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Comment by themadturk | Hacker News Reader

Well, this is an unpleasant surprise. Most of my family has been on G Suite for nearly 20 years, under a grandfathered-in free account with a custom domain. Six dollars a month is at least $24 a month. Time for everyone to switch to a free account, or look for an alternative that's just as easy. The hard part will be getting email addresses changed, which is why I chose a custom domain to start with...and weaning people off the Gmail client.

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I've also been used to the free tier of GSuite...but honestly, i can not complain. I got to use my own custom domain for my family for several years...so i can't be upset really. That being said, a few months ago i started testing zoho mail...because i had planneed to move away from google anyway (for reasons that are not about cost, but more about principles)...and so far my tests are pretty good with them! Zoho's performance and cheap pricing means that i will be hopping to them very likely. At least...that is my plan...we'll see. Also, i;'ve heard that mailbox.org is pretty good and low cost; so there are optins that won't break the bank.

Do you know if one can enable the catchall with the Zoho cheap plan (€0.9/month/user)? I have a single mail account, but I use the catchall to provide distinct email adresses to corporations (so if I ever get mail from foo-corp@my-domain.example.com, I know who leaked it).

@pygy_ Not sure what happened to your comment...but as far as supporting a catchall...while i do not use that feature, the follwoing help pages seem to indicate that it is supported: https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/catch-all-setup....

https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/mail/adminconsole/article...

https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/org-settings.htm...

Good luck!

There must have been a caching glitch...

Many thanks for the info, I had seen the first two pages, but I wasn't sure whether it applied to that very plan. That seems promising :-)

@pygy_ So, i just checked (because you got me curious too)...and the Zoho Mail Lite plan (I'm U.S. based, so i pay $1 USD per user per month) does indeed have the catchall feature available. But, please note, it is present within the admin console...so not within, say, the user's mailbox. If you were a single user, that would not be an issue...but i think i recall you saying about needing for your family...so not sure if/how the set up a catchall at the admin console level interacts with each user's email address/identity...hmmm...Likely it only activates assuming, say, amazon@your-domain.net is not being used by one of your family users...but it merits a little more research on your own, if you in fact use this feature alot. Good luck!

No, it's me alone. Thank, I know where I'll migrate to!

Is it a surprise? It's been almost a decade since Google stopped offering this as a free product. The writing has been on the wall for over 9 years.

Since they stopped offering new free accounts, which I have no problem with.

It’s the retroactive nature that pisses me off.

It's an extremely unpleasant surprise that they'd do it without offering any form of migration to personal gmail accounts. I've been waiting on a proper migration route for the past decade, with some unhappiness given Google Apps was originally marketed as suitable for personal or family use.

My phones, browser history, payments, purchases and more are tied to my GSuite account, and I can't leave without losing all of that. The fact that you apparently don't think we deserve to keep any of that stuff without paying a monthly tax forever doesn't fill me with joy.

Put another way, Google has had a decade to build a migration path from the product they decided would be business only to their consumer product, but didn't.

Please correct me if I am wrong but you control your Google Workspace domain, am I right? There's no need to change your email address, and reading Google's documentation it seems like you can also keep your Google account: https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646

Google has for ages already supported Google accounts for external domains whose email is not handled by Google.

maybe improvmx will help you? it provides email forwarding to any alias + domain you own.

(not affiliated or anything, just like and use this service myself for similar reasons)

It's free for 1 domain.

https://improvmx.com/

I find turning "at most 16 years" into "nearly 20 years" egregious!

What I hope is that Google will at least have an option to turn those accounts into regular Google accounts instead of being in yet another limbo state where they exist as part of a management that isn't free.

Same here, what a royal PITA, personally I could migrate pretty easily, but the rest of the family that is not tech-savvy won't be a walk in the part.

Uh, Google Apps started in 2006. Not quite twenty years.

I'd say it's reasonable to call 16 "nearly" 20 years. It certainly rounds off that way.

It launched August 28 2006. I'd say it's reasonable to call it fifteen years. This is tech.

Fifteen years is nearly 20 years. So, both is correct. I'm not sure what your point is other than splitting hairs.

By this logic, five years is almost ten years, and fifteen years is almost ten years. Go figure.

same, what a pain.

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