It really seems as if it is no worse than what they are already doing with their paid subscribers, and now all Gmail users have access to most of the Google Workspace services, too (at the cost of viewing ads on the webmail site and the mobile apps). They are obviously not adding free domain accounts, and they haven’t for a while now - there was a period of time starting in 2011 when you could have up to 10 accounts for free, but that stopped being offered in 2012, so there have be no new free accounts on Google Apps for Domains / G Suite / Google Workspace for 10 years now. I imagine that at least some of the domains that started way back then have since stopped.
For a company with net income of $40 billion per year, this can’t be that much of a cost and resource drain, particularly compared with the number of free Gmail accounts.
Rather than forcing everyone to switch, they could merely convert these domains to the same rules as free Gmail accounts - ads in webmail and the apps; use of metadata from services for advertising purposes; no more 24/7 phone support; etc.
Again. I’m not going to say that Google can’t do this, but I am surprised that they feel that they need to.
It really feels like completely unnecessary bait-and-switch at this point. Plus I’m already paying them extra every year for more Google Drive space since my email exceeds 15 GB. My legacy account includes 50 users. I’m sure glad I didn’t pump up the number of users like Google was encouraging us to do. That’s why I feel it’s bait-and-switch.
Data point: Due to the concern about iCloud Mail silently dropping incoming emails, I asked Peter N. Lewis if he noticed icloud.com/me.com/mac.com addresses blocking his emails. He has not noticed them especially. This doesn’t prove the negative, and it’s possible iCloud Mail custom domains would work differently, but at least this does not confirm the reported issue.
Impacting me as well. I think I’m going to copy email history to gmail, migrate to my website host email and just feed everything through my Gmail inbox.
I have
– a family “legacy” domain at Google Suite (with 4 working email addresses),
– a non-domain email address at Fastmail – that is active for filtering purposes
– another domain and email at Hover – again single address for forwarding
I have looked at moving the Google Suite to Hover.
As I read the details, their handling of custom domains is very limited and constrained.
Fastmail has given the issue a lot more thought and provides greater support and flexibility. The pricing is $50 / year / user for 30GB full-service account vs Google $72/yr (in one year) with 15GB per user.
For me a good part of the issue is the increasing evidence of just how much information Google collects from every click. Yes, they will tell you that, but you have no control over their doing it. Fastmail is committed to privacy and almost as strict as ProtonMail (which also does not yet deal with domains as well and charges for all storage over 5GB, which makes little sense in 2022.)
I am simply cynical about the deal Google will offer legacy users. They sent out a very strongly declarative email about ending legacy accounts but not a word about this change of heart – I have heard it only here. That makes it hard to trust it will work out well.
I confess to real anxiety about moving domain email accounts for four family members (of varying computer skills). My take effort is a big deal with lots of steps and settings and potential bumps.
I can only recommend that before jumping to a new vendor you think carefully about your specific needs and then thoroughly review the vendor’s capabilities and support relative to your situation. Email support and presentation for a single address is variable enough – to my eye, domain email is at least an order of magnitude more complicated.
One advantage of Fastmail is that the company provides good support for Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Setting up an account on one of these can be as simple as downloading and installing a profile. Fastmail is also one of the few email hosts I found who supports Apple’s push notification system on iPhones and iPads.
Most email hosts offer a free trial. It might be worth registering a domain to test with and then seeing what would be involved in setting up the domain with each provider.
I hated the strongly declarative email also. I felt like I was being used in a long-term bait-and-switch scheme.
About the storage though, isn’t Google’s Workplace 30 GB per user?
I still have mixed feelings about what I want to do. I’m stuck with Gmail for my company legacy account, but managed to get it down to 3 users.
For my personal domain, also 3 users, I’m just not sure yet. I don’t want to transfer them to Fastmail just for a test. And other accounts I might have don’t have enough of a folder/label structure to make testing worthwhile.
Also, of note, as much as I now loathe Google, their first year in Workplace would be $4/user I believe. So that’s less expensive than Fastmail for the first year, isn’t it?
In the meantime, since I subscribe to Office 365 anyway, I’ve been moving Docs and Sheets to OneDrive Word and Excel files. Works fine.
