Google offers free version Workspace for everyone with a business email address

Google is releasing a free option within the Workspace ecosystem where anyone can get unlimited access to Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Chat, Drive, and Meet. The Essentials Starter Edition ‘subscription’ can only be activated with a business email address.

The free variant of the business service gives everyone access to the listed Google services, except for Gmail. This is because users of the Workspace Essentials Starter Edition subscription can only sign up with their own domain name in the format ‘name@your-company.com’. No credit card information is required to purchase the subscription. Until now, paid subscriptions of Workspace allowed users to create their own company email address.

Most options of the free Essentials Starter Edition correspond to those of the current Business Starter subscription of 5.20 euros per person. For example, users with up to 100 participants can make video calls and collaborate via the cloud in the listed applications. However, an Essentials subscription only has 15GB of free storage, half the cloud storage space for Business Starter customers. In addition, there is a limit of one hour per Meet session; a fraction of the maximum duration of 24 hours for all other subscriptions.

The idea behind a free Workspace subscription, according to Google, is to let users “make their own choices about which productivity tools they use.” The search giant also explicitly mentions that the Workspace subscription also supports Microsoft Office files, an indication that this is a response to Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription that is used by countless companies.

Image via Google