How to Beat Google’s Recent G-Suite Price Increase

A 20% Price Increase For G-Suite.

Earlier this month, Google increased their prices for G-suite basic and business plans from $5 to $6 per user per month.  That may not seem like much, but if you have 20 email accounts in your organization then you’re looking at a $20 a month increase, adding up to $240 a year. Any time you’re given a 20% price rise, your mind naturally shifts to thinking about either

1. how you can avoid the increase, or
2. whether it’s time to shop around for alternative providers.

I strongly encourage you NOT to jump ship and move to an alternative provider for your email hosting without proper consideration and a really good reason. But there might be some options for you along the lines of that first bullet point…..

How Can I Avoid This Increase?

Ok, ok, you’re going to pay the extra $1 for each account you have – that is as certain as death and taxes. But a quick review of your current accounts might reveal a couple of opportunities to scale back on the number of accounts you have. So if you have 10 accounts today, but could get by with only 8, the numbers look like this

• Historically: 10 accounts x $5 = $50 monthly
• With price increase: 10 accounts x $6 = $60 monthly
• By removing 2 unnecessary accounts: 8 accounts x $6 = $48

I choose option 3!

Let’s talk about two main strategies for beating this price increase by making sure you’re not paying for accounts you don’t need – aliases and groups. Start with this – make a list of all your accounts. Let’s say your organization has 10 accounts as follows:

1. bob@
2. jack@
3. mary@
4. cindy@
5. michael@
6. claire@
7. info@
8. sales@
9. help@
10. service@

The first question to ask is – which of these are not people? We all create email addresses that are used as corporate contact addresses, or for teams. That’s usually the place to start – can we cut a few addresses and create more of a 1-to-1 relationship between addresses and people? In the above case, I’d be looking at info@, sales@, help@ and service@ because there could be an easy alternative to paying $6 a month for each of those.

The process is explained in this video:

Alias Names in G-Suite

The first strategy is using a feature called “alias names” – an alias is basically a second address for a single account. An example of this might be that help@ is an email address that is advertised to your customers, and it’s Cindy’s job to handle those emails. In this case, an ideal setup would be to make “help” an alias of “cindy”.

To Create An Alias Name In G-Suite

If you’re logged into gmail as a G-Suite administrator, you can select the settings gear in the top right of your inbox, and select “manage this domain”. Then you’ll be taken to your G-suite admin console.

1. Select users.
2. Search for cindy’s profile.
3. Go into the settings for her personal profile.
4. Click on user information.
5. Under email aliases click on the edit icon.
6. Add “help” as a new alias.
7. Now any emails to help@ will arrive in Cindy’s inbox.

Note: This is usually the best strategy for cancelling an ex-employee’s account, and forwarding new messages to their address to their manager or colleague.

Groups In G-Suite

The second strategy is using a feature called “groups”. If you have an email address that receives incoming messages for multiple individuals, like a team, that is a perfect situation to utilize groups. For example, you may promote an email address called sales@ and it’s Claire and Michael’s job to monitor those emails. In this case, we could create a group called sales@ and then have claire@ and michael@ as members of the group.

To Setup A Group In G-Suite

1. Click the groups icon on your admin console.
2. Click Create Group.
3. Give the group a name and an email handle (like Sales Team and “sales”).
4. Assign an owner (eg. Claire).
5. Add claire@ and michael@ as members of the group.
6. To allow members of the public to be able to email the group, you must check the box allowing external people to publish posts (refer to the video on this page for a demo)
7. Click Create Group
8. Now there is an address called sales@ which people can email.

This is a second example where you can create a new email address without having to pay any additional g-suite subscriptions.

Final Notes To Consider

1. Deleting Accounts

Note that you can’t create an alias or group name for an address that already exists as a user. You need to delete the user, then create the group or alias after that. Before you delete a user you should ask yourself:

1. Does the group or alias give me everything I was otherwise needing from the dedicated email account?
2. Is there anything remaining in the inbox of that account that I need (because once you delete the user, it’s gone!).

And don’t forget, you don’t realize a cost saving until you actually delete a user!

2. For WordJack Clients With G-Suite

Your email hosting costs are included in your monthly subscription, so you won’t experience any difference in your monthly costs from this Google price rise. But we may recommend aliases or groups in your G-Suite configuration to ensure your setup is both efficient and serving your needs. Please contact your WordJack Web Marketing Manager if you have any questions.