I mentioned below comment in another thread[0] some time back and I think it's relevant here too<p>Three months ago I picked up new hobby: Self Hosting. It has been an amazing ride. I learned a lot and I also get peace of mind knowing I am in control of my data. I understand that there is no self-hosted alternative for certain SaaS services but I think that will change as more and more people choose to be in control of their data.<p>A good place to start [1]<p>[0]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30021404" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30021404</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted</a>
For the many families who have used GSuites for the past years, I would love to see a $3 / month / user, maximum of 5-10 users.<p>I am stuck in the same boat as many others who created it for the family 10+ years ago and now am going through how to move each service (GMail, Drive, Keep, Photos, YouTube etc etc) to a plain Gmail account. I have most of it worked out, but it is going to take a lot of time getting 5 people migrated.<p>Sigh.
For anyone else frustrated by the vague mercurial umbrella language surrounding "GSuite/Workspaces/GApps"[1] and who this announcement applies to:<p>> Users of Gmail who retain the "@gmail.com" domain suffix and have free Google accounts that give them Calendar, Drive, Docs and so on will not be affected — at least for now. [2]<p>> This change applies only to those people, often in families or small businesses, who have been using a Google service that gave them free custom domain names and associated email addresses. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Workspace" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Workspace</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/news/g-suite-free-shutdown" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomsguide.com/news/g-suite-free-shutdown</a>
Many essentially ordinary Google account holders were incentivised to convert their accounts into domain (now G Suite) accounts for e-mail purposes. However, this has always had adverse consequences because many Google services don't support domain accounts and there is no way to undo the conversion (see <a href="https://support.google.com/a/thread/129862070/wind-up-organization-but-keep-accounts-how?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/a/thread/129862070/wind-up-organi...</a> ). This just burdens those users further.<p>The failure of Google to offer a way out of this trap means it must be politically and/or technically difficult. I used to work at Google a few years ago and I can substantiate that everything is politically difficult and I've seen enough of the way domain accounts were implemented to believe it could be technically difficult too.
So for those of us that got in this a decade ago, and have been running an entire family on it, what should be the chosen migration path?<p>I've already got nextcloud hosted locally, and could easily add calendar support.<p>The missing piece of the puzzle is email, and how mad android devices are going to get when their "google" email address no longer points to a google service.
Shameless plug: <a href="https://www.inbox.eu" rel="nofollow">https://www.inbox.eu</a><p>We have very basic free tier (allowed to send up to 3 emails per day for each mailbox if mobile phone is validated). We haven't deleted any validated domain for 15 years and will not do it in the future. We have also option to import all your mailboxes from gmail with google admin credentials.
I use this service for my whole family (5 adults) so to continue would cost me $30 per month forever. Sux.<p>Moving email service is not such a big deal, but we have hundreds of Google Docs files to try to transfer. My research indicates this is a laborious process.
I made my move a year or so ago. moved my email to go through improvmx.com setup all my domains and aliases to Gmail accounts and pay the $9 a month for smtp from them too. setup everything to go to Gmail and my outbound to go through the smtp servers. works great!<p>i can switch providers as I please and every user can use their preferred provider. my mom likes outlook.com so her email goes there instead of Gmail. if I want to switch to proton, I can change just my own and move it there.<p>I still use Google but moved all my stuff to consumer googlw with Gmail. Only thing I lost was Google Android apps purchases.<p>Movies could be moved through MoviesAnywhere with some
Get the users, then figure out how to bill them is getting a bit old now.<p>To try and migrate my email I just bought a Hetzner Webhosting package for 1.9 euros a month for my custom domain. There is an option during the order to use your own domain but leave the registration/dns settings where they are.<p>I'm now trying to figure out how use a subdomain on my current registrar to test the Hetzner mail. Currently the default mx is G Suite Free.<p>If all goes well this may be my migration path from Google. I'm grateful for what I have had for free from Google but I am weary of their killing stuff.
