

Google deleted a number of free Google Apps email accounts last month or so - jasonbarone

I realize this may come off as complaining, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it&#x27;s been yet another incredibly frustrating thing from Google.<p>Google Apps used to be free(freemium), for those that can&#x27;t remember.<p>Because it was free, for years I setup numerous clients&#x27; domain emails on Google Apps for all the reasons we all like Google Apps (spam filtering, groups, storage, forwarding, etc). Many of them were setup to forward a copy of emails into those clients&#x27; alternative&#x2F;personal email addresses.<p>Since many of these users NEVER logged into Google Apps, Google called these accounts &quot;inactive&quot; and about month ago deleted every single one of them.<p>I understand Google no longer offers free accounts, but some of these clients had no idea their accounts was being shut down and obviously just paid no attention (or missed) the emails Google sent out.<p>Ugh, frustrating to say the least. I take blame though. I even missed Google&#x27;s warning messages on my own accounts and one of my Google accounts was wiped too...
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jnardiello
I've got several accounts deleted as well. Let me say that they warned that
those accounts were going to be closed with several emails, all sent with
weeks of advance. I realize that your customers may have simply ignored all
the communications, but in this particular case, Google just did a fair and
comprehensible move (at least, makes sense to me). On the other side, Google
accounts that were actually actively used, are still there.

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pan69
I received a number of emails regarding deactivation of certain accounts.
Other accounts which are actively used didn't receive any notifications and
remained as they were.

But yes, the Google Apps freemium is greatly missed. Over the years I've
mounted quite a number of domains onto the free Google Apps simply to have a
single email address available on the domain. In normal circumstances these
accounts would receive hardly any traffic.

I'm still looking for an alternative email service where I can, in a single
account, mount a large amount of domains for the single reason to have any
number of email inboxes available for that domain. To be more precise, I'm
looking for a service that allows me to mount an unlimited number of domains
and charge me for traffic and storage rather per domain and/or inbox. Maybe
this includes a reasonable annual flat fee as well (say $50 USD or something).

Any suggestions welcome..

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j_s
"How to get free single-user Google Apps accounts"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538)

[http://lifehacker.com/5967336/use-google-app-engine-to-
get-g...](http://lifehacker.com/5967336/use-google-app-engine-to-get-google-
apps-for-your-domain-for-free)

I'm about to see if it still works, 1.5 years later.

~~~
pan69
I believe this used to work but I don't think it does anymore.

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j_s
I created a new Google account @thenewdomain to login and setup, then deleted
the free 30-day trial of Google Apps for Business and am left with my
1-account-only Google Apps. I will let you know if/when it gets shut down, but
for now it seems to be working...

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rahimnathwani
I'm surprised that you're using forwarding instead of giving your clients
access using the gmail app and/or IMAP/SMTP. I've found this works better than
forwarding, primarily because I don't then have to maintain my own reliable
authenticated SMTP service.

Anyway, my personal experience was that the warning messages before deletion
were over-and-above what could be deemed reasonable. They were sent to the
domain administrator, and also to the email address specified when creating
the account (i.e. to a different domain). The text was something like:

"We noticed that you haven’t used your Google Apps account for the domain
[redacted].com in over a year. Please let us know if you’d like to keep this
account."

All I had to do to keep the account was log in via the web, just once.

~~~
jasonbarone
Totally agree. I did give them full access. I guess I would say it was an
alternative to doing Godaddy forwarding addresses. Since Apps was free, it
made sense to just set it up through Google and give them the benefit of
having a rock solid system that was doubling as cloud backup.

In the past I've had countless scenarios where clients lost their entire
computer, or mobile, and they didn't have any backup. The first thing they
want to get back is their email. After digging in, they commonly had
forwarders setup via their domain registrar, meaning they effectively had no
backups on the server.

Apps was basically the free solution to that, with the added benefit of what
you said-- having access via IMAP/SMTP.

Since most of these clients were local/small(one owner) businesses, most of
them simply said "can you forward it to my personal email?"

Most of my larger small business clients accessed it like I would-- IMAP/SMTP.

My complain here is that Google wiped these accounts calling them inactive. In
my opinion, inactive accounts should have been accounts with zero email
activity, not zero login activity. But I guess it's too late now...

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scintill76
FWIW, I got fair warning about this mailed to the admin address on an
abandoned free Apps domain. Google is still being a bit abrupt, but probably
sent out a warning that could have been heeded if the admin were more on top
of things.

~~~
jasonbarone
Agreed, a simple login to the account would have prevented the deletion. Still
wish Google didn't assume the account was not being used simply because of not
logging in. Some of these accounts were receiving (and forwarding) 20, 30+
messages a day.

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staunch
Yup. Pretty lame. How much were my inactive accounts costing them?

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rahimnathwani
You used the past tense. Does that mean you let the accounts be deleted,
rather than spending 30 seconds per domain to log in?

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staunch
I have dozens of domains under my control. Many for friends and family. Some
of them are for babies that don't check their email very much yet.

The fact is that Google gave those accounts away and then did an opt-out
cancel on them. They want to push people off their free service they offered
to make them pay. This is something Microsoft or Yahoo would do, sure, but not
the old Google.

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eli
Did the email warning of the shutdown not get forwarded as well?

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jasonbarone
After digging, I found the ones that came to me but I missed mine the first
time. Again, my fault though. My clients who experienced problems didn't
recall seeing anything. My guess is they saw it and didn't care (like usual),
or they just missed it altogether.

~~~
eli
Definitely a bummer. Tough spot for Google though: for people using the
service only for email forwarding what else can they do besides send
increasingly dire warning emails?

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jessaustin
Presumably this comes too late to warn anyone who would have been
inconvenienced? Or are we supposed to worry that _active_ free accounts are
next?

~~~
jasonbarone
Yea, I just found out over the past 2 weeks or so. Apparently the warnings
started coming through about 2 months ago or so, and they were shut down about
2 weeks ago. I've gotten a few emails from these clients over that time.

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drz
This is standard practice with free accounts all across the industry. Inactive
free accounts are regularly pruned. As long as the provider has stated their
policy explicitly, they are entirely in the clear. They wouldn't even have to
send you reminders, that's just courtesy. You have nobody to blame but
yourself.

