and
| have been doing regular backups (using gmvault) in case
| Google changed their mind so moving to a new service should
| be a breeze.
| gowld wrote:
| 1) Business accounts aren't used for advertising.
|
| 2) Not paid business accounts.
|
| 3) Not for paid business accounts.
|
| For 20 years people have complained of 1,2,3 for free
| accounts, and said that they'd prefer to pay to avoid
| these issues. Now that there's an option....
|
| https://workspace.google.com/learn-
| more/security/security-wh...
|
| ----
|
| Our philosophy Google Workspace customers own their
| customer data, not Google. Customer data that Google
| Workspace organizations put into our systems is theirs,
| and we do not scan it for advertisements. We offer our
| customers a detailed Data Processing Amendment that
| describes our commitment to protecting customer data.
| Furthermore, if customers delete their data, we commit to
| deleting it from our systems within 180 days.
|
| No advertising in Google Workspace There is no
| advertising in the Google Workspace Core Services, and we
| have no plans to change this in the future. Google does
| not collect, scan or use data in Google Workspace Core
| Services for advertising purposes. Customer
| administrators can restrict access to Non-Core Services
| from the Google Workspace Admin console. Google indexes
| customer data to provide beneficial services, such as
| spam filtering, virus detection, spellcheck and the
| ability to search for emails and files within an
| individual account.
|
| Limited data use
|
| Google does not use any of your data for any purpose
| except to provide you with the relevant Google Workspace
| service. For example, when customers use the Cloud
| Translation API, Google will not make the content of the
| text that you send available to the public, or share it
| with anyone else, except as necessary to provide the
| Cloud Translation API service.
| SergeAx wrote:
| 1) valid point, but how can I be sure another email
| provider won't do just the same, or even worse? At least
| Google is sitting on it's data using it to profit for
| itself. Smaller actors are just wholesaling everything
| they can reach.
|
| 2) I don't agree with "moments notice" sentiment. 3
| months are quite enough for most users (and they can buy
| more time for a relatively small price). The free lunch
| was off the menu for more than nine years, I am actually
| surprised they gave us so much time.
|
| 3) There are replies around this post that for paying
| users Google support is significantly better. Good
| opportunity to check if it is really so.
| iofiiiiiiiii wrote:
| Does Fastmail do mailing lists? That's the one thing I use in
| GSuite other than the basic email.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Fastmail looks great, thanks for the recommendation.
|
| And I see they support custom domains too:
|
| https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-
| us/articles/360058753394-Cus...
|
| Ticks all our boxes (admittedly our needs are very basic).
| dangoor wrote:
| I switched from gmail to Fastmail a couple of years ago and
| the gmail import worked really well, too!
| herodoturtle wrote:
| This is a really helpful tip, thanks!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Does Google support ever reply???!
| zippergz wrote:
| I think they have always replied to me (as a paying
| customer). Now, whether their reply has any relevance to
| the question I asked, let alone solves my problem, is
| another issue entirely. I have at times wondered if they
| just have a random reply generator that doesn't look at
| anything except the subject line of the request.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Not unless you work for google.
| nacs wrote:
| They also take action if you can get your
| question/complaint to the HN frontpage..
| area51org wrote:
| Rarely if ever, AFAIK.
| mdcfrancis wrote:
| Amazon WorkMail, part of the AWS suite of tools, $4/month/user
| last I looked. If you host your domain on route53 setup is
| painless. It's an exchange server compatible service and
| provides some MDM functionality.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Thanks, will check it out!
|
| For those that are reading this too and are curious:
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/
| dekoruotas wrote:
| In my case for a personal email account I'll try DNS email
| forwarding:
|
| https://improvmx.com/
| punkspider wrote:
| Also an https://improvmx.com user.
|
| Recently Cloudflare also started enabling email forwarding. I
| believe it's still in Beta, and with the sites I've got in
| Cloudflare I got approved 2 weeks-ish after applying.
