I got my email from Google last night telling me that they are cutting me off, so its official. Better sort out a migration plan
If I understand the difference between a Fastmail account and paid Google Workspace account price wise would be $5 verses $6 right.
possible good news, Google seems to be approaching Gsuite legacy users with 10 licences or less to see how they are using their accounts. See the following 9to5 Google article article. I have just deleted a bunch of email addresses to bring my count down to 10. I have setup alias for my elderly parents so that their emails come to my email inbox (I was previously forwarding these anyway).
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ArsTechnica article:
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Good news but it still means I will have to migrate away if I want to continue using my existing custom domain email addresses.
The key information in that article seems to be this paragraph:
The support page detailing the shutdown has quietly been updated (for some reason, Google is not making a big deal of the changes yet). First, if (and only if) you’re signed in with a free G Suite account, you’ll see a link to this survey, which is aimed at free G Suite admins with 10 users or fewer using the service for “non-business” purposes. Google says users filling out the survey will receive “updates on more options for your non-business legacy account in the coming months.” It’s a sign that Google had no idea how many people this change would affect, and now, the company wants to hear from you.
Those of us who have accounts should probably all take that survey. One can hope that will influence the coming options they are promising.
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Thanks. Have logged in and filled out the survey.
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I have seen talk of signing up for a free Google Cloud Identity account which will mean you will still have access to Google services execpt email and calendar (so you get to keep Gdrive with the current login).
Does anyone know much about this? The process I saw suggested upgrading to Google Workspace, signing up for the free Cloud Identity and then cancelling Google Workspace.
I have to say, signing up for a different free Google service to deal with Google cancelling a different free Google service seems very much like crossing one’s fingers while just kicking the can down the road.
Unless you have stuff inextricably tied to the ID (purchases from Google Play, etc.) I would strongly advise against that route.
And even if you do have stuff tied to that ID, I’d seriously consider doing the “two ID” thing in Google Play and using a new account that you control completely for everything in the future.
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I’m waiting to see what sort of response/follow-up we get from the survey mentioned above. I’m hoping we get an option to transition the account without the middle step. Unfortunately, we have no idea how long we will have to wait or what options we will actually get.
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I’ve set up a few domains with this now. It’s a pretty good implementation! I like it better than ImprovMX’ free product, especially since I don’t have to juggle accounts to manage multiple domains.
I also took the opportunity to move some domains from Namecheap to Cloudflare to save the ~$4/year markup. 
I’m incurring a bit of lock-in, but I generally trust CF.
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NICE 
What are you using for sending emails?
For most of these, I or the recipient just reply from another address. Pretty simple. A couple are set up to send through SMTP authentication.
Ok. My brain hurts. And my soul a little too.
I’ve been using the free Google Suite for my personal email on my domain (registered via Bluest), as well as my wife and two kids. Ours are all our_firsr_name@islam-zwart.net with a few extra accounts that I made for whatever reason (can’t remember anymore).
We don’t use the services well enough to justify paying $24 a month - just the emails, but need to find another email host to transfer our emails to. I’ll read through all these tomorrow - I’m a bit too tired to think it through - but I guess I’m shopping for a new email host for my personal/family domain. I’m open to recommendations!
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Glad I got anxious and read through this. I just completed the survey as I only use G Suites to administer our family domain (we all have firstname at last name.net emails) Hopefully it will provide us with options.
Re-awakening this thread as I stare down the barrel of a big chunk of work.
This is a big question for me. Gmail has been free “forever” but then so was GAFYD/Workspace. Until now.
I read something on Reddit that implied “April” was the time for the conclusion of this. I pinged @askworkspace on Twitter asking about a direct Workspace->Gmail migration. I got an unequivocal response: No.
They pointed me to some articles that told me nothing I didn’t already know. Meanwhile I’ve received another email from them saying “now is the time to act.” I don’t think anything is going to change. Oh, they did announce there’s a new free Workspace option but it does not include email. That seems very targeted to me — all you email freeloaders go over there where we can serve ads at you.
So…
I’ve almost worked out what I am going to do. I have my main email, one additional, and my two sons’ email on my domain. All but my main one can just move to “standard” Hover mailboxes (where the domain is registered anyway). The size is enough (10 GB) and the price is very reasonable ($20 per year).
It’s my main account I’m wavering about:
- Just grab another Hover mailbox. Simple. Cheap. (And 10 GB is enough for me most of the time.)
- Use the old Gmail account I still have (thank you 1Password for remembering its password after all these years!) and front it with a Hover mailbox so I can still send/receive as the original address.
- Use another service entirely, such as Fastmail.
Option 1 is simple and cheap, but will I miss anything? I mostly don’t bother with the web interface these days, but in large part that’s because I use Mimestream on my Mac… which is Gmail only!
Option 2 is simple. I already use this approach for my wife (another GAFYD domain sits behind Hover — I’ll need to move that, too. Sigh.) I can then keep using Mimestream.
Option 3 is the whole “ditch Google” but also means ditch Mimestream. I would probably go back to Spark (which I still use on iOS/iPadOS.
I’m thinking the biggest “features” of Google for me are rules and spam filtering. I hear Fastmail is similarly capable on the spam but have not looked into rules. Hover’s email likely is very basic on both fronts.
Arrrgh! The best part? However I go about it, I have to move all four accounts at once.
I had two legacy GSuite accounts. My solution was to move both domains to a single ($6/month) Google Workspace account (1 primary domain & 1 secondary domain). I’ve been a Gmail and a Legacy GSuite user since the beginning of both so I didn’t want to change providers but I did look briefly at Fastmail.
Fastmail offered a $3/month account (2GB storage) and a $5/month account (30GB) so paying $1/month more for Google Workspace wasn’t a factor.
FWIW, Fastmail uses Apache SpamAssassin, an open source program that I used on our company servers for years before switching to a Barracuda Spam Firewall. IMO Google’s spam filtering is better than both.
Gmail has over 1 billion monthly active users (out of the 3.8 billion email users in the world). To me the question is how likely is Google to shut down.
I know changing accounts/providers is a colossal PITA. Good luck finding your solution.
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Thanks. Useful insight. I had no idea Gmail was so big!
I wasn’t aware of the secondary domain feature. I have a family domain (e.g. familylastname.com) and a domain for my blog (e.g. mypersonalblog.com). So, if I’m understanding this correctly, could I use 1 Workspace account to host both of those email domains? Are there any catches to this? I presume they both draw from the users same storage pool?
Yes, and yes. There are two ways to host multiple domains. Let’s say you wanted your two domains in Google Workspace. If you wanted to assign user John only the address John@domain1 and user Mary only the address mary@domain2 you would register domain1 as your primary domain and domain2 as a secondary domain.
But if you later wanted to also give Mary the address mary@domain1 you would have to purchase an additional license. The same is true if you later gave John the address John@domain2. This means you would need to pay for 4 accounts.
However if you add domain2 as an alias domain John and Mary could receive email @domain1 and @domain2 and you would only be charged for two accounts. This is the method I used.
I have one domain and one alias domain and I pay $6/month for one account. Mail addressed to wayne@domain1 and wayne@domain2 arrive in the same inbox. And I can have up to 30 alias addresses.
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