Solved: Legacy (free) into Paid Workspace

Rpiedade · 01-23-2022 10:42 AM

Hi,

I am a long time free Legacy user. It's been used primarily as a family account so that members can have a custom email address.

Recently I was notified that this product is going away and I will have to migrate to one of the Workspaces.

So I have 2 comments.

1 - The price is fair for a bussiness account, but for a family account it isn't affordable. I will be keeping my user, but the majority (10) accounts will need to be deleted. This causes an issue with them no longer having access to their photos for example. If instead I had decided to not upgrade, then these same users would still have access to photos. But having to upgrade and delete them, actually puts them at a disadvantage. I would like to suggest another option instead of delete. Maybe a flag to disable, but still allow them access to photos (and their android phones, etc.).

2 - Office360 offers a similar product, but with a discounted price tier for families. It's $99.99/yr for 6 users. So I want to suggest that Google look into a similar offering for non bussiness accounts.

abitrandom

Thanks for noticing and posting this! I can confirm it just let me stick with the personal-use plan. Link https://admin.google.com/?action_id=SE_SELF_TRANSITION

View solution in original post

animally

I am in the same situation where I've been a long time Legacy user using a family domain name. The scenario detailed by @Rpiedade is almost verbatim to my scenario. I guess the question I have is: if non-profit organizations can get free accounts (or discounted, I hostly haven't looked at the details) why can't those of us who are not using the Workspace for business have the same option? Even if it were $100 per year for 20 accounts, I would gladly pick that up for my family. But $1224 a year for 17 active accounts is very steep for something that we could literally get for free if each email was a standard gmail.com account.

axelfoly

I am in the same situation. The business model is too expensive. It would be good to have a consumer or family account. I will have to go with a different company or through my domain host. It’s unfortunate.

Carl_bdc

I mirror the above two, I am trying to get more details on the options. if you look at the FAQ

https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#zippy=%2Ccan-i-keep-my-g-suite-legacy-free-edition-s...

and drill down to the question about personal accounts, it seems to hint that there is something that can be done. The instructions seem to stop before getting to the part of what to change....

Upgrading to a Google Workspace subscription is a seamless transition for all customers currently on the G Suite legacy free edition. However, we understand some customers may not use their G Suite legacy free edition for business and may be interested in other options. If you have 10 or fewer users in your group and do not use your G Suite legacy free edition for business, please sign in to your administrator account to provide more information.

DaryleTilroe

Probably the same situation here as most. I posted this below in the help topic which sort of turned into a conversation thread:

Wow I found out about this completely by accident! I have a legacy "family" account what we have our whole lives tied into plus a community league on a different account. While I am not averse to paying (I already fork over over $100 annually for storage plus a couple personal youtube premiums that we *cannot* run as a family on a workspace account as people well know) the pricing model has not made sense for families or non-profits. I think they are missing a pricing scheme that pools storage, etc. and is maybe a flat rate up to 10-20 users. That or some sort of base price and a very small amount per year per account. Eg. $50 + $10/yr/account. Of course, as someone else suggested, I'd just gift us early adopters/evangelists. We are often the power users, developers, supporters, advertisers for their service; we certainly were in the early days. My personal/family one was when they were offering for free up to 200 users!

brit

There's more info and a link to a related form in the FAQs on that page:

What if I use G Suite legacy free edition for personal use and don't want to upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription?

Upgrading to a Google Workspace subscription is a seamless transition for all customers currently on the G Suite legacy free edition. However, we understand some customers may not use their G Suite legacy free edition for business and may be interested in other options. If you have 10 or fewer users in your group and do not use your G Suite legacy free edition for business, please complete the form below by April 1, 2022 if you're interested in learning about different options for your account in the coming months.

G Suite legacy free edition feedback form

Note that even if you decide you don't want to upgrade to Google Workspace, you'll still retain access to additional Google services and paid content purchased though non-Google Workspace services made with your legacy edition account (such as movies purchased on Google Play). Learn more above.

animally

I filled out the feedback form, which appears to be a way to check who is in this situation. Not much to it other than an email and a few questions. Hopefully, those who fill this out will get details on possible options.

Carl_bdc

got it, i did not see that form. Thank you for pointing it out.

teshera

Have filled this form out multiple times since getting the email about this but have not heard anything back. Might be helpful if everyone who needs a free account for limited personal use only would fill it out. I don't want to lose my custom email address after having been hosted through Google Docs (as it was called initially) for 16 years.

ScubaSteve

Same boat...but a smaller one. More like a kayak.

I have used G Suite since the early days simply to have a place to host my domain for email purposes only. I am the only user. There is no real org. I don't host a website and generally don't use Docs, meetings, or other Workspace functions. I do use Drive periodically, but not extensively. I have an Android phone and am connected to Google services on it using my domain email, so I suppose that does integrate my account into the entire Google ecosystem, but really, that's just so I can continue to use gmail branded with my personal domain. Otherwise, I'd be fine with the standard Google user experience.

So yeah, $6 a month is a bit ridiculous.

I am not a small business, starter or otherwise. I am a person! 🙂

Richard456

Echoing the others in this thread. 4 users, family use only, legacy.

