Google has finally patched up the old free G-Suite mess

Nearly five months after Google announced its intention Get users of the old free version of G-Suite start paying As for their accounts, it looks like it finally has a path that most people will be happy with. to me 9To5GoogleThere is now a no-cost option that lets people continue to use their G-Suite accounts for personal use, and subscribing to it won’t involve a song and dance joining a queue or transferring data between accounts.

in january, Google announced Free G-Suite users will have to start paying for Google Workspace if they want to keep their account afterwards About a decade ago of maintaining the free level of inheritance. The company said that if users haven’t decided which category of paid workspace they want by May 1, they will be automatically upgraded based on their usage. Later, Google said that you have the option to convert to a free account, but that you will lose some features when you do so. Now, though, there will be an option to continue using the service, which is open to people who don’t use it for commercial purposes, according to Google support document.

The personal use option at no cost will allow you to continue to use a dedicated domain with Gmail, use free Google apps like YouTube, Docs and Meet and keep all your data and purchases. Basically, everything will remain the same, as long as you choose the free personal transition path by June 27. You can find instructions on how to do this in Google support documentand Reddit user u/AB3DC has Post screenshots (You can see one above) in the GSuiteLegacyMigration subreddit showing what the process would look like. Google notes that the “old free version of G Suite does not include support,” and that it may “remove certain business functionality” from the plan in the future.

In person, this “jumping path”, as Google calls it, looks as if it should have been advertised in the first place. Not many people were very happy with the previous version of the plan, especially those who were not part of a company and were using G-Suite for free because it was a good option for power users at the time. For a while, it seemed like Google would make them pay for business features they never needed.

It didn’t help that, originally, people had options to either start paying or export their data and create a new Standard account. In April Google Move the deadline again, announced that there would be a tool that would let you go to a free account, but you had to join a waiting list for that, and you would lose access to being able to use a custom domain. To put it simply, there was still some kind of pain in the ass (as evidenced by the fact that there full sub dedicated to discussing the transition). Now, it looks like Google has sorted it out: If you’re a business, you’ll pay. If you are not, then there is no need.