Early this year, Google announced that it is ending the legacy free tier for G Suite. I’ve been on the free edition of G Suite since 2011. While it’s a good product, there are some issues with it like not being able to use certain Google products. Not complaining since it allows me to use my personal domain name for email.
Honestly, I don’t mind paying for the service. But the cheapest Google Workspace Business Starter cost S$8 per month. That’s S$96 per year. That’s too expensive for personal use.
It’s a wasted opportunity for Google. There are many people using the free G Suite for personal use. If they provided a cheaper alternative for personal use, I think many people don’t mind paying a few dollars a month for the service. Now they are just losing all these customers.
So goodbye G Suite. I’m moving to Apple iCloud+ which costs only S$1.28 per month for the basic 50GB plan. iCloud+ allows me to use my custom domain for email. And since I’m so deep inside the Apple ecosystem, why not jump further inside. I get 50GB storage now which means I can finally back up my 14GB WhatsApp chat log.
Setting up the custom email domain for iCloud+ was pretty straightforward. (Although it messed up my CloudFlare settings causing this blog to be down for a while.) The web-based email client for iCloud doesn’t look as good as Gmail but I guess I’m ok with that. I heard that iCloud’s spam filter isn’t as good as Gmail. Not surprised there but I think I’m fine with that (for now).
The only thing that I’ll miss is all my other data with Google. My Google Calendar, Google Doc/Sheet, YouTube channel subscription. I think I’m going to create another Gmail account and move the important stuff over. Sigh. Why do all good things come to an end?
Update on 17 May: Google backtracks to allow non-commercial users to continue using G Suite for free. I guess they are seeing too many people leaving the Google ecosystem. But this announcement came a little too late. I’ve already moved my email to iCloud+. I’m not moving them back.
DeeKay Dot SG 