Today, Google announced that they are eliminating their free Google Apps service. To many, this may not mean much because they are unfamiliar with what this service offered. However, it means a heck of a lot to low-end users and startups just looking for the easy-to-use basics.
You see, Google’s App Services are a collection of things – Mail, Calendar, Docs, Ads, Analytics and the like. This collection is what we, and numerous others, used to setup our personal emails as well as our clients. While individually you can still get all of these things for free, Google has now taken away the ability to group accounts together under a single domain.
Starting today, you are no longer able to attach your company’s URL to the end of your google mail without paying. This also does away with the free central management of a company’s emails and easy collaboration between organizations. In its place, individuals, startups and small businesses alike must now choose between paying $50 per user per year or going elsewhere. For us, it is too costly and we must go somewhere else.
In order to keep our prices so low, we have to constantly be searching for the cheapest solutions with the best user experience. That is why new users of PogoPlus will now be using Zoho Mail for their email solution. Current plan subscribers will not be switched.
Zoho’s mail offering is comparable to Google’s in both interface and features. It offers its own easy-to-use version of Mail, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Contacts & More and is a well known and respected company. Their costs are lower than Googles so we are able to take a smaller hit and continue to pass on the savings to you. If we were not to make this switch, we would have to increase our prices – something we try to stay away from at all costs (call us Republicans or something!).
We hope you understand as we make this transition. When prices raise – kinda like taxes – changes have to be made and it affects the work that we do. We promise to continue to offer the same great experience to our new customers that our present ones enjoy now. Thanks for considering, or continuing to be a part of, the PogoPlus family.
EDIT: A clever author at TechWalls has figured out How to Get Free Google Apps for a single user.