|
| As for sending emails, I think you can use something like how
| ImprovMX suggests https://improvmx.com/guides/send-emails-
| using-gmail/
| techsupporter wrote:
| This looks a lot like a direct clone of
| https://forwardemail.net/, except that ImprovMX isn't open
| source. I wonder which came first?
|
| I like simplelogin.io (also open source, so can be
| selfhosted) because the aliases can be used to send and
| receive, though you do have to set the domain up on their
| platform first.
| TheSocialAndrew wrote:
| We're switching over to Zoho for our latest startup. If you
| have more than one Google account the switching between
| personal and business is a nightmare. Some features are
| unavailable for one or the other, and it keeps switching
| between the two accounts seemingly randomly. It constantly asks
| for a password when you want to switch back. It's more headache
| than it is worth to be signed in to Google.
| tipsysquid wrote:
| The only issue I have with Zoho is that their calendar
| solution falls well behind Google's. Between the scheduling,
| the Android widget, and notifications, it just really doesn't
| feel to have the same clarity as Google's.
|
| Could just be my experience, but I'm considering moving back
| to Google for my personal email just for that.
| brnt wrote:
| Pretty satisfied with Postale.io
| fbn79 wrote:
| Aruba. Biggest hosting provider in italy has a very competitive
| mail service. Domain + 5 mailbox x 1gb each at 9 euro/year. At
| 20 Euro year you can create unlimited mailboxes x 1gb each.
| https://hosting.aruba.it/en/email.aspx
| thinkindie wrote:
| I don't think you can compare in any way Aruba mail service
| against Gmail. Even just for the webmail or the mobile app.
| fbn79 wrote:
| Why not? It's an IMAP service, you could use it with the
| client you prefer. Obvius GMAIL far way better for mail
| classification (promotional, transactional, spam). But I
| doubt any other service can do better than GMAIL with
| features.
| SergeAx wrote:
| G Suite Business Starter is $6/user. Even if you find something
| viable for, say, $3/user (and I really doubt so), it just not
| worth the fuss with migration.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Highly recommended against m365 unless you are a big company
| with a separate IT department.
|
| I setup a trial with plan to use it long term but I got locked
| out of my own admin account with no way in (I use a password
| manager, yes) and the support page that was supposed to work
| kept crashing my browser.
|
| Their Twitter account redirected me to that support page after
| explaining the situation to them.
|
| The quality of the service itself is horrible for an individual
| to manage compared to gsuite or any other service I have
| touched.
| pcarolan wrote:
| [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/) + [Hey](https://www.hey.com/)
| killerpopiller wrote:
| I am happy with MS 365
| sigzero wrote:
| I already pay yearly for the apps. I can roll that cost in
| and it might be fine.
| cpach wrote:
| Fastmail.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Fastmail is great. Clean, simple pricing. Efficient, stable.
| It never gets in your way.
| jason0597 wrote:
| Seconding Fastmail. I pay about PS45/yr for it and I am very
| satisfied with all the features it provides. What I most
| value however is the no-bullshit attitude from the Fastmail
| team. No random killing of features, no ads, no sudden UI
| changes.
|
| It might feel simple and old, but I like it simple and old.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Heya we're looking into migrating to Fastmail based on the
| recommendations here (including yours).
|
| Have you had any issues with your outgoing mails being
| flagged as spam?
|
| That's a (perhaps slightly paranoid) concern of ours, given
| Google's clout.
|
| And to be clear, I'm not talking about spammy / bulk
| emails. I mean your standard day-to-day personalised emails
| (customer support etc.).
| troutwine wrote:
| I've been a Fastmail customer for years and have never
| had an issue with being flagged.
| techsupporter wrote:
| I use Fastmail for personal e-mail for myself and two
| family members and where I work uses Microsoft's Office
| 365. I've never had issues with mails I send from
| Fastmail landing in spam, even to Google users, and I
| prefer their webmail UI over Outlook for the web or
| whatever it's called these days.
| uallo wrote:
| https://protonmail.com/
| arbitrage wrote:
| Didn't proton's compliance canary die not too long ago?
