C'mon Google, it's time for a Gsuite Family plan

+Google  recently announced a new family plan covering Google Calendar, Keep, and Youtube. This is a fine idea except that it's only available to gmail users (that is, users whose email address ends in @gmail.com).

This makes it unavailable to many Google users, especially to those who are paying customers rather than using the free tier. This includes me and my family who are on a mixture of Gsuite paid and legacy "Apps for Domains" accounts.

Now I'm sure Google would want me and my family to switch over to using an @gmail.com account, but that ain't going to happen. On the other hand, I might just stop using Google for my private email altogether if we continue to be treated as second-class users.

You see the reason people like me have our own domains is that we want to keep it for life. We don't want to be held ransom by an ISP because they own our email address. Although Gmail is ISP agnostic, the same principle applies: I don't want to have to use Gmail just because I don't want to lose my email address. I want to use it because it's the best choice for me. When it stops being the best choice, I will move somewhere else and not have to worry about losing my email address.

I've had the same email address for more than 15 years and across several email service providers. That's not changing any time soon just because Google's product development are too inept to realise that shutting out these users is poor business. This is the same lack of clue that contributed strongly to the spectacular failure of Google Spaces.

Now I do realise that Google have shifted Google Apps from being a primarily consumer-centric tool to being a business and Enterprise tool, now rebranded as Gsuite. I am a paying Gsuite customer for my own business, and work with may others who have adopted GSuite for their business IT. It's a great service. I do also appreciate that the old "Apps for Domains" is, potentially, a competitor to this; a way for businesses to get access to hosted email on their domain without paying for the GSuite service.

However, I do believe there is a missed opportunity here, and that is a family oriented Gsuite plan. When I look at GSuite pricing I see this:

These are now my only options if I want to host my own domain email with Google. As a business I can see the benefit. As a personal user, that's simply not going to happen. To host my family's email with Google would cost me $25 per month. No Way!!!

Surely there has to be a way for Google to offer a more reasonably priced plan for families who wish to use their own domain. These are going to be customers who aren't going to accept an @gmail.com email address, and will go elsewhere if you don't give them a good option. And it's something they could upsell to existing free tier users to move them to becoming paying customers.

I think many families would be happy to pay somewhere between $5 and $10 per month to have a domain hosted email for their whole family (perhaps $5 per 5 users with a maximum limit).

Of course, the challenge is to prevent erosion of the business Gsuite business to people misusing the family plan deals for their business. There may be several approaches to this, including limiting the SLA's, and restricting some of the features (such as having a very limited Admin capability). Another option would be to limit the invoicing and subscription payment options (for instance, making it so subscription payments can only be done via Google Play).

Of course, some small business users will use it anyway, but these are probably the sorts of very small businesses or organisations who wouldn't pay $5 per month for the business grade GSuite anyway, so it could act as a gateway into GSuite for these users.