Google launches Workspace Essentials Starter, costs you nothing but doesn’t include Gmail

A brand new version of Google Workspace is launching since we don’t already have enough. It’s called Workspace Essentials Starter, and it’s going to cost you a big, fat zero dollars per month for you and your team. Wait, what?

That’s right, Essentials Starter will cost you nothing, and that’s because it looks like it’s being introduced to quell the recent rightful frustrations of G Suite legacy free edition users globally. These users have been integrating Google’s services into their lives for the past 16 years at no cost, but recently, Google decided it would bump them all up to an entry-level paid Workspace account as a means of axing the G Suite branding once and for all.

And starting today, with Essentials Starter, employees can make the switch from legacy productivity tools and experience the difference with Google Workspace

Google Cloud Blog

There is one important caveat to this new edition though – you don’t get Gmail. At this time, at least, it doesn’t look like you do. The company’s blog post detailed its modern collaboration offerings, including email attachments with Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as well as Google Chat, Meet, and Spaces. It also covered the fact that users will get a reduced storage quota (15GB instead of 30GB), but Gmail was nowhere to be seen on the feature list.

There’s a good reason behind this omission though. You see, with Essentials Starter, you’re able to use Workspace and all of its features with your existing work email address. As with standard, free Google Accounts that sign up using a non-Gmail address, they get everything across the board aside from Gmail, so that remains the case here.

With this plan, you also get to host and hold 100 person Google Meet calls for up to an hour at a time, and the cap for your team size is limited to 25 people. Despite this limitation, you can have several “team accounts” in your organization, meaning that you can effectively have a 25 user Essentials Starter account for each division or department if you want.

To get started with Workspace Essentials Starter, just visit the sign up page and enter your existing business email address. If you’re going to migrate over with your whole team, you’d best let whoever will act as your administrator do the initial sign up before inviting you and the rest of the team.