Google Discontinues its ‘Legacy’ Free Edition of G Suite, Will Require All Accounts to Switch to Paid Workspace Accounts

Google Discontinues 'Legacy' Free Edition of G Suite →

Google has announced that starting May 1, 2022, its G Suite legacy free edition — the original version of what is now rebranded as Google Workspace, will no longer be available. This means that everyone who signed up for a free “Google Apps” account as it was known back then and continues to use it for free will have to switch to a paid Google Workspace account.

If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting May 1, 2022. Starting May 1, Google will seamlessly transition you to Google Workspace, which you can use at no cost until July 1, 2022.

I’m surprised that it took Google this long to come to this decision. The legacy free edition already lacks several features that the company now offers in the Workspace offering, but it was perfectly fine if you just wanted to use the basic Gmail/Email features. I personally have about 5-6 different legacy accounts that I still use for Gmail, something I’ll have to switch away from very soon.

As some of you may have probably guessed by now, I’d be switching over to Fastmail — a service I’ve been using to host my personal email account. It’s a fantastic service, and I highly recommend them. It costs just $5/inbox/month and comes with an amazing set of features. This is also cheaper than Google’s base plan “Business Starter” which costs $6/user/month.

For those in India, Google does offer regional pricing starting at ₹ 210/user/month, which is further discounted to ₹ 125/user/month for the first 20 users added, for 12 months.

If you sign up on Fastmail using this link, you get 10% off your entire first year.

[Via 9to5Google]