Are you paying for an email address? Are you a small business or a freelancer? Do you keep buying new domains and need emails for them? If your answer is YES, then you should read further.
Emails are getting expensive, and all freebies plans are over.
Nowadays, emails are costing a lot more than they used to do. I remember they offered free emails when you purchased a domain in the early days. One of the earliest domains I have still had a “lifetime free” email from Godaddy. Also, I still have a free custom domain email id from Gsuite ( Now known as Google Workspace.
Google has stopped the GSuite Legacy plan and has made people pay for it. However, they are giving a free option to people who are individuals. I opted for the free option for manojnayak.com.
Google Workspace Woes
I literally had about five domains, and I had separate google workspace accounts for each of them. I was paying for all five google workspace email IDs. The payment was not so much of a bother, but the administrative part was getting on my nerves. Every time I had to sign into different workspaces and different Gmail accounts. But what broke the camel’s back was that RBI changed the rules for credit card transactions. Now all payments need to be authorised by the user, and the process is somewhat buggy. The bank sends you a link via SMS every time your payment is declined, and then you approve the business that is trying to charge the card with that link. The links sometimes don’t arrive, and sometimes you cannot figure out how to log in to it. It is a complete mess. All five payments failed every month, and I made the payments manually.
Google Workspace Support is complex.
The path to creating a google workspace account is also designed for medium to large businesses and not individuals (obviously) and small businesses. I tried to create a new account, but it gave me an error notification saying, “This number has been used many times to create email accounts”. Hell, am I an outlier who has five workspace emails?
I reached out on Twitter, and the support guy asked me to use another number. I rage on him that I cannot spend 100 $ to buy a new SIM card and a new phone to get a new email which is 2 $. He relents and then asks me to fill out a form. I do get a reply to the form in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, I have shut all my accounts and moved on.
Get an alias email id.
I had always heard about an alias but never had dug deep into what it means until I came across this article. I followed the instructions in the article and then made an alias for each of my domains into my primary Gmail account. Now with one Gmail account, I can control and manage my five other custom domain emails.
Email Nirvana
I feel so relieved that I am now just using one email interface to manage all my five email ids, and that is when all the emails are free. I Saved 600 Rs per month in subscription and a lot more in peace of mind which is priceless.
Guide
How to set up a Gmail custom domain for free | by Artur Piszek | medium
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