All we use is the personal domain and email. If there isn't more reasonable pricing for family, we will move. Seems like Microsoft would be the best balance between cost and here-tomorrow reliability. Any other thoughts?

ggcs-tk

I use gsuite Legacy as a demo environment, and for personal email as well, the amount of people I've convinced to move to gsuite over the past 13 years (since 2009) by showing them the tools gsuite uses is insane, i can see a lot more office 365 accounts being set up by those that ask me about hosted email if I can't show them why gsuite isn't gmail and the benifits.

AdrianHudson

Same position here 😞

We have a Legacy account which we have used for our family members. We all use our custom email addresses for our primary email addresses with banks etc, etc, etc. We have all our photos associated with our accounts and have all purchased apps from Google Play. All our phones, tablets etc are associated with these accounts and we have used login with Google on numerous web sites.

We understand we can just sign up for and pay for the lowest tier of Workspace but while its wouldn't break the bank completely (and I do understand there is a 50% discount for the first year at least here in the UK) it still amounts to ~£55 (~$60) per family member which is rather a lot when all added together.

Surely Google, with all its might, can do something for us family members who signed up in the first place simply to get a personalised email address and who barely use any of the other facilities of workspace. It will be Horrible (with a capital H) if we all have to have new Google accounts and email addresses. I have changed email address once before (when I moved onto the free Workspace!) and didn't have 1/10th of the accounts and services as I do now and it was Horrible then!

Looking hopefully towards the nice Googly people 🙂 🙂

brit

It seems the nice "Googly" people may be reconsidering those in our situation:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-relents-legacy-g-suite-users-will-be-able-to-migrate-...

Meanwhile, remember to fill in the form linked below. It seems to be a way to let folks at Google know who is in this situation and may help them know who to keep informed of a solution once they have one.

G Suite legacy free edition feedback form

ScubaSteve

Good info, thanks, but still seems like a weak response. Very weak.

The article seems to imply Google is now considering ways that former G Suite users can transfer their domain account(s) to standard gmail-based account(s), preserving their data and purchases. That's nice, since it would eliminate the need to export everything to local files, resulting in the loss of online access to the data, but it also means you lose your custom domain. i.e., your email address is gone, replaced with a new g-mail address you must choose.

How many places have you registered with your domain email account after 10-15 years? Hundreds at least. For me, easily thousands over the last 15 years. Now try to remember all those locations and update those sites.

Not an option for me.

animally

I have seen several of these articles referring to us early adopters as geeks, and I do say that many of us geeks are also influencers in the tech space. Up until now, I've been very open and honest with folks about googles offerings, but this has me rethinking what I say and use in the future. I can guarantee you that the "cost" associated with allowing us legacies to continue is a drop in the bucket with the consequences associated with our negative treatment. Especially when you have to invest in tools to migrate existing users vs. just adding a new account type to the existing infrastructure. Not sure where this business decision is coming from, but they obviously are not seeing the bigger picture.

kim_nilsson

Yes, us with low user counts, not actually using that much storage would be easy to keep around, while at the same time clamping down on the really large legacy accounts. Especially those that had added multiple secondary domains before that was locked down, as a good guess is that those are "mail hosting" corporations, making others pay to use Legacy.

It would be so easy for Google to keep the Legacy licence around, and then do real headcounts, to find those who are truly abusing the service.

I have only four accounts, my three children and me, but it is our identities!

Why should I suddenly have to start paying such high fees for something that is given for free with a Gmail address. I have already much less features than a paid Workspace account.

TomPesina

Yeah, in fact - what you will do in case you don't want to pay for your family account the same money as a small business: you can create a couple of new free (for now!) Google accounts and do your best to migrate your data there. But it is simply not feasible.
From Google standpoint - in this case there are no savings, they are still maintaining the same amount of data for free. But there is a huge difference for Google Legacy users - email is the smallest problem BTW. But reinstalling phones, loosing bought content on Android (isn't this indictable?), issues with bank access, problems with logon credentials on all services where we used "login using Google" etc...
I really do not understand, why is Google so pathetic. It would be a great business opportunity to come with a real Family plan. I do think that it is simply laziness or, better, incompetence of the marketing team. I have already seen articles like "Google is taking it's users as hostages..."
I still (optimistically) hope, that Google can come with a solution for family accounts.

kim_nilsson

True, even if it will become possible to migrate all content to a free Gmail account, the loss of identity is still irreversible.

Stubloke

Like most of you here, I am being forced off G Suite legacy or whatever it is called - signed up when it started a long time ago. I use it to point my MX records to host family domain name email (5 users) and personal photo storage - 2 users have 100GB for 2*£1.59 a month. I don't want to change but "Business Starter" is too expensive. MS do almost what I want for £79.99 a year .... Why cant Google match this ? I would sign up for that.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products?tab=1&WT.mc_id=...

Rpiedade

Have you filled out the Google Survey Form? It's a quick survey of how you're using it.

I think Google is looking for a solution for Family accounts.

Stubloke

I did fill in the form. It didn't ask much. I didn't get an acknowledgement either.

