In the latest move, search engine giant Google Inc. completely removes the option for freely signing a Google Apps account. Now the only option for the end user is to sign up for a “Google Apps for Business” account which is quite expensive given the fact that most of the time people use Google Apps for custom Email address.
This move comes as a surprise to many of the new users who want to use the facilities of Google Email with their own custom domain names. But from now onwards there is no option for signing up for a free Google Apps account.
Google Apps for business is basically a paid version of Google Apps which gives user some premium features such as 25 GB of storage and 24×7 support. This features however comes at a steep price of 5$ per user per month. In case if you are opting for annual payment option then you will have to pay 50$ per user. This means if you want 5 user Google Apps account then it will cost you around 250$ per year!
It is still not clear what will be the fate for all those users who are presently using free version of Google Apps. I also have received the Email from Google stating that from now onwards they are dropping the option for signing up for a free Google Apps account.
After this move from Google, individual users will have to go for other free services which provides the facility of using custom domains for email service. Outlook.com is one of them