I’ve been a member of the g-suite family for almost 20 years. My plan went up from $4 a month to $6 a month to $12 a month to now $21 a month, but now my storage is being cap at 5TB and I’m being asked to either delete my data or pay $300 additional for a wapping 10TB more.
After almost 20 years with gsuite and managing multipel user and multiple domains, now I’m going to have to move to office365.
I think reducing all G Suite functionality to storage is a bit unfair and just highlights how long you’ve been overpaying for G Suite after price increases or not taking advantage of all it has to offer (due to ignorance or different personal needs ). I explain it
If we value the tool as such, the increase in the payment per user makes sense mainly to maintain those features that have been introduced over time and have benefited us without paying more than what we were paying at that time.
By this I understand the need to increase its cost, I deduce that to pay for the maintenance of the development of that growth and improvements over time.
It is understandable the frustration of the change where you start to pay more and lose a benefit that you had until now, however with a more understandable approach it can be a way of inviting the user to better manage their storage.
I have doubts about decision making and changing the amount of storage and costs is something lightly at Google. I would like to think that they have carried out a prior analysis of the impact that the number of users will have, and about these, how much data and type of data will be affected, and they will have reached a conclusion that is most favorable for all, where the “invite the user to better manage their data” since, by modifying the platform, they still intend to invest more in Cloud Storage or integrate it with GSuite with their corresponding costs, of course. Somehow I want to think that there is something meaningful behind these types of decisions and that is what personally invites me to reflect.
Something similar happened to me in my case, perhaps not as traumatic, but a bit frustrating.
My solution was to analyze what I store, how I use it and if I am really efficient in this task. Which led me to reorganize myself and now be more efficient.
If I had a need for more storage, I would first assess the type of data I’m storing, the need for it, and whether it really is the most effective way to store that information.
I take a similar approach like setting up S3 Buckets basic concepts on AWS (sorry GCP, I’m more experienced on AWS these days), where the “storage type” should be defined by the “data type” to query, regular queries, or long queries, fast or slow access, etc. Where the cost of the service is associated with the type of use that is given to it. Since we are talking about consumption, greater use, greater payment. It makes sense looking for efficiency.
Extrapolated to the situation you mention, I could be wrong but in my opinion, the use of that space is not being properly valued. With Cloud Storage, you can manage that storage more efficiently. If just because you need more space you consider migrating all settings, I just think:
Just in my opinion, migrating for storage only reveals how little benefit you get from the rest of the G Suite features, so maybe the switch is your solution.
Who knows, I only invite you to reflect on the use you currently make of your storage, since due to your situation, with a 20-year experience, I am not sure which will be more traumatic, managing 1 TB and revaluing the storage which offers the opportunity to reassess and reorganize or “migrating 20 years configurations” to a new tool.
Time is also value.
Regards,
Sergio G.
I could understand, and I could see how we can volunteer to cleanup storage space or some people could benefit of storage cleaning, but I cannot. I am a videographer, and I join the Gsuite, not for the other options and service that they offer, but for the unlimited storage which is why I became a member.
This is not about Google making decisions to benefit all of us, I don’t see how cutting back will benefit myself or others as we now are forced to either delete data, or we won’t be able to update them to google drive.
I don’t use about 90 of their services except for what I join them which 20 years ago, was the unlimited storage. I’ve been grandfather into this, and now, google made a decision to cap that at 5GB. Now I have to shop around for other services, because of this. I’m pretty sure, there’s others out there feeling my pain trying to cleanup before they are not longer able to sync. I don’t see any benefits on this.
I recently join Office 365 which is giving me more products that I use, and more storage space for less than half of google. I’m not complainting about that, I’m just saying that it is sad that a company would change plans on grandfatered accounts for a benefit to themselfs. Not a benefits to their customers. To me there is nothing good about cutting back as I cannot just delete videos just to cleanup my google drive. I have my processes, and procedures, and now I have to change everything, including the retention to my clients because google changed the plans to me.
I didn’t get a call, or notification giving me a choice at minimum, The plan was changed, and I was notified that I was over my cap of 5TB. My decision was to move on after 20 years of being a customer.