[marksbrown]

I honestly cannot believe the hubris. A 20% price hike and removal of features mid-term. If I don't pay for the email accounts I apparently didn't pay for, I will lose my business email accounts. I get the impression I should just have stuck with : <official sounding>_<country> @ gmail.com and moved on with my life. Maddening.

[ornornor]

That comes with its own set of issues when google decides to block your account for reasons only known to their algorithms and there are no humans to talk to. You end up locked out of your business email with no recourse.

[marksbrown]

What is an SME supposed to do? I need static web-hosting and an email server that will not get blocked by Google!

[jcrawfordor]

Smaller commercial email providers are probably a good balance of competence and reliability (their email service is their revenue source) and better customer service (they have few enough customers that they care more about each of them). Fastmail is often brought up in this category. I think Zoho is pretty good too if you're looking for more of a complete G-suite like offering with other applications. Both of these companies also increasingly feel like more competent or at least better-run software engineering organizations than Google.

[ornornor]

Having your own domain you control the MX record. If google locks you out, you can still move to another host for your email on the same day. You don't get your historical email (unless you backed it up with offlineimap or something like that) but at least you still have access and control over the address. Using @gmail.com for your business (or even personal email) is asking for trouble given how notorious google is at locking people out with no recourse and for mysterious reasons.

[tarsinge]

Gmail, Fastmail... with custom domain

[JoshTriplett]

Fastmail.

[dakiol]

The problem with Google is that if your account gets blocked/banned for whatever reason, you can just say goodbye to it. Minor companies like Gandi do have human customer service, so there's always the chance to recover the account (and move on to another service one you make a dump of your data and all).

[tarsinge]

You still own the domain and are free to setup another hosting with the same address. With Gmail if you're banned it's over you lose access to everything and have to manually reach to all your contacts.

[behringer]

what's amazing to me is that the only reason you would pay up to double what other registrars charge is because of the free services they throw in.

I have a feeling Gandi is going to go down the tubes very fast.

[marksbrown]

For a small business expense and the annoyance of having to extend effort to change something that just works, it was a pretty sensible decision. Now I've got to go down the rabbit hole of playing the free market game for what should just be a damn simple thing. Why is web hosting & email so difficult in 2023!?!