Schools And Businesses May Have To Start Paying For Google Suite

Organizations, commonly schools and businesses, that use G Suite legacy’s free addition may soon have to pay for the use of Google Workspace.

Some educational and non-profit organizations will continue to be able to use G Suite’s added features for free, but the features that have been complimentary for most since 2006 will not be available for all starting July 1. Those features include the ability for organizations to have their own domain emails.

For context, the G Suite legacy stopped being offered for free in December 2012, but Google — an Alphabet company — allowed existing users to still access it for free. That free access is ending, and it is important to note that administrators cannot switch back to the free edition.

Those existing users — who are not specific educational institutions or non-profits — will have the option to access four subscription tiers. While the services will remain free until July 1, affected users have until May 1 to make their subscription decision otherwise the Google system will decide for them based on their usage history.

According to the Verge, if no payment information is available by July 1, Google will suspend the account for 60 days and then remove the user’s access to core services including Gmail, Calendar, and Meet.

There are two options for payment plans, a flexible and an annual plan. The flexible plan allows administrators to pay for the users in that suite every month and add or remove users as needed. Most users who do not update their subscription preferences will be put on a flexible plan. The annual plan requires a contract with a certain number of users committed upfront but can add users as needed.

However, administrators can cancel an account at any time and download the information on the suite, using the Data Export tool, before doing so.