I had a Google Workspace that was originally on Google Workspace Essentials Starter. I want to switch it to Google Workspace Business Starter. All of the Google support docs walk you through the steps, but there's no way for me to switch from essentials to business.

I tried upgrading my Essential Starter to Essentials Enterprise. When I did that, I could see the option to select Business Starter. However, there was a notice that I could not switch because I was on an active plan.

If I downgrade back to Essentials Starter, I will now be in a spot where I can't see Business Starter. I'm stuck in Google purgatory.

How do I get my essentials starter account switched to a business starter? Do I need to start the whole process over?

Thanks

Hello,

I would like to change my free Google Workspace "Essentials Starter" account to a paid Google Workspace "Business Starter" account.

We have 40 team members, several calendars and Drive files. I don't want to lose any of the data.

Simple upgrading within the admin console doesn't really seem to be an option, as the only upgrades I can do are "Enterprise Essentials" or "Enterprise Essentials Plus".

What is the process, and is there any documentation?

Thanks.

If you were like me, you were forced into free-trial of the Business Plus plan upon sign up for Google Workspace with a new domain. To downgrade your plan to the starter plan, or any other lower-level plan, you have to start the free trial for this plan and then downgrade it in the admin console.

However, I found that the previous guides and reddit posts do not work anymore, as Google added a step in between to make it even harder to downgrade your google workspace plan. Thus, this updated post.

Now, to downgrade your plan, you have to:Go to the Admin Console --> Billing --> Subscriptions --> Click on the blue text for the Google Workspace Business Plus plan under the Subscriptions tab under Billing (or the plan you want to downgrade) --> Click the More with the three dots --> Click Downgrade

Click the Downgrade button on the plan you want to downgrade to. The change from before: Clicking the "Get More Services" tab under Billing does not show the lower-level plans anymore, only higher-level plans.

Edit: i truly apologize for the blurriness of the images (the image I snipped was too low in resolution), but if you click on the images in the post they load much clearer.

We are currently a team of 8 using GSuite basic and are happy with its functionality. The only "non-basic" part is that we are using Shared Drive from out sister organization that is on the higher plan. Should I switch to Workspace Business Starter that costs the same?

I'm assuming, Google will add newer functionality to workspace before GSuite (if that happens at all.) My only concern is that I don't lose access to the Shared Drive if I upgrade.

My small business recently went over to Microsoft from Google Workspace. We all still have our Google Workspace accounts but no longer use it for anything other than as a Google Profile. When I tried to downgrade the subscription, the only options were to switch to another paid subscription. Do I need to strip everyone's email addresses of the company domain name and switch them over to just gmail.com? If that's even possible or necessary?

Does anyone know if there's a way to basically convert a bunch of Google Workspace Business Starter users to free google accounts? So that they still have access to their files/Google profile data?

I'll be honest, I am a bit lost and haven't been following things closely. I received the pooled storage email and logged into both admin centres for the first time in a long time to check things out.

I have two domains:

1. I am using for my personal emails (with several domain aliases setup as well). This one has 1,100 licences. It is on the Legacy plan. I have purchased additional storage for this (I have many photos stored on here)

2. The other is an old sole-business contact, that is trickling over. It is apparently on the Free Business Starter (I don't remember changing this) and has 300 licenses.

And many questions:

• It appears as though the Business Starter is the better plan to be on. Is there any way to switch to this?

• How will the 'pooled storage' changes impact me? Should I create additional user accounts now, to be best prepared for the change?

• Will I be able to stop paying for storage on my main account soon???

Anything else to be aware of to make full use of this? I use it daily, but haven't really logged into the admin centre very often in the last 10 years.