Google will continue to let individuals and families use G Suite Legacy free edition

This January, G Suite Legacy free edition administrators received an email stating that support for the service they and their organizations had been using for the past 16 years was being deprecated. Understandably, this threw many loyal users into a fit of rage, and many could not understand why Google wanted to push the new and improved Workspace onto them at a cost in its place.

Just a week later, Google responded stating that it would provide a means for those individuals and companies to transition their non-Workspace paid content and most of their data to a no-cost option outside of Workspace instead of being forced to upgrade.

In the coming months, we’ll provide an option for you to move your non-Google Workspace paid content and most of your data to a no-cost option. This new option won’t include premium features like custom email or multi-account management. You’ll be able to evaluate this option prior to July 1, 2022 and prior to account suspension. We’ll update this article with details in the coming months.

Google Workspace Admin Help

While we weren’t truly certain what that new option would look like at the time, we now know that the company has unveiled a free personal tier for previous G Suite Legacy free edition users. In addition to providing the aforementioned upgrade path to Workspace, a new “Personal use: Stay on no-cost Legacy G Suite” option also appears on the transition screen as shown below by Redditor AB3DC and shared with us today via Brett Batie of Clean Drive (thanks!)

Choosing this option prior to June 27, 2022, opts you out of the automatic upgrade to a paid Workspace tier so long as you can confirm that your legacy subscription is being used for personal use. The benefit is that all of your purchases and content will remain intact without needing to be switched over to a free standard Google Account. Taking no action will cause your account to be suspended on August 1, 2022, so I would recommend clicking the link above to do so as soon as possible (requires a super admin account).

G Suite legacy free edition is only intended for personal non-commercial use. If you’re using G Suite legacy free edition for business purposes, we will transition your account to Google Workspace. G Suite legacy free edition does not include support, and in the future we may remove certain business functionality.

Google Workspace Admin Help

Basically, companies are still being forced to upgrade to Workspace, but individuals and families who have been using this edition for years can continue to do so without any disruption. Any company upgrading will be eligible for deep region-based discounts at 50% off for the first 12 months after August 1, 2022. These discounts are viewable on the Admin console.