YouGrowIT
Google Workspace
Google says your free account is a business account. Now what?
If an email has arrived telling you a legacy free Google Workspace or G Suite account is being used commercially and must move to a paid subscription, you have a real deadline and a decision to make. Neither is as bad as it feels — but the clock is genuinely running.
Read the dates in your notice, then decide. Don't let it lapse.
What's actually happening
The old free tiers — G Suite legacy free edition and the free Workspace accounts that came with them — were always licensed for personal, non-commercial use. Plenty of Australian small businesses have been running on one for fifteen years without anyone raising an eyebrow.
Google is now enforcing that condition. Accounts identified as being used commercially are being told to move to a paid subscription, with a window to upgrade or to appeal the classification.
If nothing happens by the deadline, the account is cancelled: your people lose Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Meet, and an administrator keeps console access for a limited period to set up billing or export the data before that goes too.
There is no single sunset date to look up. This is happening account by account, and the dates that matter are the ones in your notice. If you've had one, that email is the thing to read first — and worth forwarding to whoever is going to deal with it.
You have three options, and one of them is free
1. Pay Google
Upgrade to a paid Workspace subscription and carry on. Nothing moves, nothing breaks, and if your business genuinely lives in Google Docs and Sheets this is very likely the right answer.
We'll tell you if we think it is. "Stay where you are" is free advice.
2. Appeal the classification
If the account really is personal, there's an appeals process. Be aware that people have reported appeals being rejected without much explanation — so appeal if it's genuinely warranted, but have a plan for the deadline arriving anyway.
3. Move to Microsoft 365
If you're paying for Google while your team actually works in Word, Excel and Teams — or you're about to start paying for something you never chose — this is the moment to consolidate. Fixed price, agreed before anything starts.
We have no stake in which one you pick. We don't take a margin on Google licences or on Microsoft ones — you pay the vendor what the vendor charges, either way.
When moving is the right call, and when it isn't
Worth moving if…
- Your team already writes in Word and works in Excel, and Docs is just where email happens to live.
- You're paying for Microsoft licences and about to pay for Google. Plenty of businesses are.
- A customer, insurer or tender has started asking security questions and you need the tooling to answer them.
- Nobody can quite remember who controls the account, or it's in a former employee's name.
Stay put if…
- Your business genuinely runs on Google Docs and Sheets, with shared documents people edit together all day.
- You've built things on Google Forms, Sites, Apps Script or Google-integrated tools that would need rebuilding.
- The deadline is very close and a rushed migration would be worse than a subscription you can reconsider later.
That last one matters. If you're out of runway, pay Google for a month or two and move calmly afterwards. A migration done the weekend before a cutoff is how attachments go missing. We'd rather tell you that than sell you a rushed job.
If you're moving: the fixed price
$990 base + $165 per user, inc GST
A typical ten-person business lands around $2,640 inc GST — one price, agreed up front, for the complete move.
Included
- A look at what you've actually got — accounts, mailboxes, Drive, shared drives, aliases, domains
- Microsoft 365 tenant built with a security baseline: MFA and sensible defaults from day one
- Licence selection billed at cost — we don't clip the ticket
- Gmail, Calendar and Contacts migrated
- Google Drive and shared drives moved to OneDrive and SharePoint
- DNS cutover scheduled outside business hours
- Every staff device reconfigured — Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, phones
- Plain-English handover, and two weeks of post-migration support
Your email keeps working the whole way through. Nothing in Google is deleted until you've confirmed everything arrived.
Line-of-business integrations, Apps Script rebuilds and ongoing training are quoted separately — and the fixed quote says so before you commit.
More detail on how a migration runs · Other fixed-price projects
Working backwards from your deadline
A small business move is usually a week or two of elapsed time, most of which is waiting rather than working. What it needs is a start date that isn't the day before.
- A short call. How many people, how much mail, what's in Drive, and what the notice actually says.
- A fixed quote in writing — including our honest read on whether you should move at all.
- The move, with the disruptive parts out of hours and a buffer before your deadline.
Tell us the date on your notice and we'll tell you the latest sensible start.
Straight answers
Do we have to decide right now?
No, but don't let it lapse. If the deadline is close, paying Google for a month buys you the room to choose properly. That's cheaper than a rushed migration and much cheaper than a suspended account.
What happens to fifteen years of email?
It comes with you. Mail, calendars and contacts are copied across, and nothing is deleted on the Google side until you've confirmed it all arrived.
Do we have to take a support package too?
No. The migration stands on its own, and plenty of businesses have us do exactly that and nothing else. If you'd like someone keeping an eye on it afterwards, the packages are month to month — and what IT support costs shows how that compares to the rest of the market.
Our account is in someone's personal name. Is that a problem?
It's common and it's fixable, but it's the part worth starting early — proving ownership of a domain or an account can take days rather than minutes. Tell us on the first call.