Then there is Google Photos and also the fact of my extra Google Drive subscription I have for my personal domain.
It’s hard to believe this was worth the trouble for Google to make us long-term loyal users so upset.
– my apologies
– you are correct legacy Gmail suite is 15GB of mail storage, paid Google Workspace is 30GB
As regards cost
– $4 / user / mo for year 1, the $6 /user /mo after that is correct
– Fastmail is $50 per year per user – difference in year 1 is insignificant; and even modest after that. That is why I mentioned the other factors.
I agree that there are multiple good services for on-line files and that is not a critical factor in this issue.
For photos and phone backups I live in the Apple ecosystem. Not saying it is the only solution, just that it doesn’t figure in this issue for me.
Yes the Fastmail iOS app works very well.
And their support notes offer clear integration with several macOS apps – both Mail and others.
Good points to add to the discussion.
I have another domain that I can and may well use as test. But none of us gets much email to that domain so it is a modest test of interface and limited test of features.
As you note, I could keep the legacy Gmail domain set up for a while at modest costs and setup another domain at Fastmail and use that for a test. But in order to get a feel for actual volume load, I would then have to forward all my emails to Fastmail. That adds a bit of baton-passing to the traffic in and out of my primary email account and represents a different risk.
I actually don’t think there is any easy way to eliminate or even truly minimize all the risks and effort inherent in this substantial move. I’ve certainly seen businesses that paid real dollars to consultants and IT folks have unexpected stumbles. If we set out to do it, I’m sure we’ll get to the other side – just don’t know what the journey will be like ;-)))
That’s true. And Google Workplace doesn’t have a yearly discounted rate.
I’ve been moving my Google Docs and Sheets to my Office 365 OneDrive Excel and Word documents just to get away from Google.
I’ll see what they do with their move though. I have so much in Google Photos. Though I also have them in my 2 TB iCloud account. Sharing is a bit easier with Google Photos, but I tested and shared albums with the Photos app also works ok.
It doesn’t support even basic image annotation (e.g. arrows and text) like iOS Mail and Outlook does. Not sure about the filing features. Outlook makes it easy to file mails in desired folders on the iPhone. Regular Mail does not.
It’s been mentioned here when discussing the custom domain feature with iCloud+ that it’s not useful for multiple different users because all the mail gets mixed up into one account. That’s right, isn’t it?
If two people have their own iCloud+ accounts (e.g. my sister and me) can we both use the same private domain we currently use for our family email, each in our own separate account? Or are custom domains in iCloud+ basically only useful if there is just one user with that domain?
After reading that page I’m not clear what a Family Sharing Group is, but it does say:
“When you subscribe to iCloud+, you can personalize your iCloud Mail address with a custom domain name and invite members of your family to use the same domain with their iCloud Mail accounts.”
So it does sound like it’s possible. Not sure why it needs to be a member of the family if they each have their own iCloud accounts though.
Anyway, I have no real idea of how good iCloud email might be. I only use my icloud.com account to receive certain server alerts since it’s push email. I don’t know what kind of labeling or filing systems it might have. I guess no better than those built into Mail app itself. And I have no idea how hard it would be to port over from Gmail.
I’ll read up more about that. I have a lot of space leftover in my 2 TB iCloud account and my sister doesn’t use much space at all. So I guess that’s one possibility. I have no idea how good their mail system is though.
Since almost everyone who has been using G Suite Legacy Free for 10+ years has done so for Google’s email service first and foremost, this isn’t a complete replacement for that. However, once people have found a new home for their email with their own domain, this may be a preferable alternative to moving one’s Google Drive contents to consumer Gmail accounts.
This makes me think even more strongly that now is not a good time to move off G Suite Legacy Free. Not only have they started making changes due to the reaction of their original notification, they’re clearly in the process of making changes to their offerings overall.
Even if getting off Google still ends up being the right move, in time other providers may have attractive offerings or even just better support for “refugees;” I don’t mean giant providers like iCloud but smaller ones more like Fastmail, who it sounds like is already prepared for such migrations.