Google Apps No Longer Free

[Greg]

Just saw that Google Apps is no longer free for businesses. 

I have no problem paying for a Google Apps account where I actually use Google apps, but at the moment you have to have a Google Apps account to link a domain to an Appengine app. Some of our apps have two or three domains showing the same app, and because you need to have an account for each email address that Appengine sends email from, we have three or four accounts per domain. So this is potentially going to add $600 per year to our costs - all for virtual accounts that don't actually use Google Apps at all.

Can someone from Google comment please? Either Google Apps accounts need to remain free if they are associated with Appengine apps, or there needs to be another way to link domains (and authorise email addresses) for Appengine.

[Strom]

This seems like another nice price increase for GAE.

[Nickolas Daskalou]

-1 Google.

Nick

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[Gregory D'alesandre]

Hello Everyone,

The Apps Standard account you have today will continue to work for free.  If you create a new Apps account going through the App Engine Admin Console you'll still be able to create a Standard Apps account for free but you'll only be able to get 1 user per account rather than the 10 you get today.

Let me know if you have additional questions,

Greg D'Alesandre

Senior Product Manager, Google App Engine

[Greg]

Thanks for clarifying, Greg - I'd hoped there would some dispensation like this.

I've still got a problem though, because this means you can only have one sender email address per app. I believe that I can't use aliases to the same user to add two addresses as appengine developers, and anyway if you need different behaviours (like a vacation responder on the noreply user) you're out of luck. So currently this means paying out an extra $150 a year per app, or looking at switching MX records so the domain's email is handled by another server (assuming we can do that without breaking anything).

Any chance of raising the standard apps accounts you get through appengine have more than the limit of one user (preferably the original ten ;)?  Maybe make this available only to billed apps to reduce abuse by people wanting free apps accounts.

Cheers!

(the other) Greg.

[Thomas Wiradikusuma]

Hi Greg (of Google),

I agree of what the other Greg said. It's very common to send transactional emails from a dedicated address (e.g. noreply). It's not professional (and even raise suspicion) if the "Click here to reset your password" email comes from j...@startupname.com for example.

If it's not possible to increase the account from 1 to n, at least please allow the use of alias.

[Francois Masurel]

Yes, I agree with Thomas, that's exactly what I have done.

I have created noreply adresses for each of my domains hosted on GAE because these sending mail adresses need to have administrative rights.

Will Google provide a fix for this?

These huge changes without warnings are a really really bad suprise at wakeup :-(

François

Bordeaux, France

[alex]

Another suggestion: make it so that App Engine apps can be served from
a custom domain w/o creating a new Google Apps account. I couldn't
find an issue for that so I went ahead and created one. Please, mark
it as a duplicate if there is one.

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=8517

[Hugo Visser]

I think allowing to send from an alias would be very helpful. When running from an app, you most of the time don't need the actual inbox, you just need to be able to send from a email address originating from your domain. Currently every sender has to be a real account, but it would be nice if you can just add that account and with that also allow the aliases fo that account to send email.

On Friday, December 7, 2012 8:11:24 AM UTC+1, Thomas Wiradikusuma wrote:

[Mat Jaggard]

Hi Steve,

I think you're missing the point. Some startups are getting going with zero capital because an individual with some skills and some time can produce and sell a product using free cloud services and then once they've made a few bob can upgrade.

Google WERE supporting this model very well - shame on you for stopping.

Mat.

On Friday, 7 December 2012 09:18:18 UTC, Steve Daniels wrote:

Hi Thomas,

I don't mean to show disrespect, but if your startup can't afford $50 to send email from a Google Apps address, then you've probably got bigger issues.

Yours Respectfully,

Steve

[glimmung]

Hi Matt,

On Friday, 7 December 2012 10:35:09 UTC, Mat Jaggard wrote:

Some startups are getting going with zero capital because an individual with some skills and some time can produce and sell a product using free cloud services and then once they've made a few bob can upgrade.

Google WERE supporting this model very well - shame on you for stopping.

Very succinctly put - this raises the barriers to entry to GAE for small startups, and significantly reduces its usefulness for testing ideas.

Reducing the free tier from 10 to 5 (or even 3 at a push), or reducing the cost per user for tiny teams, could have significantly mitigated that had Google wished to do so - clearly they don't, which is their call of course.

