For the first time ever, Google is raising their prices for G Suite Basic and G Suite Business. Effective April 2, Basic plans will increase from $5 to $6/month and Business plans will increase from $10 to $12/month per user.
Since their introduction into the productivity market over a decade ago, G Suite has grown to offer a larger number of services like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, and more. The email from Google regarding our own G Suite account said this:
We introduced the original version of G Suite, including Gmail and Google Calendar, more than 10 years ago. Since then, we’ve added more than a dozen new G Suite services, including real-time collaboration (Docs, Sheets, Slides), flexible storage (Drive), video conferencing (Hangouts Meet), and enterprise-grade search capabilities (Cloud Search). We’ve also infused our products with advanced artificial intelligence to make it easier to respond to emails and protect against phishing attacks before they happen. The new $12 price for G Suite Business, a 20% increase, brings its price more in line with Microsoft’s Office 365 Business Premium plan, which costs $12.50/month per user.
Google also announced in October the gradual phase out of Google Plus, their social (but not really) network that never quite took off the way they’d hoped. Their failure to reveal a potential data breach (on the heels of The Guardian’s Edward Snowden story) was the nail in the coffin of an already struggling platform. If you’d like to learn more about the fall of Google Plus, Search Engine Journal has a great article here.
All things considered (and even though we don’t personally love the interface), we still whole-heartedly recommend G Suite as a great tool for our clients. Competitive pricing, a substantial set of tools, and advanced integration options make the 20% increase worth it.
