Google Clicks 'Undo' on Plan to Force Legacy Free Google Apps Users to Pay Up
Almost five months after telling people who had spent years using a free Gmail-hosted address with a custom domain name that they’d have to pay up or get out, Google is now offering a plan C: Stay put at no cost if you vouch for non-business use.
The news broke Monday(Opens in a new window) in an update to a “G Suite legacy free edition” support note(Opens in a new window) Google had posted in mid-January(Opens in a new window): “For individuals and families using your account for non-commercial purposes, you can continue using the G Suite legacy free edition and opt out of the transition to Google Workspace.”
The note instructs those people to choose an “Opt-out of the automatic transition by confirming your legacy subscription is for personal use” option in their account’s admin page(Opens in a new window) by Aug. 1 to avoid having their accounts suspended.
A separate Google FAQ(Opens in a new window) covers what free legacy accounts maintain (“You can continue using your custom domain with Gmail, retain access to no-cost Google services such as Google Drive and Google Meet, and keep your purchases and data”) and lose (“G Suite legacy free edition does not include support, and in the future we may remove certain business functionality”).
That is roughly what many people who had signed up for the free service first launched(Opens in a new window) as Google Apps For Your Domain in August of 2006—then closed to new signups in December 2012—had asked for when Google sprang this surprise in January and gave users a July 1 deadline to “upgrade” to a paid version of Google Workspace.
The cheapest option there to keep an existing personal-domain mail setup was a Business Starter(Opens in a new window) account for $72 per user
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