I'm in the same boat - I have a free GSuite account and need to either pay Google for it or move elsewhere. What's not clear is that I have a YouTube channel attached to this Google identity and I don't know if when my custom .com GMail address enters the 'suspended' state whether I will lose access to my YouTube channel.
Both the email and the YouTube channel are for my video games business, so I'm okay paying for the privilege of my domain with my email, but I'm unsure that I want to trust Google with that. The whole way they have announced cancelling this GSuite deal, which they originally promised they would never do (it was "for life"), makes me think that all the more. But my YouTube account is pretty important to my business and I don't want to lose that.