Now Google announced that the free version of Google Apps is no longer available for new users. Existing users are not affected by this change and Google Apps for Education continues to be available. Google's explanation for dropping the free Google Apps for small organizations is rather vague: "Businesses quickly outgrow the basic version and want things like 24/7 customer support and larger inboxes. Similarly, consumers often have to wait to get new features while we make them business-ready."
Well, not everyone needed customer support, SLAs, migration tools or other business features and Google Apps was a simple way to create email addresses for your domain and use Gmail to manage them. Why pay $50/user/year for features you don't need?
It's obvious that Google wants to focus on paid customers and the free Google Apps was just another thing to support. Now that Google Apps has more than 5 million business customers, Google no longer needs the free Google Apps to attract new users. The free Google Apps was just a burden that made things more complicated.
Update: Apparently, there's a workaround that lets you use the free version of Google Apps for a single account. "If you create a new Apps account going through the App Engine Admin Console you'll still be able to create a Standard Apps account for free but you'll only be able to get 1 user per account rather than the 10 you get today," says Greg D'Alesandre, Senior Product Manager for Google App Engine.
{ Thanks, Arpit. }
So, what's the problem? Did they cut off currently free users?
ReplyDeleteYea, means that families can no longer use Google Apps, so no more bob@smith.com (unless each family member wants to pay £33 a year).
DeletePerhaps, free "single-user" Google Apps account is still possible:
ReplyDeletehttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-appengine/pVZfdeky-ow/TO1SmipM2Y0J
The people (and families) that I know of that are using the free edition are not candidates for the business edition. For them it is just about getting a google account but with their own domain name, and if this weren't free they would have gone elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI find that the #1 impediment to consumer's getting a Google account is that they can't find a gmail address that they like. So, Google should have gone in the opposite direction by making it much easier for consumers to create a free Google Apps account (with custom domain).
Hey maybe Obama can force Google to keep giving them free stuff??? After all Google, you didn't build that.
ReplyDeleteThat's disappointing. I have one for our family that's really worked well and been kind of cool. Sad to know that others can't have this same option in the future.
ReplyDeleteThere was no support costs, it was all handled by Google Groups.
I think there still ought to be a nearly-free option, maybe $10/user/year? $50/user/year could add up for small businesses and non-profits.
Or have I misunderstood the changes they're making?
The google app engine back door let me sign up 10 users today, quick, before they notice
ReplyDeleteTried twice an hour ago and it only allows one user. Do you still have a link that you used for signup in your browser history? Maybe it will allow creation of more users. The current one-user link (from AppEngine) is: https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3?refererName=AppEngine. Thanks!
DeleteExisting free accounts for small businesses and families are grandfathered. This change only affects new Google Apps accounts.
ReplyDeleteI am disappointed that Google has chosen to eliminate free accounts going forward since it was the small businesses and families that were the early adopters and they played a huge role in the enterprise adoption that there is today. We helped prove the concept and work out the bugs... and we did it without Google support that is reserved for its paying customers.
I will miss Google Apps free... it was the best way to set up custom domain emails along with its free suite of stuff. Sigh...
ReplyDelete@Kelvin, Microsoft is offering custom domain Windows Live accounts with outlook.com and SkyDrive at http://domains.live.com -- that could be a decent workaround.
ReplyDelete