Nearly five months after Google announced that it will make users of the legacy free edition of G-Suite start paying for their accounts, it seems there is finally a path that most people will be happy with. According to 9To5Google, there is now a cost-free option that will allow people to continue using their G-Suite accounts for personal use, and registering for it will not include a song and dance of joining a waiting list or transferring data between accounts.
In January, Google announced that free G-Suite users would have to start paying for Google Workspace if they wanted to keep their accounts after about a decade of maintaining the inherited free level. The company said that if users do not decide which paid level of Workspace they want by May 1, they will be automatically upgraded based on their use. Google later said that you would be able to switch to a free account, but you would lose some features this way. However, you will now have the option to simply continue using the service, which is open to people who do not use it for business purposes, according to a Google Support Document.
Google’s explanation of the path to personal use. Image: u / AB3DC on Reddit
The free personal use option will allow you to continue using a custom domain with Gmail, use free Google apps like YouTube, Docs, and Meet, and store all your data and purchases. In principle, everything will remain the same, as long as you choose the free personal transitional route until June 27. You can find instructions on how to do this in the Google Support Document, and a Reddit u / AB3DC user posted screenshots (one of which you can see above) in the GSuiteLegacyMigration subreddit showing what the process will look like. Google notes that “the old free edition of G Suite does not include support” and that it may “remove certain business features” from the plan in the future.
Personally, this “transitional path”, as Google calls it, looks like it should have been announced in the first place. Many people were not very happy with the previous version of the plan, especially those who were not part of the company and had just used G-Suite for free, because it was a good option for experienced users at the time. For a while, it seemed that Google would make them pay for business features they absolutely didn’t need.
It didn’t help that initially people’s options were either to start paying or to export their data and create a new standard account. In April, Google moved the deadline back and announced that it would have a tool that would allow you to switch to a free account, but you had to join a waiting list for this, and you would lose access to the custom domain. Simply put, it would still be something of a pain in the ass (as evidenced by the fact that there is a whole subreddit devoted to discussing the transition). Now Google seems to be fine: if you’re a business, you’ll pay. If you are not, you don’t have to.
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