I'm not sure I trust any migration for something this important. I think I'd much rather just pay the $6/mo for my user.
I've always found it's best not to have a "special" kind of account and something tells me a legacy G suite -> consumer account is going to have some holes/inconsistencies that would be hell to deal with.
I guess I'm ok with going through with this because the legacy G Suite account was already a "special" kind of account with all kinds of weird restrictions, and will become even more so once they close off access to the workspace features.
Migrating back to a regular @gmail.com account has been something I wanted to do before they even announced this shutdown TBH.
> ...porting your G Suite legacy free account to a consumer Google account still means that you can’t keep your existing email address with a custom domain name. You would have to use a different email address or find another email provider
This new option is still a no-go for me and doesn't address the primary issue of keeping a custom email address at no additional cost.
porting your G Suite legacy free account to a consumer Google account still means that you can’t keep your existing email address with a custom domain name
I'm not certain they've correctly interpreted that. The source says "This new option won’t include premium features like custom email", which I think may be different. I suspect that means keeping the email address, but losing some of the ability to manage multiple email addresses as an entity.
I'm not sure what's included there, but I think color and design schemes are one of them. And I think you'd lose the ability to have a catchall email address -- something I actually use and like, and would have to consider. But I used it mostly as a spam trap, which is less important now that spam filters are better.
So it sounds like what you'd get if you had a traditional email account with some other provider and used it as your Google login -- which comes with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Pay, and a ton of other things. You don't lose the address -- at least, not the actual addresses attached to accounts, as opposed to the myriad fake addresses I have that end up in catchall.
I think the issue was that there was lots of uncertainty for people that actually want to keep their Google account for Google Photos other other products and that do not care for the custom domain (anymore). The official wording before this change was: “upgrade and pay or ..... Photos ‘may’ not work anymore”
I've always found it's best not to have a "special" kind of account and something tells me a legacy G suite -> consumer account is going to have some holes/inconsistencies that would be hell to deal with.