These G Suite Alternatives Are Cheaper or Free
G Suite (formerly Google Workspace) has retired its free plans – you can no longer pay for a domain name and use Google’s corporate email for free. The move won’t bother large organizations much as they are all already in paid tiers, but small business owners or individuals using G Suite will be forced to pay or look for free alternatives.
Switching to a paid G Suite account
For most people, the smoothest transition will be to a paid G Suite account. You won’t have to move your data anywhere if you can spend at least $6 per user per month. For that price, you can use 30 GB of cloud storage, Gmail with your own domain, and hang out with up to 100 people. At the very least, you can consider paying for G Suite as a temporary measure until you find a better alternative.
Microsoft 365 for business
The Microsoft Business Applications Suite is a direct replacement for G Suite. Its plans start at $6 per user per month , but you’ll have to spend about double that if you want to use both email and the Office desktop apps. Microsoft offers 50GB of mailbox space and 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is more than 30GB of G Suite. That being said, Microsoft 365 for business as a whole is still quite expensive. Google Docs, Sheets, and other G Suite apps are included for free in Google’s plan, making Microsoft 365 look a lot more expensive.
Zoho Workplace
Zoho Workplace offers most of the G Suite features at a much lower price. It allows you to use your own email domain with 5 GB of space for free without ads. You can create an organization in Zoho and invite up to five people to join for free. There is a 25MB limit on attachments, but the price makes it bearable.
If you’re looking for a free alternative to G Suite, it can’t get any better. You can visit the Zoho Mail pricing page and scroll down to the Forever free plan . If you add more than five users, Zoho Mail plans start at $1 per user per month (billed annually). The 50GB plan costs $4 per user per month, so it’s cheaper than G Suite and Microsoft 365 for business.
For those who want a complete email office suite, Zoho Workplace is a worthy alternative. It has email, cloud storage, hangouts, a Slack alternative, and office apps for a starting price of $3 per user per month.
iCloud+
If your G Suite organization is one person, you might consider using a custom domain with iCloud email service. The iCloud+ plan costs $1/month for up to 50GB of cloud storage and lets you use your own domain for your emails.
iCloud+ is not intended for businesses, so you should not use this service to manage multiple users in an organization. For individuals, you have access to both iCloud email and Apple’s already free office apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Collaboration on documents also works well in Apple’s office apps.
Having said that, it’s best to point out the features of iCloud+. Ideally, you don’t want to use this if you have non-Apple devices in your workflow, because Apple’s support for Windows and Android devices is unreliable at best. Also, iCloud email is OK, but we’ve heard a few complaints about emails not showing up in the inbox and an overly aggressive spam filter.
ProtonMail
ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption of your emails, which means that the email service provider cannot read the content of your emails. If you’re looking for a more private alternative to G Suite, the free tier of ProtonMail is worth checking out.
Its paid plans start at about $4 per month, which gives you 15GB of space, support for your own email domain, and up to 10 email addresses. ProtonMail doesn’t have a built-in office suite, but you can use its cloud storage service called Proton Drive if you opt for the most expensive plan at around $10/month.
You should be aware that even if you use an end-to-end encrypted email service, encryption only works if you send email to other users using a similar level of protection. If you send an email to a Gmail user from ProtonMail, the encryption breaks because Gmail does not encrypt emails in its service.
Cryptopad
If you are looking for a more secure alternative to Google Docs, check out CryptPad , an end-to-end encrypted office suite. The free tier allows you to use up to 1 GB of storage space and has alternatives to Google Docs and Sheets, as well as a few other tools. If you don’t plan on storing large files here, the free tier should be enough to store a ton of documents. If you’re willing to start paying, plans start at around $5/month for 5GB of storage.
Other Email Alternatives for G Suite
There are some decent options for those who need a non-Google email service. Here is a short list of the best options:
- Fastmail : You get a 30 GB mailbox for $5 per user per month with support for custom domains. The service allows for aliases, has no tracking, and blocks deleted images by default.
- Hey . Developed by Basecamp, Hey offers a fresh take on email. It’s pricey at $12 per user per month for custom domains, but it has useful features like email tracking blocking, good email filtering, and improved email reading.
- Rackspace : With plans starting at $2.99 per user per month, this is a cheaper G Suite alternative that offers 25GB of storage for your inbox on the basic plan.