For several of my smaller/more speculative projects where I'd intended to use GAE, Google Apps or both, this will cause me to fire up a couple of new Linodes, which may or may not be Google's intention. However, whilst this change is not hugely significant in and of itself, it is a timely reminder to me that I'm safer using services that I pay for, and where I therefore know where I stand. The uncertainty as to what change will come next is the bigger issue to me.

FWIW, Linode surprises me now and again, too - but every time Linode surprises me, it is with good news...

--

Cheers,

PhilK

[Peter Liu]

Some question and feedback:

1. 

I am not sure it's related. Last Sunday one of our new google apps account we created for GAE domain was suddenly deleted.

Users can't hit GAE app with that domain, and Google 404 page is shown.

We quickly re-register the domain with Google apps and added back the domain and it's working.

This result in 2 hours of production down time.

2.

I don't know the transition detail, but will #1 happen again? Say if the domain we have right now has 2 users and we didn't add billing info,

will Google delete the domain in Google apps? 

3.

How do we downgrade the app account to "1 free user"? 

[notreadbyhumans]

It's also a point of principle. We are already paying for the App Engine service through that infrastructure, and we are forced to use Apps because of a quirk of that infrastructure. Now we are having to pay for that privilege if we want to do more that the absolute minimum (having multiple email accounts for an application is a fairly common/predominant use-case).

It seems perfectly reasonable for Google to have made this change for all the other uses of Apps, but it seems to me that the App Engine/Apps relationship is a slightly special edge case. Perhaps it's time the App Engine team put some serious consideration into how they might decouple the two services so that we can use our own domains in a more traditional manner?

[alex]

> Perhaps it's time the App
> Engine team put some serious consideration into how they might decouple the
> two services so that we can use our own domains in a more traditional
> manner?

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=8517

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[Wes]

Ditto what Greg and Thomas said. This is really the only option for outbound mail sending with GAE. 

Short of a change in the rules, I'll have to look elsewhere for the mail services (i.e. I'll have to give my money to someone else). This really complicates new domain setup.

[pdknsk]

It wouldn't be so much a problem if Google Apps was a good service to
use in combination with App Engine, but it's not. The integration is
poor and just puts hurdles in our way.

Google has made some questionable decisions lately. I don't know why.

[Andrew Jessup]

Hi Michele,

To set up your domain in this way, navigate to your application's dashboard within appengine.google.com and visit "Application Settings > Add Domain". On that screen follow the "Sign Up for Google Apps Standard" link. From here you can sign up to a limited version of Google Apps Standard.

Kind regards,

Andrew Jessup | Product Manager, Google App Engine

On Friday, 7 December 2012 01:53:11 UTC-8, Michele De Rose wrote:

Hi Greg D'Alesandre,
I can't find the way/link for to register a new domain with standard google apps (free for 1 user)...

can you help me?

thanks a lot :)

Michele.

[Jeff Schnitzer]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Wes <west...@gmail.com> wrote:

Short of a change in the rules, I'll have to look elsewhere for the mail services (i.e. I'll have to give my money to someone else). This really complicates new domain setup.

To be honest... GAE's email system has never been "production quality".  Every time it comes up in conversation on this list the advice from longtime users (including myself) is always "use a third-party service".  It's not complicated - just enqueue a task that submits the (typically REST) value to Amazon SES or one of the zillions of other companies that focus on deliverability and customer support.

I don't consider this much of a shortcoming in GAE; there is no inherent advantage in having email built into Google's infrastructure.  Sending an email is just an API call either way.  I'd rather have Google focus on things that third parties can't do well, like add features to the datastore.

Jeff

[PK]

I have been extremely happy with GAE mail sending and receiving state and is production quality for me and my customers. It needs additional features like being able to send and receive using custom domains but the stated capability works great for us, please stop taking every opportunity to bash it!!!   (Sorry for forking the thread but had to respond to this).

Thanks,

PK

[Kyle Finley]

techamerica,

Have you looked into Windows Live Custom Domains https://domains.live.com/ ? I think what you could do is:

1. Add your clients domain as Greg described.

2. Setup your clients email using Windows Live

3. Create regular google accounts (not gmail accounts) using the Windows Live email addresses e.g. us...@example.com

4. Add the users as developers to the account so that you can send emails using their address.

I haven't tested this, but I think it should work. It adds a few more hoops to jump through, but I guess that's the cost of free.

Kyle

On Friday, December 7, 2012 11:31:13 AM UTC-6, techamerica wrote:

Well Merry Christmas to you too Greg and Google.

