I work the tech at a small start up and, since we started, have been trying to get us off G Suite. To do that, I'm going to need to make compelling cases to my coworkers.
Basically, I need some suggestions for replacing G Suite for the non-tech folks.

I'm trying to appeal to cost and reliability without losing ease-of-use, because that's all they really hear. We really only use Gmail and Drive, so those are the two that I need solutions for.
My current idea is Tutanota for email (which is stunningly cheap and encrypted) and a self-hosted Nextcloud for everything else. Together, they will save us a bit of cash, but I'm struggling to make the case for reliability here as adding another server under my purview will take my take away from more pressing tech issues. Id prefer something like Nuclino, which I don't have to host, but the cheapest non-free plan is far pricier than G Suite.

Any ideas, friends?

Assuming I've been soaked in Google G Suite / Workspace for the last decade, what are the Open Source alternatives that can seriously provide equivalent functionality across email and, more challengingly, collaboration tools?

Has anyone gone through a migration to a system that isn't Microsoft Office 365?

Hi!

I'm looking for an alternative to Google Workspace for a small business.

Currently we have 3 workspace accounts. We need 8 more email accounts under our domain but with it being €6,90 a month per account that's already €75,90 a month.

I think we'll just hire some mail server to host the mail but I'm looking for a selfhosted solution for everything else (including a webmail client).

I found nextcloud which seemed promising, but the mail client in it is not good (and the mobile layout isn't good either; it integrates well on Android through WebDAV though). The snappymail and roundcube integrations don't cut it either. I also don't like that calendar invitations are all sent out from the same email address for all users, with only the reply-to address being different.

Zimbra seems good but it's also a mailserver in itself, which I don't want to host myself.

We have at least the following specific requirements:

-Good modern layout
-Proper text editor for mails
-Scheduling a time to send an email
-Adding signatures to emails
-Email templates

-Calendars with shared write access
-Calendar syncable to phones and other applications
-Calendar invitations sent from the user's email (also when being made on a phone)

-Contacts

-Creating and sharing forms (alternative for Google forms)

-File sharing feature would be nice to have but not necessary

-Everything accessible from one place (email, calendar, contacts, etc.)

Just got a notification that my Workspace price was going up, so I logged in and the price is more than doubling. What was $6/month/user, is now $14.40/month/user. And Dec its going up to $18/month/user. Thats an astronomical increase. For a small business that uses mainly email, chat (hangouts via gmail in browser) and docs - what are some alternatives??

Thanks to this sub I just learned that the free tier of G Suite is shutting down. Unfortunately I need some help finding some alternatives as frankly I never thought I'd need to know alternatives.

I only use it for my personal email (about 5 accounts at a custom domain). I don't use any of the other Google features, so those aren't a huge loss. I can't justify $360 a year just for email hosting from Google, but I would like to have a 3rd party host. I'm not interested in self hosting email at this point. I loved Google because it was easy for my family members, so hopefully I can find a more affordable service that still has good usability.

Any recommendations? Looks like Zoho and MX-Relay are popular. Any opinions?

I'm pretty bummed with Google doing this. One more nail in the Google coffin for me. YouTube will be all that's left that I use. Hopefully I can port my account over to a new spam Gmail account...

Finally biting the bullet and moving my personal domains to a better provider. Currently I have one with Google G-Suite (2 accounts), and one with O365 (1 account), but have a domain with about 10 accounts which needs to be moved.

Cost is an issue, so is security and reliability. MS and Google do well on the security/reliability front, not so great on the cost front once you have more than a couple of accounts. Email is the most important service, everything else is 'nice to have'.

Happy to consider 'novel' solutions.

EDIT: Current list of options

• Exchange or G-Suite with aliases/shared boxes

• Zoho (free up to 25 mailboxes)

• MXroute.com

• Migadu

• Protonmail

• Hover.com

• thexyz.com

and I discovered, Rackspace email hosting which is $2/user/month or less than half cost of Google/MS.

When I signed up for gsuite, it was literally ONLY to have a place to use my personal email address. I have never used anything other than the email functionality of it.

At the time it cost $5 a month in local currency (Australia). Now it's $8.60. (Constant price increases).

That might be great value if you use everything, but it's way too much just for email.

So can someone tell me of a free (or much cheaper) and reliable email provider where I can keep my current email?

And just in case I'm being too hasty, what can I do with a paid Gsuite membership that I haven't been taking advantage of?

If Google doesn't come up with an option/plan with a reasonable price I will need to look at other options.

Wishlist:

• Custom domain

• Email - multiple accounts

• integrated + working calendar

• Webmail with search

• Secure, and as privacy oriented as possible

• Preferably dedicated Android and IOS apps

• Not required Godaddy domain hosting

• Good privacy record

• Not too costly / user account

• Some free aliases / groups

Does this spell Fastmail, Tutanota, or something else?

If this guide already exists, slap me in the face and link it. It would be great if there was one place that listed out all of the email host options with any limitations. I took a shot at a few, it's a pretty disappointing list.

1/22/22 : Updated to add more plans and more columns.

Dear community,
I am paying too much for 4 users for Google Workspace, I don't use it for business just for home use. I am paying something like USD 450 a year.
I am thinking of moving away from them and migrating most of my storage to my private home NAS (Maybe Synology, still not decided), leveraging the good connectivity I have at home symmetric 1 Gbps or even I can upgrade to 10 Gbps for USD 10 more per month in (Switzerland).