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Sure, but let's also be realistic that any service large /
| secure enough to trust your email to will also be large
| enough to have drawn the attention of entities that can
| force them to do things against their will.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Thanks will check this out. Hand't heard of them before.
|
| Slightly more expensive than Fastmail but seems like better
| security / privacy considerations.
|
| That said, the space per inbox seems far more limited.
|
| Seems we have some interesting options here!
| 422long wrote:
| Also looking for recommended paid/simple alternatives. Email
| only. Been using it for family email on a custom domain and am
| not looking forward to funding a dozen accounts every month for
| eternity.
| grzaks wrote:
| We have migrated 150+ accounts from GWorkspace to M365 last
| year. Better price, more features.
| petemir wrote:
| I used zoho for a long time, free tier.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I used Zoho for an event's domain, and didn't like how they
| removed POP/IMAP for their free version without any prior
| notice.
|
| I'd trust them not to pull the rug any further even less than
| Google.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I use Zoho for some personal projects, and enjoy it. It's
| very full featured with a la carte pricing for additional
| services.
| zuccs wrote:
| I have no issues paying for email hosting with Google (and
| already do on some domains), but how are people dealing with
| shared company email addresses with access to things like Google
| Analytics, Google My Business, etc.?
|
| If that shared email address is google@yourdomain.com, and Google
| suspends that Google account on July 1st, how are you supposed to
| disconnect it from G Suite and sign it up as a free Google
| account (no Gmail)?
| worik wrote:
| He gives the kids free samples Because ho knows full well That
| today's innocent young faces Are tomorrows clientele...
|
| Time to pay the dealer... What did anybody expect?
| samueldr wrote:
| I figure all play store purchases and similar content are now
| taken hostage.
|
| Are there any ways to migrate those licenses to a "google
| account"? Or am I being forced to pay to keep using licenses I
| already paid for?
|
| Oh, and what about my YouTube channel?
| donmcronald wrote:
| Since you can have a Google account with a non-Gmail address
| [1] they should at least provide a way to switch to a non-
| Workspace account. I have a ton of app purchases tied to my
| account that are going to get stolen if I don't pay the
| extortion money.
|
| 1. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441?hl=en
| mpettitt wrote:
| Historically, they've not been able to migrate purchases from g
| suite to Gmail - I've been asking on roughly an annual basis
| for the last 5 years. I really hope they are going to change
| that, although I don't buy much anymore thanks to a phone with
| very little app storage space.
| bmarquez wrote:
| YouTube channels can be converted to a "brand account" then you
| can link it to a different email address.
|
| Play store purchases are probably lost (I'm in the same boat).
| I have no intention of repurchasing my Android apps so I guess
| its an easy permanent switch to iOS at this point.
| snuxoll wrote:
| This is really pissing me off because of this. I've dealt with
| annoying limitations on my Google Account that I created back
| when it was just "Google Apps for Domains" to have a custom
| email domain for myself and my family. The service has been
| plagued with limitations as Google has added new services, but
| I've dealt with it as a nuisance - now my account is being held
| hostage?
|
| Google can get bent. They advertised Google Apps as a solution
| for families way back when it was announced, and they're
| seemingly content to burn any good will it bought them.
| Macha wrote:
| This is my worry. Also device support, etc.
| smudgy wrote:
| Poop.
|
| Welp, it's time to pay I guess.
| jlv2 wrote:
| I've had this for 10+ years. I use it for a family domain.
| Everyone in the family has a user in the legacy G-suite, but it's
| really only set up as an email forwarder to their personal gmail
| account. No one logs in under it.
|
| I'm not going to pay $6/user/mo just to do that, and I don't
| think any of them (all adults at this point) would either.
|
| If I could get up an email forwarding without needing a paying
| user, I'd probably move to Business Starter for a user or two.
| I've not reconfigured any users in there for about 6 years, so I
| have to look to see if this is possible.