Have you guys even stopped to consider the effects eliminating the small standard app will have on small business?  I for one do not know if I can survive. I make my living on helping very small business's get efficient on the web. And part of that was introducing those small clients to Google Apps Standard and Google Adwords. I was literally in the process of setting up 2 brand new clients when this hit. I just cashed their checks on Tuesday. Now I am going to have to give them their money back. Right before Christmas. And when I say small clients I am talking about 4 or 5 people.

If you even would have given us some notice, we might have managed it. How many of us small, one and two and three man shops have supported Google over the years?

Thanks a lot. Merry Christmas.

[Jason Collins]

I wrote up a specific API here that I think would be easy to use (and implement by Google in my opinion). Please star if you'd like to see it:

  http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=8528

[fj pecsy]

Thank you Kyle!

I'm looking into it. But we are hoping that when Google realizes how petty killing of the support for micro business's is, that they may change their minds. My typical start up client is three to 4 people, but about half of them are under three. Basically 'mom and pops'.  The client that I just signed up is dad doing manufacturing, mom doing the sales and accounting and packaging, daughter doing deliveries and customer service. They are struggling. I recommended Google apps for them as a way to 'start off right', 'standardize on a reliable service' and have a cost effective solution for them as they grow. I get to be admin for them, and prove that by being able to connect them with Google Apps service that I am a valuable member of their team. So they win, and I win.

But Google also wins. Everything from good will, and living the 'do no harm' philosophy, to getting first bite at the successful companies that survive. I've set up many a client over the years for this kind of solution. And many have grown into paid services-everything from the apps upgrade itself to adwords. The decision to kill off services for these kinds of business's hurts everyone, including Google.

Frank

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[stevep]

Stake in the heart of micro-non-profit, volunteer organization as well. I have supported several, and the number of volunteers times $50 is impractical. I am talking about micro-non-profits such as groups is small towns that organize to get levies passed (WA school funding phenom). They often have NO BUDGET because it is 100% volunteer. Oh well, we will persevere I am sure. Good thing kids holding signs on street corners is still free. -stevep

[fj pecsy]

Thank you so much!  How do I star?  Anything to help us out would be gratefully accepted, not to mention much needed.

This decision of Google's to kill off support for micro business's is not good for anyone. Where are those business going to go to?  You guessed it, Google's competitors. It was just a mean spirited gratutious slap in the faces of these customers.

Google needs to reverse itself on supporting these microbusiness's.  Just sayin.

Frank

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/vifzlllgDs0J.

[Jeff Schnitzer]

This thread keeps getting more and more surreal.

Google App Engine != Google Apps.  They aren't run by the same people.  I realize there probably isn't a mailing list where you can vent at the Google Apps team, but it's pointless to do it here.

Jeff

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 3:27 AM, River <rive...@gmail.com> wrote:

Greg,

This is truly heartbreaking. A couple years ago I was about to sign up for the free 50 user account to build a social enterprise I had been planning for years, when my daughter was abducted. I had to drop everything and didn’t sign up, but I certainly would have if I’d known if was going away because it was critical to the plan.

 It took 2 years and going into huge debt to recover her. Now, I was just about to sign up for the free 10 user account to build a much scaled down version of the plan, and discover I have just missed it once again. 

Now I must abandon the plan completely because the entire viability was based around zero start up costs, since for the first few years of community work, it will have no income or contributions. Plus I am familiar with Google’s tools and don’t have the time to learn another platform. 

This is very sad. I put so much care and time into building this plan. Now a lot of good that would have been done will not happen. I was so exited about the free Google Apps offering, it revolutionized the ability for certain kinds of social enterprises to get started immediately without funding and start doing good in their communities. 

For some team efforts, a simple integrated infrastructure is everything and all you need to get started. I just wish I had had the foresight and street savvy to guess that it wouldn’t last and put in the 10 minutes it would have take to sign up back when it was 50 users, or at least yesterday when it was 10. Now I can’t do it at all.

Regards,

River

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/MHxDcv1UnmgJ.

[pdknsk]

It's not the same people but it's the same company. This wouldn't even
be a topic on this board, if Google didn't force us to use Google Apps.

[Brandon Wirtz]

Oh? So you don’t use Apps For Domains to Deploy your App? It’d be awesome if you didn’t have to do that, but I kind of think you do.

[Jeff Schnitzer]

And yet as Greg pointed out, GAE usage is unaffected by the Google Apps changes.  You can still create a 1-user free Google Apps system.  So complaining here about 1 user vs 10 users vs 50 users is not productive - I'm willing to bet that nobody on the GAE team has any input into the pricing strategy for Google Apps.

