Google Won’t Stop with Free G Suite After All. The legacy system will continue to exist for non-commercial use for those who have had the software for years.
G Suite, especially your domain name, will remain free for some existing users. Google has reported this in a support document. However, the company announced in January that it wanted to get rid of the free version of ‘legacy’ G Suite.
G Suite started in 2006 as a forerunner of the current Workspace and combined, among other things, a calendar, website builder and mail service. Those who signed up for the service between 2006 and 2012 could use G Suite with their own domain name.
For example, you could email from your company name instead of ‘gmail.com’. For those early risers, the service was also free. In January, however, Google started sending emails to users of the service, telling them to upgrade to a paid version of Workspace if they wanted to keep their entire online business, er, keep.
Now you don’t have to, at least for those who use G Suite for personal or non-commercial use. However, they must give an ‘opt-out’ before August 1 to stop an automatic transition to the paid version, Google explains in an update to its support documentation.
The free service includes 15GB of cloud storage and some basic collaboration features. For those who had a personal email address, that is also retained. Companies that entered G Suite before 2012 will have to switch to the paid version. Newer users should already be on a paid version anyway.
