Hi all

We have sold the family business and looking to move the remaining accounts from Workspace Standard (paid) to free accounts. I've now seen there is a deadline of 21 August to do this.

We have 2 domains, lots of data in G Photos & Drive etc but don't use anything other than Docs, Gmail, Drive and Photos. No meet, voice etc.

Would we be able to continue using the two domain names (old family business name and new family domain name) with the free tier for personal use if I go down the Workspace 'Free' route?

https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F2855120%3Fhl%3Den&assistant_id=generic-unu&product_context=2855120&product_name=UnuFlow&trigger_context=a

" After August 21, 2023, you can no longer identify as a personal user and revert to a no-cost subscription. If you already identified that you use your account for personal use, you don’t need to take any further action at this time. "

How will our data be handled? We have 2TB each through the workspace business standard sub at the minute, we would then drop to 30GB each afterwards, but I hope we wouldn't lose all the data in drive and photos? We have lots of family photos and shared albums created by us. The albums is the primary pain in the backside as we can't afford to have them drop off.

I assume we will be able to then individually pay for increased storage like a regular google user would? eg 1TB, 2TB etc.

Thanks

Am I tripping or did google announce it's going to be free for everybody? I'm trying to sign up with my google account and it's saying it's 6$ a month per user. What?

I just got an email that the case "Switch back to GSuite Legacy free edition" is fully resolved. Along the email, they attach a link to their support page. It seems the rumours about deleting the Gsuite Legacy are true. So, you can wait until your account is automatically upgraded or upgrade yourself now.

Update : Please check these comment if you not following.

So 4 or 5 years ago when G Suite was still a thing I setup a handful of custom domains in "gmail". In other words, each domain had its own G Suite account. I definitely use all these emails, BUT that's all I'm using (none of the other features matter in any way). Well, fast forward and now I'm starting to be charged for each of these "Google Workspace Business Starter" plans at $6/ month. I need to find the best alternative out of this. Any suggestions?

So I have been trying google workspace for a week now and honest the only difference I see from normal gmail account and google workspace is the whole administrative structure behind the scenes, resetting passwords, creating users, etc.

From the user perspective, only custom domain email account, and more storage space, everything is exactly the same. I don't see any ads on free google accounts either. I was expecting to see some ads on gmail boxes but nothing not even on mobile.

Am I missing something here?

Fair to say that google workspace is not worth for personal use only for business?

Looking for a free to use, with limited services, google workspace account as a student. I have had a personal email since highschool. But i am an adult now still a student and unemployed. Would like the option for a new gmail account that reserves my name that is similar enough to my personal email which is formatted as [email protected]

Start using Workspace for work

Supercharge teamwork and centralize project information with Google's collaboration tools - all while keeping your existing work emailYour current work email addressYour current work email addressYour current work email address

Example: [email protected]

Currently what i am seeing is this ^^^^ however i do not have a company name... therefore

am i able to use hello@[email protected] or maybe i can use my githubpages free website?
which is firstNameLastName.github.io

I am very confused by this setup process

I currently have two domains that use Google Workspace for free. They are super old and never made any money, and I think I remember switching them over to some sort of free plan many years ago. They have full Google Workspace access and I have 2 email addresses on each domain. I use Gmail to access them (but I can also access them using the Mail app on my iPhone).

I have a new domain (also not making any money) and I'd love to be able to link the domain to some sort of free Google Workspace account to use the workspace tools, but primarily so I can use the Gmail interface. I'd love for it to match the experience I have for my other domains.

QUESTION:

Is there a way to open a new Workspace account for free using Google Workspace? If so, what process is best to follow?

Not talking about forwarding emails from my crappy hosting provider, I'd like to have Google host the email address. Added access to Workspace tools would be a bonus.

Thanks!

I don't have any Google One plans or Gemini advanced, I'm a completely free Google user, but today, I just got Gemini on my Drive, Docs, Gmail, and other apps. How is this possible? I thought only organizations and paid users can access it. (btw I'm part of the workspace labs program and I'm using firefox)I don't have any Google One plans or Gemini advanced, I'm a completely free Google user, but today, I just got Gemini on my Drive, Docs, Gmail, and other apps. How is this possible? I thought only organizations and paid users can access it. (btw I'm part of the workspace labs program and I'm using firefox)

It seems many are finding success now after all hope seemed futile weeks prior. Just wanted to quick share my own experience.

I missed the June 27, 2022 deadline to signify personal use of one of my legacy g-suite accounts. It was tied to a domain and inherited free from a web host many years ago. Attempting to visit that link after that point said it was unavailable.

I then upgraded to Business Workspace, which was offered at a discounted rate where it'd be free until October, then $3/month for so long and then $6/month after that.

After that I again attempted to indicate personal use but it still said not available. I let it sit and kind of forgot about it for some time, but made the effort once more tonight and was successful.

You may try directly visiting: https://admin.google.com/u/1/ac/billing/legacytransition and after logging in as an admin see if you have the blue button available to acknowledge personal use. Otherwise more detailed steps are below:

1. Under ADMIN account and control panel, select Billing - Subscriptions and make sure it indicates you are on Workspace or Workspace Business Starter. Mine took some amount of days to migrate after manually switching.