One alternative I was looking at to move email was ProtonMail, but their family plan is a bit salty too.

So another alternative I was thinking was to use Free Gmail accounts, and configure my custom domains on a standard hosting and auto-redirect to the different free Gmail accounts. Then get a Google One subscription to have more storage for Email and Google Drive for the cloud stuff.

Any other ideas you may have? Cons? Pros? Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I dare to ask, even if it is a bit controversial.

After have been benefiting of the free tier for some years, the account was converted to a small business plan. I have my own domain, but we are only two users, that uses it for our private email and calendar.

After the latest increase of prices, I think it has become to much for the family email, but is there any alternatives?

The “competition” with their family plan, no longer offer the use of your own email domain, in order to do so, they also force you over to their businesses plan, which oddly enough, cost about the same as G business suite.

If this is not the place for such a discussion, what other reddits would be suitable.

/V

According to Google, the billing and support services for Google Workspace (including G Suite) subscriptions currently billed by Google Domains will be managed by Squarespace.

That is a big betrayal to Google customers and a huge no-no.

Does anyone know any service comparable good besides Microsoft's that an organization (or organizations) can use to replace Google Workspace?

I understand that each GW service can be individually migrated to such a service.

But it will be good to have something that can take care of most of them.

I have to get Google out of my life. I am really starting to see how evil the company is and how much of a stranglehold it has on the world.

Also, how do you move IMAP email to a new service?

Hi guys,

we have about 40 people on our team and we are currently using google suites for emails. It's fine but its getting pretty expensive as we add new members.

Any alternatives that you guys would recommend?
ideally we want unlimited email storage.

Thank you.

Long time lurker of this subreddit, I love the idea of ditching Google but some things they do quite well. In my case, I'm using their Google Workspace service (previously known as Gsuite), where for about £4/user/month, I have access to a fully managed email service with a custom domain support - this is what I'm looking for. What are the alternatives? What are the services you guys are using?

I have a server already but managing an email client, trying to keep it up to date, staying off blacklists, managing anti-virus, configuring mail delivery/transfer agents to fit my environment. Props to those who are fluent in those technologies, but I am not a back-end genie.

Thanks for any help, I'm open to suggestions.

Edit:

Thank you for all those who have commented. An important aspect for the transition, is the security and privacy of course, and that is why I'll try ProtonMail for a year or so. I really wanted to avoid Microsoft 365 even though it is the primary alternative to Google Workspace feature-wise. For ~$5/user/month for Fastmail and ProtonMail, I have email support with a custom domain. For my use case, the significant difference is the lower storage, ProtonMail offers 5GB of storage compared to Fastmail's 30GB. Where ProtonMail seems to excel at is the end-to-end encryption, a security aspect that isn't offered in Fastmail. I'm going to commit on a monthly basis and see how it goes, still open to alternatives.

Edit 2:

After some researching, ProtonMail's encryption is somewhat limited. Intra-domain (e.g. ProtonMail to Gmail) email sending requires a password for full end-to-end encryption, meaning you need the recipient to input a password to see the email body (official source). Even then, the meta-data, most significantly the email header, isn't encrypted.

For me, the main focus is the emailing clients (not emailing within a company). I won't be asking the client to enter a password to see an email, so the encryption aspect loses a lot of the appeal.

There's plenty of discussion online of what apps to use instead of Google Workspace, but in my experience, they always fail to take into account the whole of what Google Workspace is.

It is incorrect to say Google Workspace is an office suite, or a document collaboration provider, or a notebook. Google Workspace is an integrated combination of these aspects. As such, replacements like OnlyOffice, or online notebooks without document collaboration are not actually replacements/alternatives (imo).

The closest alternative I've found is Cryptpad, but A) I can't test what the document editor is like (to see it's any good) without paying and B) This is more nitpicky, but I can't work with OnlyOffice spreadsheets. The way my spreadsheets are made requires there to be finite rows/cols. Also, images don't work in OnlyOffice on Cryptpad.

There's also Standard Notes, but I can't tell if it supports document collaboration or not, and I don't think I can test with the free demo. There's also also Peergos drive with spreadsheet plugins. However, the main one they have is Luckysheets, which as of iirc March 2024 is no longer maintained. Luckysheets now says to use Univer for spreadsheets (on their read-only github), but I checked them out and they are super new and seem suspect to me. Their privacy policy has vague-ish terms for providing data to third parties, and their YouTube channel seems like its made entirely with ai.

tldr: What do you all recommend for Google Workspace alternatives?

I am not interested in paid email. I have free forever with Google Apps now called G Suite. Since Google made it paid, and more importantly since I do not trust Google and do not want them to have my data, I want to fully move over. I now use Protonmail for most emails and no longer give out my domain emails so I can use protonmail, but I do not want to pay for Protonmail domain email which is too expensive, it would be $25 per month for my usage.

I'm leaning toward Yandex. I don't care about all the people afraid of Russia. I actually trust Russia and the KGB far more than I trust Google or the NSA. Yandex is fully free and I already have a domain account there, but I haven't set up my MX records because I wasn't settled on it yet.

Is Yandex as good as Google Apps domain email? I couldn't find a compare and contrast.