G Suite Legacy Free Edition users are being required to upgrade to Workspace in July

Admins for organizations using G Suite’s Legacy Free edition are receiving emails this morning stating that support for the service is being deprecated. All users are being told that they are now required to upgrade their license to the new and improved Google Workspace. This comes 16 years after having used Google Apps at no cost.

Just about two years ago, Workspace launched, and provides some much-needed polish and improvements to Google’s services, and on top of offering subscriptions for businesses and schools, it also offers individual tier subscriptions for sole proprietors or small businesses with no employees.

In 2020, we introduced –Google Workspace– and tailored our offerings to provide more options to fit customers’ needs. Google Workspace includes all the features you already use, plus several new capabilities including more storage, increased security, 24/7 support, and more.

Google Workspace Admin email sent out this morning

Beginning July 1, 2022, G Suite legacy free edition will be retired, so if anyone currently utilizing it wants to benefit from Gmail, Drive, and other core services going forward, they will need to select a Workspace plan no later than May 1, 2022. Luckily, anyone who doesn’t will automatically be transitioned to an upgraded Google Workspace paid subscription based on their usage.

For anyone even wondering what the heck the legacy free edition is, it was a basic version of Google Apps that was offered to businesses and schools 16 years ago, but it was shut down in 2012. Anyone still on it was grandfathered in to continue using it until now, but it looks like that grandfather clock has struck midnight.

You can get in on Workspace for as little as six bucks per month per user with what’s called Business Starter, but you can see the other options just above in the image. Google states in the email that it only takes a few steps to switch, and doing so before the forced transition means that you can select an upgraded plan for increased storage and such just in case your needs have changed.

Interestingly, while Google is automatically upgrading anyone who has not chosen a plan before the deadline, it’s also suspending Workspace accounts if the owners have not entered billing information in time to be charged. Luckily, you’ll have 60 days to enter those details before losing access to core services like Gmail, Calendar, and Meet. Basically, this is happening whether or not anyone likes it, and they’re not playing around with stragglers. Let us know in the comments if you happen to be using a legacy account and how this affects you if it does at all.