2. Click the HELP icon in top-right, select Contact Support - Questions about G Suite Legacy Free Edition - I used G Suite Legacy free edition for personal use.

3. An agreement will appear to confirm you used it for personal use (and with the disclaimer that they may once again decide at any point to remove more features), click YES.

4. Click the blue button "I used G-Suite Legacy Free for Personal Use."

5. Sign-in under your Admin account.

6. Click the blue button on the new page that appears, again to confirm personal use.

If successful, you will see: "Your account already has the no-cost option."

Now when you check billing, you should see Google Workspace Business Starter with 300 licenses available, and it will indicate "Free Plan" and "Free Edition (No Charges)"

If you check your Payment Accounts and had a credit card on file, it should say it is "not in use" anymore for the plan, meaning you're good to go!

I finally decided to do something about this, and today in my admin panel I saw this notice. As much as Google pissed me off with this change, I am tempted to just go with this for the next year.

https://imgur.com/9ToNBgF

So, my company was already appalled by the 20% price increase this year with the flex plan, so we decided to go under the cheaper overall option of the annual contract with the impression we'd be able to split that agreement into the as-advertised fixed monthly payments. Yet, I couldn't find this option anywhere in my billing or purchase settings

I decided to contact support to see how we could set up the fixed-rate monthly payments for the annual contract and came to find out that this is no longer an option via their support staff when I inquired as to why we were about to be charged a lump sum.

It feels like false advertisement that on the Payment Plan change AND on the support pages this option is still featured, yet they don't provide it anymore.

Has anyone else run into this? Do you think the support staff was ill informed or am I missing something?

Logged in to my admin panel today just to check for the FAQ updates and options following announcements and I have a new banner offering me Google Workspace Business Starter for free for 6 months. And then $3 per user per month for another 12 months. If nothing else this allows me to have another 6 months to wait and see what happens.

I've reviewed the plan details and it includes Custom Domains which was my main concern!

Anybody else have this offer? Has anyone taken advantage, and are there any pros and cons?

I read about the free months and lower cost option while still being able to retain my email to my domain name and think heck yea I want to sign up for that list. One link fails, the other takes me to a page that doesn't work, someone posts on google support a link that takes me to a process that looks like it's going to work and when I am at the last step of checking out it fails and grays out the button, finally I find the right link (HOORAY!) I complete the billing setup, and it gives me a response that makes it look like it worked and the message goes away from the top of my inbox. I go watch TV for a couple hours come back and turn my computer on launch my browser and go into gmail and bam the banner is back at the top of my inbox and when I try to go through the process now: "This offer is no longer available" ... grrrr guess I'll see what happens come 8/1 but I suspect I will be getting charged $6 and this was all a ploy to get people to try to opt in to a "possible waitlist" where they "might" decide to give you the actual offer of 3mo free and 12mo @ 50% off and then a big old JUST KIDDING SORRY ALL WE WERE LATE ON OUR APRIL FOOLS JOKE ON YOU!!

Well, this sucks. I've had GSuite free for my family since 2006, but now those days are over.

I know this is a self-hosted sub but this was one service I was not willing to give up - until now, I guess.

We have until July to either move or start paying $6/mo. per user.

Anyone else on the same boat? I'm not paying them $30+ per month, that's for sure.

I definitely don't want to self-host (above my ability and time.) I'm thinking fastmail, proton or tutanota. My biggest concern is spam filtering.

What to do?

Edit: I'm not resentful or angry with Google. It's my fault for trusting them (though, back in 2006, it was a lot easier to do.)

I'm trying to bring all of our 'processes' together into one area.

Currently i use microsoft 365, the licences are quite expensive and it has our email hosting.

Google workspace looks more cost effective and the storage included is a huge bonus.

Does anyone else use it and how have they found it?

The main reason for this is file tracking. I can use google sheets to manage job file per job where users can open a job file, and enter data into workbooks and i can see when a user has logged on and modified. There may be a better way of doing this on teams but i'm unsure!

I have a dedicated server for my sites. For email I have [email protected] redirect to [email protected], and then in Gmail I have the "Send mail as" set to send email through my server. This lets me read and reply using the Gmail interface, but when I email someone the sender shows my site, and the server has email reports for all of my employees in case I need to track down a problem.

I also use Google One to increase my storage to 100GB; it's only about $20 /year.

Now I'm looking at Google Workspace:

https://workspace.google.com/business/

I really don't care about video chat at all, so it looks like the only advantage to me would be running the email completely through Google (bypassing the server entirely).

I currently use 48G of storage, so I think that I could do the $6 /user Business Starter + Google One, giving me 130G of storage for $92 /year. That's compared to the Business Standard that would give me 2TB of storage for $144 /year... but I don't need 2TB of storage, and if that's the only real advantage then it would just be a waste of $52.

Are there are features that aren't really explained in the bullet points?

Do you think that it's worth the money?

It’s around $10 a month and I need something fairly simple to keep track of everything so my adhd doesn’t lose crap.