I pressed the button to go to Business Starter .... I hope that has not stuffed my chances of getting a family deal if one comes about.

Stubloke

This idea is in featured ideas .... it might be a good idea to up-vote it to get it noticed.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/Family-Plan-pricing-for-Workspace/idi-p/385830

TomPesina

Hi Stubloke,

it seems I don't have access to the idea ticketing system. I will check later how to get it.

Thanks a lot for the link!

animally

I too get access denied, so please share if you come across what is needed.

I really appreciate any help you can provide!

Stubloke

There was a pop-up somewhere to click saying "ask to join" when you click the "Feature Idea" tab on this page.

animally

Okay, on the right-hand side where it says Ask a question, I clicked on Suggest an Idea and there's a Send a Request to Join button.

ArkoXS

Authentication Failed.

Authentication Ticket Mismatched, failed authentication.

Stubloke

They don't make it easy to make your views known do they?

Click on Feature Ideas on this page and ask to join.

Ironghat

I requested access from this page - let's see when they grant it.

KAM

This article might be of interest to some on this thread: https://www.androidpolice.com/googe-workspace-essential-free/ -KAM

Stubloke

My primary reason for signing up for "Google Apps for your domain" was custom domain email. This doesn't do that. I would pay but the market rate is $99 for 6seats and shared 1TB storage. Match that and I would stay.

kim_nilsson

Yeah, no possibility of paying more for Workspace than for O365. I too would never accept that.

ScubaSteve

A nice write up of options: https://adrien.poupa.fr/migrating-away-from-g-suite-legacy-free-edition-2022-email-providers-overvie...

Ironghat

Thanks for this! I had not heard of Zillum until I read this article. The Zillum solution seems to be the exact template that Google needs to follow.

Ironghat

O365 is actually 1TB per user - so you get 6TB storage in all.

overscannz

Same as the above.
In the UK, it became normal for some time to give out free domains with broadband packages, with forwarding to their email service. So I already had a "personal domain", and signed up for Gmail with a custom domain to avoid dealing with ISP email. My accounts are me, the wife, two kids. Its our entire digital identity - sign on to websites, mobiles, Chrome browser, etc. I know several other senior architect level people in the same boat. The dataset of 'people that obtained custom domains for personal Gmail use back in 2006-2012' probably overlaps with "people now in senior technical positions in the IT Industry" quite well.

I was happy with Gmail. I use Office 365 at work, it's okay. I don't object to paying for something. I recently started using Google Drive on my free account for a specific use case and pay for additional storage on that.

This move was the final straw that broke my trust in Google. First problem was when my 9 year old daughter was duped into a $160 NZ app subscription scam, and Google simply didn't give a shit, and didn't even offer a mechanism to be able discuss it with anyone let alone get a refund. The app had thousands of reviews saying it was a scam for months before my daughter was scammed, but the app wasn't blocked from the store.

Apple, Microsoft, for all their faults, are better than this.

Now, it is abundantly clear that Google didn't understand the use cases for this product and just thought we were all businesses freeloading on them. All I wanted was consumer Gmail, but with my own domain.

Dealing directly with Google, even as a senior technical figure in an enterprise company, is impossible- Its like all the actual people were sacked and replaced with AI algorithms.

The 'feedback form' for this issue is peak Google - all you can enter are pre-determined responses Google decided on. Feedback involves taking my comments, not giving me the option of 4 predetermined answers. At least give me a text field and pretend like someone is going to read it.

So now, even if Google come up with a 'family solution', I'm not sure I will take it. I am now considering how best to completely extricate myself from the Google ecosystem at home. It won't be easy, but I won't be held hostage. In my professional capacity I will try to ensure no enterprise I work for ever uses a single product by Google.

Stubloke

The dataset of 'people that obtained custom domains for personal Gmail use back in 2006-2012' probably overlaps with "people now in senior technical positions in the IT Industry" quite well

There is probably a strong correlation. In my case electronics engineering rather than IT.

mariom

Agreed, same boat. And yet here I am with a team of dozens of Devs who need to be skilled up into either AWS or GCP. I know what my current thinking is, regardless of how slick Qwiklabs is. I've only seen the questionnaire link today and it no longer works; the waitlist is still not there; I am thinking that unpicking the domain name is my first priority, to do right now. As others have said, I'd pay the market rate that Microsoft is setting.

ArkoXS

Same as above.

Also a family user, using Google Apps before it became G Suite and then Legacy. I remember receiving a mail that because we were early adopters we could keep the environment to a max of 100 users. But I understand that times change and we became a pain.

My family (5) only uses Gmail with our own domain, the calendar, keep, and photo's. I've purchased extra storage for mail and photo's.

We rely heavily on the catch all mailbox and mailbox rules to distribute mail. Because we use specified mail address <websitename@owndomain.tld> to subscribe to websites and mailing lists to separate and track which website has leaked my mail address, it would be a disaster to migrate this.

A Workspace Family edition would be welcome and I willing to pay. If not then (5 users) $ 360/y is a bit to steep for me.

As a professional I've never used Gmail, every company I've worked for uses Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft365. The non-profit organization I'm volunteering does use Google Workspace because of their free offering.