Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying for Workspace this year

Thanks I will try the link and check.

Just a word of warning. I’ve been having some odd problems with missing emails (on an old Hover → Gmail setup I’ve had my wife using for ages). I asked for help on another thread here and I was just enlightened on the dangers of forwarding. Best to read the whole thread but the linked post onwards was where I learned what I needed to know.

Since moving to Google Workspace I’ve been on Youtube researching features that did not exist in my old legacy gsuite account. And there appear to be several that are new to me and which are available in standard Gmail accounts.

The video below is an example of some advanced features. I’ve found several interesting Google and Mac tips on this channel, but the host’s humor took some getting used to.

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Ok had migrated to the Business Workspace Starter Edition in the first week of May. Once I came to know about this today I reached out to Google Support and they confirmed me that they will switch me back to the Original legacy plan. I just told them it was for my own Personal and family usage. Thay asked for the Admin Email account nt on my domain and said I should be all said. I’m on the wait-list to be migrated.

Anyone wanting to go back don’tdelay get early on the queue.

I am in a similar position. How do I find out what my admin email account not on my domain email address is? Is it the same as the recovery email for the admin account?

it was setup so long ago that I do not remember

@merecivilian, it should be the email you signed up with for Google Legacy account. Do you know which email gets the annual invoice for this legacy account. Thatbshoukd be your admin account. If not I would.say initiate a support call with Google Support. I chatted with them.over the web and they are pretty good at responding now. They are well aware of the scenario now.

They can find your admin account and can help you gain access to it with proper identification.

In my case when I login into the Google Legacy Admin Portal, click on Users Tab, I see a list of all users I have created and the Admin User is early labelled as Admin User.

Good Luck :grinning::+1:

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:rage:

Having decided that “less than a month” until their deadline was long after they should have relented, I spent considerable effort moving four accounts of my own domain away from Google and decided to leave my wife’s account alone because she runs her business with it and I will just pay the price.

I am VERY tempted to migrate her away now just to spite Google.

Call me cynical, but I reckon they waited until a big chunk of users had ponied up or gone away before they let this cat out of the bag.

This is great news, sometimes my laziness pays off.

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Or maybe the intern they assigned to the task dropped the ball. I had been thinking of moving to a paid account before all this started, but I can understand how this could be frustrating to others.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

  • Robert Hanlon
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Which begs the question as to what the hell is Google doing: The most data driven company in the world was not able to predict this PR debacle.

I’d be surprised if they didn’t expect some of their free legacy G Suite users would be upset.

Chances are the Legacy users who upgraded to Google Workspace Business Starter Edition will get the Workspace Business Starter account for free. Since there is no downgrade path.

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@sangadi, how did you “identify as a non-business user” ?

By being truthful. They just ask you confirm that you use it for personal and family use or you should be using Business workspaces.

No, I mean what mechanism did you use to communicate your non-business usage? I couldn’t see any form to do this in the admin interface. Did you just email support and explain the situation?

@jec0047, just chatted with Google Support and told it’s for personal use.

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I signed up to keep mine in the free edition yesterday… it seems to be pretty straight forward, I clicked a box that it was for personal use and it was done. Have they done away with the waiting list already? I didn’t see this update, I actually went in thinking I was going to have to start paying, but…

I guess I need to go look at it again and see.

I had the same experience - quick, painless, no waiting. Rather un-Google-like IMHO, but I’m grateful they made a provision for personal use.

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Since I’d already changed the domain over to the “free for 6 months” version of Business before the latest ruling of “personal free forever” came out, I’m waiting in the queue of cases to move to free forever. They did require me to change to the Business Standard edition and then promise that I am going to use this for personal purposes. After that, my case is just “in the next queue”, but I have no indication of how long it’s going to take to process.

My biggest concern is that they process the request before July 1. As of July 1, the admin console indicates I’m on the hook for $96 a month because I have 16 addresses in my domain. Google offered no service level agreement as to when they’ll get through the pile of cases. I certainly appreciate that they’re going to switch me to the free-forever account, but I’d rather not pay $96 a month until they process the request.