| eivindga wrote:
| Sounds like you need something like:
|
| https://improvmx.com/
|
| or
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/email-forwarding
|
| (I have no idea if they work as advertised, as I have never
| used these services.)
| [deleted]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More discussion on other post here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432
|
| Mods: maybe a merge to this one since it's the 'official' Google
| post
| Macha wrote:
| Well I think this is probably the push to move my email to
| fastmail, though for EUR5/month if they've got rid of the 5 user
| minimum I might pay for the archive/drive space/laziness.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't remember the details, but fastmail was recently the
| recipient of some HN ire recently. Might be worth your time to
| search to see if it changes your opinion of fastmail. Lots of
| users chimed in with alts in the thread there.
| beerandt wrote:
| At some level, it's been sort of nice that Google has been
| nudging me off of their platforms one product at a time, while
| reminding me to not become overly reliant on the ones I continue
| to use.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| True, Email and docs were their last products I used to do
| anything real.
| jhawk28 wrote:
| Apple has a custom domain for email with their Cloud+. Guess I'll
| be switching to that.
| criddell wrote:
| This is interesting. If you or anybody else has experience
| moving from G Suite to iCloud+, I'd love to hear it.
| zeagle wrote:
| I /wish/ I could migrate to a regular gmail account from
| me@mydomain.tld. I've put up with a crippled account for years
| that can't access arbitrary features or leave store reviews
| because of my play store purchase library. My email was moved to
| another host years ago for privacy reasons.
|
| Do they not realize the downstream effect is they are removing
| the lock-in that kept has users like me from switching to iOS for
| all these years? When this keeps me buying a new pixel every
| other year there is a revenue impact even thought the account is
| 'free'.
| treesknees wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432
| Sunspark wrote:
| I am affected by this. I am sorry to hear that Google is running
| low on cash to pay for the bandwidth consumed by my two-user
| email/calendar suite.
| area51org wrote:
| Yup. The multi-billion-dollar company is low on cash and just
| _has_ to do this.
|
| I hope they succeed in completely ruining any goodwill they
| have left. I'd toss out some four-letter words, to boot, but I
| just can't be bothered.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Thanks for killing my family's primary email addresses google!
|
| Absolutely no reason to pay for gmail @ vanity domain. Why I
| thought they would offer this service for free forever and
| actually went through with setting my kids up this way is beyond
| me - now it's just 4x the work to migrate.
| batch12 wrote:
| I needed this. Finally an excuse to get off my ass and transition
| the last bits away.
| jfengel wrote:
| Huh. I thought that was what I had, but I haven't heard this
| directly from them. It's the first I've heard of it.
|
| I used a microscopic subset of the features. Aside from them
| hosting my email, I don't think I'm any different from other
| users. It's just me; I'm not really a business. I notice some
| differences, mostly in limitations: less storage, features of my
| Pixel phone that sometimes don't work with that account.
|
| I'll probably upgrade to whatever the minimal plan is just
| because it's less trouble than any alternatives. I've had this
| for a very long time, so there's a lot that I'd rather not touch.
| They're providing a fair bit of value and I don't really mind
| paying for that.
|
| But I'm surprised not to have heard about this by email. Perhaps
| I'm on yet another different legacy thing.
| Aloha wrote:
| Yeah, I' in the same boat you are.
|
| I dont know if I want to pay six bucks a year for that
| privilege, per account. I'm giving away emails on my domain
| too. Most of which are not used.
| waych wrote:
| Six bucks a _month_, per account.
| jholman wrote:
| Six bucks per month, per account, you mean.
| mattl wrote:
| $6 a year, or $6 a month?
| KallDrexx wrote:
| This is the first I've heard of this as well. I went to
| admin.google.com and verified that this does impact me. Glad I
| check HN I guess??
| jfengel wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I went to admin.google.com and I don't
| see anything there, either.
|
| Maybe it's rolling out?
