[olug] Google changes to free

[Ben Hollingsworth]

Hey Dan,

Sorry to hear about your Google troubles.  I don't use G Suite myself, 
but...

I've run jedi.com email several different ways since 1995.  For the last 
11 years, I've registered the domain at Namecheap (a very pro-FOSS 
company).  They host the DNS on their servers, and I have all my 
family's jedi.com mail addresses set up with them as redirects, mostly 
to gmail addresses that no outsiders ever see. You can even set up 
multiple destinations for a single address, so (for instance) my son's 
email also gets copied to my wife's and my accounts.  The only cost for 
that is the $10-ish per year for the domain registration.  On gmail, I 
then set up an "alternate email address" so that my jedi.com addresses 
is configured as an alias to my gmail address.  I send & receive all my 
mail as jedi.com, and people have to look at the Received headers to 
know it's passing through gmail.  My mail clients all communicate 
directly with gmail servers.

It's been working quite well, especially for the price.  My only 
complaint is that on rare occasion (once every few years), the Namecheap 
mail servers will introduce a delay of up to a few hours in the mail 
routing process.  That's rare, as far as I can tell. Generally, the 
delay is only a matter of seconds.

I can give you more details if you want to go this route.

On 2/5/22 10:10, Dan Linder wrote:
> Not sure who has heard about the plan, but Google is changing the terms of
> the free G-Suite service this year:
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-tells-free-g-suite-users-pay-up-or-lose-your-account/
>
> I signed up for it near the beginning - it's how I host the Linder.org
> email and use GMail for the actual mail processing.
>
> Over the years I've set up a handful of emails on this for my wife, kids,
> and parents, and only used the Google docs/spreadsheet/etc. lightly.  If
> nothing happens with the change, I'll now have a $42/month bill for their
> services - it's not "break the bank" level, but still, $500/year is pretty
> hard to get past the family financial controller (e.g. wife).
>
> We're an Android family, and all of our devices are registered with our @
> linder.org email.  They haven't said what happens to our devices and
> purchases if we let the @linder.org link with Google expire.
>
> So I have two comments for the greater OLUG group:
> 1: If you're concerned, please take some time to fill out their survey
> about this:
>
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeY9yv4WGCHvOiJN4tgt3SdsunaVBoT_6rN8un9Q4_lzBKGeA/viewform
> *(It's only one question, so reading an "it'll take you X minutes" comment
> takes longer than filling it out...)*
>
> 2: I've been looking a bit at other email providers (Microsoft O365,
> ProtonMail, etc).  Transferring might be a pain, but I'm willing to change
> to another hosted provider if I'm being forced to by Google anyway.  And
> there are enough options available now (vs 15 years ago) that I can be a
> bit more selective.  Does anyone have any suggestions on where they might
> have a domain hosted that has a decent email web experience (mail filters,
> good spam filtering, etc)?
>
> Thoughts?
> Dan
>


-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com www.Jedi.com 
<http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/