I've been trying to switch to iCloud email today, but apparently you need to set up an @icloud.com email address before you can use your own domain, and every single thing I've tried I get back a "This address is taken" message, even with entirely random strings [0]. They also have a 21 character limit, just to make it harder.<p>[0] <a href="https://twitter.com/drcongo/status/1484489810932862982" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/drcongo/status/1484489810932862982</a>
The lack of clarity is yet another irritating part of this. Like others, still no email for me. I've been reading that there will be a more gentle onramp than this seems to indicate, where those who "transition to paid" get one more free year, and then another year at 50% off. So anyone really tied in who wants more time before jumping ship that could be useful, but it'd be nice to actually have that all laid out officially in a mail.<p>So would an official transition method to personal. I submitted a link to <a href="https://www.39digits.com/migrate-g-suite-account-to-a-personal-google-account" rel="nofollow">https://www.39digits.com/migrate-g-suite-account-to-a-person...</a> (2017) with a few notes [0] earlier today which seems to still mostly work. But the lack of purchase transfer means the pain will vary massively. Those of us who only used it as one of many possible custom domain email systems purely for old school client based IMAP email of course have the easiest smoothest pass. Jumping to something nice like MXroute or Migadu pretty much covers it (though I wish they had some sort of burst send pricing or option) and is smooth enough. Calendars and the like aren't bad either, and there are plenty of generic online storage options. At the opposite end are those with thousands of dollars or more in purchases tied to the account, or massive use of other services. As of right now they seem really screwed.<p>As much as anything the sheer lazy shoddiness of this change is the irritating bit. I don't begrudge them a bit charging for a decent service, or cancelling offerings even. It might be dirt cheap but it's not free and they're offering some value. Ideally they'd have a basic paid tier for non-money making usage, and indeed that is missed in the brave new subscription world in general, but it is what it is. But it's just plain unprofessional not to even notify broad swaths of people, to leave open all sorts of questions about details, to not have any kind of purchase transfer for those who depended upon it, etc. The should be law mandating the ability to transfer purchases between accounts within the same service as a basic minimal floor, and that at least is not a unique Google problem in the slightest. Seems more the rule than the exception for digital software stores of all kinds. Going between services is reasonably more complicated, but within the same one shouldn't be impossible.<p>----<p>0: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023769" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023769</a>
Is there any way to migrate one "google for your domains" account to a @gmail.com account?<p>I am looking on transferring:<p>* Google maps location history (have it there since 2009).
* Google photos of all the family accounts + plus partner sharing.
* Google drive
* Gmail
* Google extra storage (that I pay already for).<p>As far as I know, there are no way to migrate cleanly the data. Only crappy ways if possible at all.
I get the need to make me pay for the services (and I'm happy to pay if it's worth it), but why the downgrading of services after <i>paying</i> for things. There are various little tick boxes in their comparison table where the "legacy" accounts have a feature that "basic" doesn't have, but are present in standard (I'm looking at you noise cancellation in google meet).<p>Also, why the heck hasn't google solved the "GSuite users can't use this service" problem yet? I've been on GSuite since the beginning, and now I actively <i>avoid</i> google services because I'm sure they won't work with my google account.<p>I'll most likely end up paying the fee, but why can't they just be a <i>little</i> nicer about it? Google Homespaces would be awesome, parental controls, mailboxes, custom domains, shared calendars, and I'd probably pay a pretty penny for it too.<p>Come on...do better...
Have not looked extensively into alternatives but AWS WorkMail looks interesting. Not significantly cheaper but looks like a more predictable option. With Google you never know what is around the corner, I feel.
Real link (no login required): <a href="https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120</a>
Does that mean that the free "Google Docs", "Google Sheets" etc. will no longer be available then? Or is "GSuite" something else? I haven't been able to figure this one out with certainty...
Shoot! I've got one tied to a really cool five letters dot com I own since forever. It changed names I don't know how many times ("Google apps for domain" ?, "G Suite" now "Google Workspace" and I don't know how many other names). Heck, I had since back when you could switch the free ones from one domain to another one. Then they tied it to the domain.<p>It's been a good ride. I take I'll fork out the 5 EUR / month or so for the basic plan.<p>Still a bit meh.
I've been using this as my primary personal domain when Google was encouraging normal users to switch to this. For the last half decade this has included the account associated with my personal Android purchases.<p>It sounds like there is no migration path to keep these without paying the extortion... At the very least I've been unable to find anything about it.<p>I have fiber and cell service associated with this account. What happens to those?
I would gladly pay something which aligns with why I started using this in the first place - an easy way to keep my family members connected. I wish they had an inexpensive 'family' or 'personal' plan instead of everything focused on business.<p>But it's been obvious for awhile now - the old 'do no evil' Google is long gone. Long live profits and ads and screw everything else.
I am paying a subscription for extra GBs in one of these legacy “free” plans. (Remember they reduced GBs not so long ago?)<p>I wonder what happen to my account.
While this is annoying to many of us, if it diminishes the general public expectation that that online services should be free and subsidised by advertising/marketing/related services, that would be good news.<p>I'm not particularly optimistic about Google though, as they can charge for their services <i>and</i> continue the whole data-gathering game...
Have google given any insight at all as to what will happen to users purchases and so forth? Is it fair to assume that we either pay up or lose access to that which was purchased?<p>In addition does this mean @gmail.com users should consider whether or not they could be subject to the same unexpected alteration regarding their own accounts?
It's the min 3 users package that's annoying me. Looks like I need to go through a reseller to have a 1 user package. Also iffy if my Google Fi etc. will work or if I have to pay extra.