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Sorry I wasn't clear :).
|
| I went to admin.google.com -> manage subscriptions and saw
| that I am on G Suite legacy, so therefore inferred this
| does impact me.
| jfengel wrote:
| Ah, I see it now. Thank you very much.
| jvolkman wrote:
| Looks like the information has been added sometime since
| 2021-12-07 (the most recent web.archive.org snapshot [1]), so
| maybe it's brand new and the emails are still forthcoming.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211207200137/https://support.g...
| blakesterz wrote:
| > Perhaps I'm on yet another different legacy thing.
|
| I keep wondering the same thing. Haven't seen any communication
| at all from Google, so maybe for some reason I don't fall into
| this thing that is no longer free? They can't possibly do this
| to me and not even tell me... can they?
| Aloha wrote:
| I mean they can, but it'd be kinda foolish, we're the people
| who've been pushing people into their service.
|
| O365 looks pretty decent.
| novaleaf wrote:
| I haven't heard anything yet either. I spend about $5k/mth on
| GCP so I wonder if they might be making an exception for
| spenders....
| sigzero wrote:
| My Pixel phone (and the wife's) uses that account. Well this is
| going to be a fun choice.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Did any of you who migrated to fastmail have any gotchas in the
| process? They do document the process, but still, maybe there are
| things one needs to be aware of.
| snarkerson wrote:
| So no more free gmail accounts?
| mpettitt wrote:
| No, they like @gmail.com, but don't want people getting gmail
| for their own domains without paying.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you pay, do they stop scanning all of your emails?
| javagram wrote:
| There are no ads in the paid edition of G Suite.
|
| They actually stopped scanning emails for ads in free Gmail
| about 5 years though.
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/26/google-
| wi...
|
| Of course, both offerings still scan your email for spam
| filtering, as all major providers do.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Where's the pay out for G to keep free Gmail then? I
| never read that the stopping of scanning was for the free
| accounts. I had only understood it to be for those that
| paid for the GSuite. Are we really to believe that Googs
| is operating Gmail for free with no hoovering of data to
| offset the cost of the service?
| area51org wrote:
| I'm just like so many others here: I've had these services for
| _years_ and now they pull the plug.
|
| Here's an exercise in how to piss off the world.
|
| I will _never_ recommend or use google products in the future if
| I have a choice. Never. Reason: you just don 't know what Google
| is going to do next.
|
| Here's a highly successful, multi-billion-dollar company. They
| don't need the money. But they want it, because apparently, there
| just aren't enough billions.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Damn. I've been using the free version to host my personal email
| with a custom domain for, apparently, over a decade. I have no
| need for the rest of gsuite - I just want
| `myfirstname@mydomain.com`. Guess I have to decide if it's worth
| $72/year for that, or look into alternative email hosts.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| As an admin of a number of legacy G Suite accounts I have yet to
| receive any email about this/pointing to this
| znkynz wrote:
| Likewise. Multi-generational family account. Around 17 users.
| Huge cost - i suspect many individuals just stop using it; a
| few may want to stay. Will one of us want to pay for it, and
| then collect subs from others - no - not really.
| ggm wrote:
| Likewise.
| duckworth wrote:
| Same boat. Ugh.
| luckyorlame wrote:
| bye bye google; thanks for all the fishes
| nunez wrote:
| So I guess that's a great way to shovel hundreds of thousands of
| legacy Workspace users down to Google consumer.
|
| Honestly, the only reason why I'm even on Workspace is because of
| Gmail aliases, but this news is reminding me that I need to stop
| paying them $12/month for this (which used to be free back in the
| day, and it was $6/month just last year!)
| pingec wrote:
| Is there a way to seamlessly migrate current email address to
| another email provider and what steps can be taken so that it
| will be even easier to switch provider next time?
| blocked_again wrote:
| I wonder how much extra revenue would be generated out of this
| move? Google stock to the moon?
| spcebar wrote:
| I hope it's plenty- I was really starting to worry about
| Google's bottom line with all their goodwill to users. /s
| [deleted]
| znkynz wrote:
| Am admin for such a domain; not had the email; do not see
| anything in my admin portal advising?
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-19 23:02 UTC)