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Google Axes Free Google Apps For Businesses
New submitter Macfox writes "In a move to focus on serving small business better, Google has axed the popular free edition of Google Apps for businesses. From Dec 6th, it will not be possible to sign up for the free edition. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Google's senior vice president in charge of Google Apps said Google wants to provide small businesses that use the free version of the software with dedicated customer support — something only paying customers currently get. 'We're not serving them well,' he said of the free users."
Google's blog post notes that "this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."
We are now charging you more...
you aren't the product, you're the customer. A brave new world for Google!
Google's blog post notes that "this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."
I used to run all my own email etc. on a server in my house, but a year or so ago I moved it all onto a 'google apps for business' account. Since then, my kids and wife have all started using google stuff much more often and it's hugely useful for us to be able to collect all that under accounts tied to the family google apps domain.
Google should do something family-related in this area, they could cut out 95% of the features of apps for business, but the most useful stuff is creating sites, sharing docs and drive between members and most importantly for me to be able to manage the accounts of all of us. There are alternatives, but this is a nice setup which works well.
I have been a free Google Apps user for years and I've never had any issues with it. The lack of support hasn't ever bothered me. I've helped several other people sign up for the free version as well and no support has ever been needed for them either. This is just a case where the free version was good enough and was keeping people for signing up for the paid version. It's always about the money. They have been thinking about killing this service for while now. When I originally signed up, I had access to 100 address. Soon after the limit had been dropped to 50 and then to 10 accounts. I think when the service launched, there was no limit on accounts.
Work smarter, not harder.
What I'm not entirely clear about is what happens to the middle ground of people who own their own domain and want to be able to have email address for each member of their family linked to the various Google services.
If they are now trying to push those people onto the business tier then a family of 4 with 2 grand-parents each side is going to cost $400 a year - which is way too expensive to properly consider.
(I'm thankful I set my family up several years ago before they reduced the number of users from 50 to 10)
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It's based on a business technique that's as old as the hills: Give away free stuff to crush the competition until people become dependent on your free stuff, then you put on the squeeze. Google is just a private company trying to make money, not freaking Santa Clause
I was able to register for a single-user free account this morning by doing this.
http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-apps-free/26926/
How to Get the Free Edition of Google Apps
Alternatively, here’s a quick and simple workaround that will still let you sign-up for the free edition of Google Apps even though Google has officially retired the free edition – all you need is a free Gmail or Google account.
Go to appengine.google.com, sign-in with your Google Account and create a new Application. You may fill in any dummy date and click the “Create Application” button.
Open the “Dashboard” and on the next screen, click the link that says “Application Settings.”
Scroll down a little (refer to the video tutorial) and choose “Add Domain” to associate a domain with your App Engine application.
That’s it. Now you should see a special link* to sign-up for the free edition of Google Apps. You may either use your existing domain or buy one through Google Apps.
[*] You have to access this link through App Engine as Google Apps checks the HTTP Referrer information before serving up the sign-up page for the free edition of Google Apps.
So if somebody wanted to do this themselves is there a way to self host this kind of Integrated Stack??
I like the concept of EyeOS but that seems to be a Dead Project
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The page currently has a cryptic entry "Google Applications for Personal Use" without any "learn more" which the business and educational versions have. Since many individuals use google apps for their email for a personal domain (for example with WordPress) I hope that a free perosnal version will be available.
'We're not serving them well,' he said of the free users.
Well, now they won't be able to serve them at all.
Absolute worst case it will eventually mean spending a couple hundred dollars a year. If your one man show makes any money this will be the least of your worries.
How soon for Gmail or other services to follow this route?
Really it's the correct path: give something away free to get clients, then start charging when competitors are mostly dead. No real surprise.
Anything is possible given time and money.
I have a really small biz and just use the Apps email as I like the web interface instead of the local pop client thing.. Even though thats all I use, it is critically important to my tiny web biz.. I really cant afford to wake up to no biz email which might not be whats happening today..but looks like the direction its headed. I guess I will be doing some MX updating and either use the roundcube/squirrel that my webhost provides or break out the local email client.. it was good while it lasted..
Ookay, this sounds like corporate speak. Translation: This is costing us more money than we are earning through ad-based revenue so we have to transition to a non-free model. This has absolutely zilch to do with providing adequate customer support.
Well, I didn't see this coming, but now that it's happened I'll be looking at possible replacements. I love the gmail interface, and it's the only thing I'm interested in (don't care about docs, etc). I imagine there will be some competitors come and break Google's stronghold on web email now though, particularly in managing your own domain for free
As a web designer I have always recommended customers use Google Apps for their Email instead of the web host, CPanel or whatever.
Lots of benefits.
- Apps interface way better than whatever most typical hosts offer.
- If the host goes offline your email still works.
- Great mobile support.
- List goes on.
However most small businesses spend maybe $10-$15 / month on web hosting (Dreamhost, GoDaddy, most Cpanel hosts etc..).
And they might have 5-10 email accounts which you can always setup free at the host.
So $50/year per email account on Google Apps is suddenly WAY OUT OF THE BALLPARK. A small busness with 10 email accounts would be paying Google $500 / year for Email .. and only $120 / year for Web Hosting which always includes Email (albeit not as good).
It should be ~ $50 / year for a Google Apps account that supports 10 users ... that is market bearable for a small business who's pricing expectations are set by the shared hosting company.
I have a feeling people number of people using it for free are greatly reducing the availability of support people to help those who are actually paying for it. As someone who currently uses the free version and wanted to switch over a couple of other domains, I'm less than thrilled, but can understand it. I would have preferred it if they kept it available but said "you get zero support".
