Replace G Suite with your own mail server
For those of you that have signed up long ago for Google apps (which has become G Suite Legacy Free Edition), Google has announced last week that all G Suite Legacy Free users will need to start paying monthly subscription fees to continue using their account as reported below by Arstechnica.
Ron Amadeo
I, too have been using G Suite Legacy Free for at least 10 years and will be sad to see it go. Account pricing for G-Suite starts from $6/user/month with $12/user/month for their recommended plan. Google stands to profit well from converting users that have used the free version as users were allowed up to 10 free accounts which would easily have been $60/month in additional revenue if you had 10 e-mail accounts using their cheapest plan.
If you are a single proprietor or a person that runs a small team of people and use additional e-mail addresses for mailing lists or communications, it might not make sense to shell out for additional expenses to use G Suite. A great alternative to getting around this (as we've recommended before) would be to run your own cloud server for $5/month and install your own mail server. You'll also be able to install your own equivalent and more without needing to pay for extra accounts on a per user – installing a mail service like postfix and suites of tools is enirely free to have multiple domains and unlimited usres managed from your own machine.
For those that are interested in having your own mail server, we also do consulting and training to set one up for you for a nominal fee. Reach out to us if you're interested and we'd happy to help you own and run your own services without the fear of having terms of having your services suddenly changed on you.