Before Google kills free G Suite accounts, why not offer a family email plan?

Some longtime Google users have a tough transition ahead of them. In the early days of Google’s business-focused service, first called “Google Apps for Your Domain”, then “G Suite”, and now “Google Workspace”, Google offered Google “business accounts”for free, branded with the. From 2006 to 2012, users could create a free Google Apps/G Suite account with a custom domain, so their email ended with their domain instead of “@gmail.com”.

In January, Google announced a significant policy change. and told those users that they needed to start paying the standard business rate for their Google accounts or they would face account termination. This is not fair to users who created a free account years ago without being warned that Google might end up charging you for it. These people are deep, all data, emails and purchases are stored in these accounts and it’s like extorting data to suddenly tell them to pay or lose everything.

Google later relented somewhat and offered a vague way out, promising that someday these “legacy G Suite”users would be able to transfer their data and purchases to a free Gmail consumer account – with the caveat that Google would no longer host their email. in the custom domain. Many of the important specific details of this transition plan have yet to be made public, but what is specific is the deadline for payment and account closure, leaving users to flutter in the wind as their anxiety grows.

The key issue is that Google has effectively stopped offering custom domain email to consumers, and now there is no obvious upgrade path for Legacy G Suite users. In the past, there was nothing wrong with using Google Apps/G Suite for non-commercial purposes, and Google even encouraged it. Just take a look at the original Google Apps blog post for your domain, which states that Google launched the service after “hearing feedback from thousands of small businesses, K-12 schools, nonprofits, universities, and even families with their own websites.””. Google has encouraged families to use it, and now it’s telling those families that they are a business.

My question is why does it have to be so hard? Here’s an idea: offer Google Workspace (or Google One) a “family plan”that supports a personal domain at a reasonable consumer price. It’s not a crazy idea because all of Google’s competitors already offer it. In my conversations with various people affected by the policy change, free G Suite users don’t necessarily resent paying for their own email domain. However, they are often non-enterprises and don’t want to pay enterprise rates for G Suite.

Let’s compare what Google offers competitors. Google Workspace’s closest competitor is Office 365, and in addition to business offerings, Microsoft offers a “Microsoft 365 Family”plan. That’s $100 a year for a family of six. It has 1 TB of cloud storage per user, a 50 GB mailbox, access to all Microsoft Office applications, and most importantly, email accounts in its own domain. Even with the cheapest Business Starter planGoogle Workspace costs $6 per month per user. If we match Microsoft’s offer with six users for one year, that’s $432 per year, and that’s with only 30GB of cloud storage per user. With 2TB of cloud storage per user, the next tier costs $12 per user per month, or $864 per year.

A similar product from Apple is the iCloud+ subscription, which also offers email support for your own domain, starting at $1 per user per month. That’s six times less than what Google charges, and Apple offers 20 GB more per user for a total of 50 GB. For six people, that would be $72/year, while Google would charge $432/year for the lower storage tier.