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Ask HN: What are you switching to from G Suite legacy free tier?

20 points by parski ↗ HN
Google Apps Engine, later G Suite, later Google Workspace, used to have a free tier where you could have a custom domain connected to Google hosted services such as email, drive, calendar, etc, for free.

Google have nudged us for years, prompting an upgrade to one of their paid tiers but now they are sunsetting the free tier for good.

My question is: what are you switching to, what does it cost and how many users do you have?

I'm looking at ProtonMail, Tutanota, Outlook, iCloud and just staying at Google. We have to switch or pay within a month so I'm curious to see if you've landed on anything and if so, why.

20 comments

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codingpanic
I've switched my main domain to iCloud, once they announced custom domains. It "just works" with the Apple devices I usually use for main domain stuff. If I do end up leaving Apple, this will likely get moved to another service.

I do have a few other domains I use for various tasks and testing, I've moved those to the free Zoho Tier for now. I'll keep an eye out if anything else comes up thats worth looking at. These work well with any device, and not just Apple ones.

Someone1234
Unpopular Answer: Paid Google Workspaces.

Really boils down to how many users you need. I am your stereotypical 1 user with a catch-all, and I just make up email addresses on the fly. For $6(+tax)/user/month, for a single user just paying them made the most sense.

But I wouldn't make the same decision if I had e.g. 10 users on the free tier, and it is over $70/month after tax.

palidanx
I always thought the catch-all only goes to admin@yourdomain.com . You can make catch-all go to myname@yourdomain.com ?
hirundo
Fastmail. I'm quite happy with it so far. Paying $5/month is worth it to be the customer rather than the product.
WorldMaker
Migadu: https://www.migadu.com/

Their power user controls seemed to have a bit more power (at a reasonable cost) compared to the others I compared (mainly Fastmail), particularly in terms of number of domains. I have Calendar and Drive accounts in both Outlook and iCloud (and also personal Gmail), so an email-only/email-focused provider seemed an appropriate choice for this particular migration as I had already minimized my usage of GSuite/Google Workspace down to just email.

dmw_ng
A small but important detail regarding Migadu: it's impossible to run their spam filter in a fully permissive mode. Some checks (presumably SMTP time like SPF) cannot be disabled, preventing the recording of all incoming spam. That's fine if you want to depend on their spam filter, but if the point of moving from Gmail is to avoid megaprovider lock-in, complete visibility of spam is needed to train an equivalent filter that does not belong to any service.

It's possible I'll eventually move on from Migadu due to this, even though there is otherwise a lot to love about the service.

WorldMaker
I appreciate the concern.

In my particular case, a strong spam filter currently seems desirable. I've (tried to) train spam filters in the past and that's one of the few reasons I was still relying on Google Workspaces up until recently was as one piece in a rube goldberg "megaprovider" spam filter.

Though from what I see most of what Migadu is providing that cannot be turned off (SPF, DKIM, etc) are today considered best practices that you should add even if you were self-hosting, and the spam they prevent should be off your filters radar anyway, leaving your filter to better train on documents that aren't so bottom-of-barrel. (They are also, to my knowledge best practices to implement if you don't want to be entirely black-holed by the "megaproviders" as a self-host.)

dmw_ng
I want SPF/DMARC etc. results as features alongside all other message content, and overrides (like whitelisting, clicking "not spam") to apply similarly. Valid SPF/DMARC is so commonplace in spam that it's not worth treating specially, there are much more reliable indicators (e.g. domain age, Google safe browsing list, Phishtank) that in a variety of cases a user might still want to override.

I'm actively playing with this stuff so probably my requirements are a bit special, but even aside from that, it does still feel quite irksome that all mail input can't be cleanly recorded.

zeagle
Another vote for this. While the website does not have any recent updates their change log through the admin panel has regular activity and their support has been quick.
p0d
Made the shift to Fastmail a few months back with all my custom domains. Created a free Google account and use Fastmail as my mail server. I still like the Gmail experience but can exit if need to. I was using G-suite legacy for about 10 years. Change has made me migrate away from reliance on Google. I don't have a problem paying for something. I never needed or wanted online office. Just email and custom domains.
ViktorEvil
I have my domain name with Google Domains so I am using their email forwarding service to forward my existing email addresses to normal gmail accounts, and then using gmails alias feature for sending mail as my original domain email address.

Works OK and is free (apart from the domain registration fees). Google Domains allows you to have 100 different email addresses forwarded, so all my family can use the same domain

h4waii
I'll probably pony up the $6/user for my family members to not face any interruptions or annoying changes.

While I'm not exactly thrilled about the way Google did this, admittedly, I have been using it for the past 10+ years for free on multiple domains/accounts.

When I add up the cost to replace value-added stuff like Google Voice, it doesn't seem worth it to switch right now.

seanfitz
Google Voice is a large additional cost with a pro Workplace account: https://workspace.google.com/products/voice/

There is a way to migrate the Google Voice phone number from Legacy Suite to a consumer Gmail account in the GV settings.

h4waii
Well, this is going to suck to deal with and likely means I'm migrating completely away from Google forever if they don't have a solution by deadline.

Thank you for pointing it out.

1123581321
Migadu for domains that need email sending. Cloudflare email redirect for ones that don’t.
mijndert
I pointed my MX records to iCloud and quickly forgot about it soon after. It works for my needs, which are really not that complex. I can receive and send email, have a 'family' calendar shared with my wife, and it's all included in the price of what I was already paying for iCloud storage. To me, it's a good deal.