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Google says the free ride is over for early adopters of the company’s custom domain g suite service. Google has long offered the ability to use Google apps on a custom domain, allowing you to have a Google email address that ends with your domain instead of “gmail.com”. For the first six years of the service’s life, the basic level allowed you to create a custom domain account for free. now, you have to pay for the privilege of using a custom domain with a google account. Google disabled the ability to create these accounts for free in 2012, but it wouldn’t remove accounts from existing users, would it?
I would.
as 9to5google first reported, google will close free g suite accounts if the account holder doesn’t switch to a paid account. Google is sending emails to “g suite legacy free edition” account users, telling them they have until July 1 to start paying. a support page details how this process will work. Starting May 1, Google will attempt to automatically “upgrade” users to a paid account if it has billing information available. if there is no such information by July, the accounts will be “suspended”. after 60 days, those accounts will lose access to “core” google services like gmail and calendar.
google custom domain started in 2006 as “google apps for your domain”. the service has undergone several name changes since then: “google apps for work”, then “g suite” and now “google workspace”, but the setup has always been the same: you get gmail and other apps from google, but they are custom branded for your company, which makes them look more professional than a gmail.com email address. today, the service starts at $6 per user, per month, with higher tiers available for larger storage needs. from 2006 to 2012, the basic level was free.
google removes the product
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google notes that customers can use google takeout to export some data, but if you don’t want to pay, rebuilding an account into a consumer google account is a lot of work. these were mostly fully functional google accounts, and there’s no way to export things like content purchases for books, movies, music, and apps. you will probably also lose your google voice number. If you used your G Suite account in this way, you don’t have many options other than to start paying. It would have been nice to see the company go the extra mile and offer users an easy way to transfer their data to a free consumer account with a new email address. but google is not doing that.
If you are unsure of the status of your Google Business Account, you can try going to the “Billing” page at admin.google.com. If you see a message about being on a “Legacy G Suite” account, you’ll soon receive an email detailing how you’ll be affected by the change. If you got your Google Apps account through some sort of integrated service, like a domain hosting site, you’ll probably want to check that out.