MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
The address I have used for everything since the mid 90s is going to be discontinued, as it was a free G-Suite account for the last 15 odd years and they are being stopped in May
This is going to be a monumental undertaking as there are hundreds of accounts and goodness knows how many businesses out there have that address.
Any tips?
You are ****ed
Not much help but that is my experience when I changed mine about 10 years ago, and things were much less connected then and I was just changing from .googlemail.com to .gmail.com
Start asap as lots of things require you to confirm changes by sending emails to the old address. Set up and auto-forward with some kind of obvious flag to show where it came from now if you can. This will show up in the new email box and you will know which account you need to go to and update.
Does it matter that much? Obviously you want important stuff updated but any old account registrations can just be reregistered if you use that company again. You might even get a few new customer offers. I'd get on with the important ones and forget the rest
Worth trying protonmail? Probably a lower user base so more chance of getting that molgripshasabigwilly@ address.
Or go full private plate and get your own domain.
@molgrips, have Google contacted you directly about this? I have a legacy G-suite from when it was called Google Apps for Domains and I haven't been told that it's being withdrawn. It will be a bit of a pain if it is because the whole family use it.
There are a number of blog posts out there about this - I would imagine you'll hear today.
Do you have control of the domain? If so, setup a normal gmail address and then you can setup mail forwarders, so all the incoming email to your domain (or individual email addresses within the domain depending on how you set it up) will come into said gmail address. (other free providers are available, but you are familiar with gmail interface hence recommending it)
You can also setup gmail to "send as" so your outgoing email will continue to appear to be from your existing email address.
I read it as the 'free' service was being discontinued and you would have to start paying to retain it. I guess you'd have to work out which was more painful - paying or changing it all.
you would have to start paying to retain it
From free to $360 a year - that's certainly quite painful. But it does make Microsoft 365 look very tempting. I can transfer the data and just need to sort out the email forwarding.
Yes it's going to be painful. You shouldnt have to change the actual address as you should just be able to point the DNS records at a new host but finding a new free host that allows that is not going to be easy. If you are a non profit then consider applying to Google for non profits to get it upgraded. Microsoft also offer free accounts bure are more restrictions on them
If this is just a small handful of accounts then you could consider setting up individual free Gmail accounts for each and then using an email redirect service to forward mail to each Gmail account. You then need to faff with the individual Gmail accounts to change where the mail looks like it is being sent from
But yes it's going to be painful depending on your situation. I think for a couple I've got we will end up just paying for Google workspace as being the most efficient way forward but I've still got to work that out
The main thing is there is no need to actually change the address if you own the domain name which I am assuming you do. You just need to decide where to point it
Assuming that your address really is being discontinued, and not just the hosting service, then the key thing to do is to buy your own domain so that you never have to go through this again. You then have free choice of where to host it, and if your new hosting provider disappears or annoys you, you can just go elsewhere.
I think the only people affected by this are people who have their own domains - if you just have a Gmail account there's no change.
Is it really that bad, there's probably less than 20 companies I actually care about re email (eg banks, Paypal, Amazon, Ebay, a few subscriptions, energy suppliers etc).
The rest I can just create a new account as it doesn't matter if I loose the history eg Wiggle, CRC etc. It's really only stuff with an ongoing subscription which matter.
This is news to me!
Looks like I'll be migrating my domain to something else, I already pay for MS365 (get a discount from work ) so maybe that's the answer...
Edit - might not be as easy as I thought, I only have MS365 family...
It's not the actual accounts, it's the fact that people may want to contact me from out of the blue about things. This does happen from time to time.
@molgrips, have Google contacted you directly about this?
Not me no, the guy who administers it, who is a friend of mine. Back in the day he ran a server that we all had funny email addresses on, and it got ported to a G-Suite app when he could no longer be bothered to do it. No-one wants to pay so that's out.
I'm happy to create a new GMail (I actually was planning to anyway as I cannot be a parental overlord on the G-Suite one) and if it lets me auto-forward it then great. But for that to happen the domain would need to continue to exist.
The main thing is there is no need to actually change the address if you own the domain name which I am assuming you do
He does.
It's also used as my main Google account so all my Android devices are signed in with it...
Apparently there's a migration service, but it doesn't migrate things like app purchases. Fortunately there aren't that many of those and no other media purchases.
I'm going to have to plan an actual migration project.
changing from .googlemail.com to .gmail.com
They're the same now. Whether you address it to gmail or googlemail it will work. Same as dots. If your email has dots. Remove them and it will still come through to you.
I'm affected as I joined up on Google Apps For Your Domain some years back, just found this out this morning also.
I've just done the switch to Workspace, as I really don't want to deal with hassle / fallout of switching to something else. Fortunately my usage puts me easily in the starter tier, so not too pricy yet for the single account I use.
They give free service until July, then 50% off for a further year, so it's £2.30 per month/user from July 2022 until July 2023, at which point the full pricing for the tier starts at £4.60 per month
If you don't mind paying a little bit each year, get your own domain and do email off that - won't save the hassle of swapping now but should stop you needing to ever do it again. You can get basic email forwarding on many cheap packages and just direct it to wherever you want your email to end up.
Paying another £50 a year to keep my email address is a bit galling, but I think I might just migrate to workspace for now and see what other providers can do.
I've just been trying to set up my outlook.com address, seems straightforward but they only do domain linking from go-daddy, which I don't currently use.
Any other options for free ish email?
Edit: does mean I can ditch my old business domain (which I was locked into as the primary domain on G-Suite) which is a bonus 🙂
Same as dots. If your email has dots. Remove them and it will still come through to you.
Eh, what now?
If I've understood what G-Suite is, you could set up an account with a hosting service (Krystal costs me £60/year) transfer your domain to there and carry on as you are.
I’m going to have to plan an actual migration project.
They wouldn’t have been allowed…
There appears to have been a short time when it was allowed. I have a friend who gets mail for someone with the same name but without the dot between forename and surname. I fairly sure it is blocked now though
I have a friend who gets mail for someone with the same name but without the dot between forename and surname
It's more likely to be somebody who has the same address but with a number, joebloggs23@gmail, and somebody forgets the 23. I get a few of those.