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I have 6 user accounts that I have been using with Google Workspace for over 10 years, but now Google is charging per user, and it is expensive. I have 4 kids and host a family domain. They also use Gmail, and I forward their family email to their Gmail account.

I'm looking for a good alternative, and I am afraid to host the mail server myself since email seems to be the biggest hack and the ability to get screwed if someone gets access to the email account and like Google security like 2mfa. But the cost now per month per user is not suitable. I did buy the domain through GoDaddy. Should I go back to them to host the email?

A little while ago I use to mass cold email and used a pretty simply stack.
Created multiple subdomain on my hosting account and used GHL to to send the emails, apparently this was bad since reading this subreddit.

But I read everyone saying they are using google workspace, which is $6 per email account, and then using multiple domain and say 3 emails per domain. Am I missing something?
10 domains at $10 each per year.
Then 10 workspace accounts each with 3 emails - around $180 per month?

I ask, as this doesn't appear very saleable, as this is before you add all the other tech needed as well.

Is this correct, you are all paying like $6 per email inbox

I registered my 3 letter DNS domain over 25 years ago and had my cool email address since then.  I got it parked at number of ISPs and for the last 10 or so years at the G-suite - cost ~$10/year for DNS domain hosting.  Then came android phone with Google pictures backup. The whole family got their Google ids in my domain and slowly each account needed more then 5GB of disk and we got 100GB each for $1.98/month.  That amount of space was good for decades of snapping pictures.  I anticipated issues and started evicting all family members out of my domain to gmail.com accounts. I left with the last user this year with its own 100GB limit consuming 50GB and my account with about the same in my 100GB.  Then came the email to google workspace admin that our 100GB plans are forcibly discontinued and my two users in the workspace have 30GB each and we are 10GB over the limit. Options - buy Google workspace business standard for $12/user/month with yearly commitment = 12/12/2=$288.  So far my cost was $1.98/m and suddenly I had to pay $288 next month.  Emailed workspace support to see what happens if I do not pay - the answer - you loose your email address, your family looses their email addresses,  you all loose you pictures and email history. Options: First pictures with Google takeout - tried that and downloads went at about 100kB/s - that is 2 weeks of uninterrupted transfer - not doable.  Email migration - more or less possible after finding new email hosting and moving all folders by-hand in IMAP client.  Now explain all that to your generation-Z users.

Hi All,

We're in the process of doing a 3 year renewal for our Google Workspace licensing. Currently we're looking at a 77% increase in Workspace Enterprise Plus Licensing, and a 86% increase in Workspace Enterprise Standard. This feels insane! Is everyone else dealing with the same thing?

1. I have recently retired and shut my 3 business websites at Hostgator and am letting my ownership of 2 associated domains lapse because I no longer need them.

2. I have maintained ownership of the 3rd domain simply to continue using my "professional" email address [email protected] . because that's the only email address 90% of my contacts have used to reach me for the last 20+ years. But Hostgator charges $118/year (more) to host this domain, even without a website ... plus they're constantly pulling tricks with add-ons and up-selling that are beyond my feeble understanding.

3. The Hostgator rep suggested setting up a Google Workspace Individual account and moving my single email account [email protected] there.

Will this work? Is this a good solution for a retired professional who needs to continue using a single old email account but no longer needs full website hosting?

Thanks for your advice (Explain To Me Like I'm 68yo)

I’m a plumber, and I’m tired of paying more and more every year for email. $130/year for one email is ridiculous, but I want to still keep a professional business email. It helps with new clients. Just curious if there are any good cheaper options.

Just received an email from Google to say the cost of the subscription has gone up again. The justification is AI and additional functions that we have no use for.

We are a small business with about 20 accounts several of which we only use for the email address. It would be great if Google offered cheaper versions of the subscription for email only or accounts that didn't require storage.

Has anyone here transferred from Google to an alternative or found a way to reduce the cost of the Google subscription?

Thanks

Sorry for the naive question. I have a growing business (currently 5 employees quickly scaling to about 20) and I want to set up email addresses for each employee using our domain name via Google workspace. Do they not offer a package of email addresses? All I see is the $6/month per user plan which seems like it will get expensive very quickly as I add employees. Am I missing something or is this just the price that I should be expecting. TIA!

This is a joke. I don't need Gemini, but they're enforcing it on all plans and charging $2/month or more whether you like it or not. Google announced a price increase for monthly plans in 2023, and now this in the new year of 2025! Expect more increase in coming years!

We keep getting emails that look legit and say our customer's subscription price will change on or after March 25th.

I'm aware of the (BS) Gemini related price increase but we don't have any customers.

There's an attached .csv but I'm hesitant to click it because, you know, we don't have any customers.

Any idea why we're getting these?

So Workspace has been nagging our users to death about buying Gemini. I finally find a way to turn it off. We just do not want it and do not want to pay for it! What does Google do?

I got an email this morning that the price of workspace is going up and here's the bonus, we get Gemini forced down our throats. You cannot get people to buy it, so you force it on your faithful users in an attempt to recover your investment costs? I dont want it.

Sadly, I went to Microsoft for the first time in a long time to look at their pricing models and Workspace is now priced higher than Microsoft and I still have to jump through hoops to open up excel documents sent by business partners and customers.

I do love Workspace but this really irks me.

I am trying to sign up for the $6/user a month "Business Starter" plan on Google Workspace but when I go through the sign up process, the end price ends up to be $7.20/user per month. This is in the U.S.

Because of this, I was curious what others are paying? Is anyone actually able to pay $6 a month?

I went through the steps of setting up a business email and first I registered a domain, but then after setting it all I was prompted to start a business account for something like $26 a month. I just started the free trial but am I signed up for something I don't need? I also only need one user for this email but my company is a few people. I literally only need email with the work domain

Seriously? They just hiked the price again? My wallet can't keep up with these constant increases. It's getting harder and harder to justify the cost. Guess I'll be shopping around for alternatives soon.