The real problem is that calling a product "Google Apps" is stupid.  I just had a client ask me "did you see that there will no longer be a free tier for app engine?".  Google's product names are confusing.  Ranting to the wrong people on this list is not helping matters.

If ranting here because it's "the same company" is appropriate, just wait until the search and gmail users find us...

Jeff 

--

[Frantisek Fuka]

Oops, the direct link mentioned by me and Balázs Benedek does NOT work because the target domain checks for actual HTTP referer. Either you have to fake it or actually click on the refering link in App Engine panel...

On Monday, December 10, 2012 3:14:42 PM UTC+1, Frantisek Fuka wrote:

It seems that visiting the following URL: https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3?refererName=AppEngine allows you to create Free Google Apps account with ONE user per domain (no matter if you use AppEngine or not). This is seems perfectly acceptable and fair to me (provided that this is not dsome sort of glith to be patched). If you need to have different e-mails for single domain, that's not a problem because you may use Catch-All address and GMail filters to sort these and/or forward them elsewhere.

Again, if this is supposed to be a permanent solution, I am OK with it. If I need more than one physical account per domain then I will pay for those.

[River]

Jeff,

You're probably right that no-one in GAE team has input on pricing strategy for Google Apps, so therefore pointless to vent here. It's a good point and I apologize for diluting a tech thread with this. But it's also not 100% impossible that Greg could put a word through to someone with sensitive ears willing to consider grandfathering a few worthy exceptions. It is not unheard of. I actually heard there were some cases individually considered. I wouldn't bother, but some good things are resting on it. And Frantisek, It's easy to be blase about money when you're consulting and the money is flowing in. I've been there. But voluntary work is unpaid, and in the Philippines just $10 means the difference between a child keeping their teeth or not, for example. But I digress, don't worry, I won't be making a nuisance of myself here; if anyone has a relevant contact in Google I can approach, please let me know.

Thanks,

River. 

On Monday, December 10, 2012 11:18:40 AM UTC-7, Jeff Schnitzer wrote:

And yet as Greg pointed out, GAE usage is unaffected by the Google Apps changes.  You can still create a 1-user free Google Apps system.  So complaining here about 1 user vs 10 users vs 50 users is not productive - I'm willing to bet that nobody on the GAE team has any input into the pricing strategy for Google Apps.

The real problem is that calling a product "Google Apps" is stupid.  I just had a client ask me "did you see that there will no longer be a free tier for app engine?".  Google's product names are confusing.  Ranting to the wrong people on this list is not helping matters.

If ranting here because it's "the same company" is appropriate, just wait until the search and gmail users find us...

Jeff 

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 2:43 AM, Brandon Wirtz wrote:

Oh? So you don’t use Apps For Domains to Deploy your App? It’d be awesome if you didn’t have to do that, but I kind of think you do.

[Pat Glenn]

Hi Andrew,

I set up my domain on the appengine (at least I think I did it correctly). However, how do I know that once the free 30 day trial for the google apps for business expires, that my account on the appengine will automatically take over? Or do I need to do something to switch it over now? Please advise and thanks for your help..  (The domain I set up was "Ben-Glenn.com")

[Nick Hu]

Hi Andrew,

I'm also not able to sign up for Google Apps Standard edition through App Engine - It always takes me to a Google Apps Business trial!

Kind regards,

Nick

[Barry Hunter]

You now need to purchase the Google Apps for Business Account,  then apply for a credit

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-appengine/jC_K-YlmXhM

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[Andrew Jessup]

Hi Pat - unfortunately as we announced last week - we are no longer able to offer the Google Apps Standard edition to App Engine customers. Instead (as Barry notes), we can offer a $50 credit toward your App Engine application to help offset the cost of your Google Apps for Business subscription.

The terms and conditions of the credit, and the form to request one if you are eligible can be found here - http://goo.gl/akrPB

The announcement itself is here - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-appengine/jC_K-YlmXhM

[Balázs Benedek]

Hi Andrew,

What happens at the end of the trial? Is the account simply deleted and the domain-mapped application stops responding on the given domain name?

Thank you,

Balazs

[GAEfan]

This page still states that a new app should get one Google Apps Standard Edition for free:

https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/domains

Just created a new app.  But, the links take you to the paid (not free) Google Apps for Business page.

[sb]

And the page still states I can get it for free, the google apps people tell me I need to pay them $50 a year or they will cut off access.