Exactly. I run several hobbyist sites for gaming and such. I don't run ads, I don't charge for it, it's just for fun for games I play. The free version of Google Apps was absolutely perfect for us as a free alternative to paying for hosting our own e-mail services. Plus, everyone was pretty much familiar with the Gmail interface. I've set up several gaming "guilds" with basic sites and e-mail addresses.
Back when you could have up to 50 or so accounts, this was absolutely perfect. When they reduced it to 10, that put a serious dent in our ability to host all but the smallest of our guilds. Now that it's zero, well, I suppose I'll be finding and alternate solution because I simply cannot afford $50 per user per year for something that's just a hobby.
I don't understand why Google doesn't come up with some happy medium. For example, have a more limited free tier, something that allows you to manage 50 or 100 free e-mail accounts and calendars (with Google ads on them) with access to Gtalk, a total of 100 Google Docs (or 10 MB or some other limitation), and a few pages. If you want all of the full suite of hosting services, access to discussion groups, metrics, advertising, a larger site layout, etc. then you charge the $50 per user per year.
As it is, might get Google a few more paying customers, but more likely than not, it will just drive a lot of people away from Google and to another service. That's too bad, because I'd really like to continue using Google for these groups I set up.
Perhaps the author of the summary to exercise a bit more "journalistic integrity"....
Evolution: love it or leave it
The big problem here is that Google is commingling all their services and there is only one level of payment, for example, they announced a few days ago the distribution of Android applications for your business using the Google Play infrastructure, for that, you need a Google Apps domain, so If you have all other services covered, for example you have your email infrastructure already in place (where you can have intranet only email accounts and public accounts something impossible with Google Apps) then you still have to pay 50$/year per user to distribute Android applications using their service and you don't use email, chat, docs. This is wrong!
I'm curious how this will affect businesses that are currently using postini. Since google is moving postini functionality into google apps, does this mean a business will now have to sign up for google apps to continue using any postini features?
It seems that google has been fairly quiet about exactly what the postini shutdown means for business, and I've only found vague talk of how a business is supposed to transition to google to continue the service. Especially businesses that do not use gmail, but use their own mail servers.
Just like drug dealers.
Seeing the words "Google" and "customer support" in the same sentence is amusing.
I think that this move will not bring the intended effect on Google's bottom line. The core user that is affected by this change is the enthusiast, setting up a custom domain for email for their family, opensource project, etc. This enthusiast user was advocating the Google services. I count myself as one such user whose recommendations has led at least 3 new small business customers for Google. Also their decisions to use Android over the competing platforms.
Now Google loses all of that. And since it is highly unlikely that they will discontinue their free Gmail, Calendar, Drive offerings the end of free custom domain accounts is unlikely to save them any money on hosting and will represent a net loss to them in the long run.
I don't think I could bring myself to utilize google for anything essential to my business.. Yeah, I have an android phone, and I use gmail, but not for work.
I know they offer a lot of cool stuff, for free/cheap... just the same, when they make it nearly impossible to get someone on the phone it really hurts as a customer, especially a paying one.
Bearing in mind, using cloud services in general gives me pause and concern... it really takes a new level of trust in those cases.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Sure the mail is relatively reliable the the control tools fairly simple to use. A lot of hassles are taken out of my hands definitely.
However when there is an actual genuine issue, getting them to look at it, it's not a quick fix. It took a 50-> 100 reply thread, nearly a year before they finally fixed up the 'last logged in' display time in the console so you could actually identify when users were using the system or not. It was set to a US based time if I recall, despite Googles other services supporting international time zones relatively fine.
A lot of whining was needed to finally get a response. I dread to think how long it would take a very nasty issue to be ironed out? Perhaps only a 500 reply thread and 12 weeks?
Also, the latency from Google to Australia for hosted mail? Yeah, not really making for responsive mailboxes. Admitedly not their fault directly, I made the choice to use it.
Having used the free version for a number of domains, I was under the impression that the free version had community support as it's only option - ie, you could post about your problems on the forums, but you couldn't raise an issue directly with Google.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
I'm not sure, as I've never needed it. You may be correct, although I think the Google techs usually answer questions in many of their community groups ... not sure about these one though.
If you get the paid version of Google Apps, you get a support ID number (or something along those lines) and provided with the details of how to contact Google. If you're on the free version, you don't get anything - although as you said, Google employees are often in the forums that you can use.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
More accurately would be "To better serve you, we aren't accept new users that are a net cost of resources." The people that this is to serve better are current users, and the change affects new users (who will no longer be able to sign up for the free tier.)
The quote you are calling newspeak does not appear (much less, appear as a characterization by Google) in any of the sources cited in TFA.
Free tier individual users who use it just to have consumer-Google-account-with-Gmail-and-a-custom-domain are definitely clogging up forums for every new consumer feature attached to Google Accounts with complaints that the consumer grade feature isn't available to Google Apps users. Limiting the growth of this problem by shutting off new free Google Apps accounts and intensifying the focus of Google Apps as business offering is probably a good thing for all Google products going forward.
Right, because the common phrase is "broke like Google", not "fat Google money".
Oh, wait...
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
As far as I know, you can still add multiple domains to your account (I have two)
Small teams, very small business and community projects will be greatly screwed over by this. Many can't really afford or has enough money to spare for this. I am part of 2 business that uses google apps. If the free version hadn't existed, neither of them would ever have moved on to the paid one. Sad move by google.