The morning was rather calm. Then, suddenly, an email came to me and I had a strong feeling of unease. It came from the Google Workspace team. The subject line was “IMPORTANT: Price change for zatz.com”. Zatz.com is the primary domain for my Workspace Enterprise subscription.
I opened the email, read it, and that feeling was definitely strengthened. Indeed, the email simply stated that the price would increase in a month, but gave no details. I did, however, appreciate that the email ended with a section titled “We’re here to help.”
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
I quickly logged into my corporate account with a bit of trepidation. Just knowing that the rate I pay is going to increase worries me. Everything is getting so expensive these days. Above all, I am completely stuck with my Google Enterprise Workspace subscription due to the 57 TB currently hosted on the tech giant’s servers and in the cloud.
A very innocent little banner
It wasn’t very difficult to find the bad news, thanks to the banner at the top of the main admin interface.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
I clicked on View Details, and saw this:
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Let’s break down what that means. Because I have a lot of data stored on Google servers, I had to upgrade a few years ago from a Google Workspace small business subscription to a full Enterprise subscription.
To be eligible to purchase the Enterprise plan, you must purchase five “seats”, that is, a license for five users. I only have two users, but what Google wants, Google gets. After all, it’s becoming almost impossible to find cloud storage with the capacity I need at a reasonable price.
While the price of $20 per month for five users is a little hard to swallow, the $100 I’ve paid so far is absolutely fine for 57TB of storage. But today, or at least in 30 days, that $20/month per seat increases to $27.60. My $100 per month fee increases by almost 40%, to $138 per month.
How these price changes may affect you
Google is not at all transparent when it comes to its business subscriptions. The main Google Workspace pricing page simply says “Contact Sales.” The Google Workspace blog does not mention a price increase, at least as of this writing.
However, there is mention of an increase in the price of the Enterprise Standard plan from $20 to $23 (less than what I received) in a January 3, 2024 post on the Cumulus Global (a Google partner) blog.
I may face a larger price increase due to the amount of storage I consume. But it is difficult to get clarity on this. I contacted Google through different channels. If I get a clearer answer, I’ll update this article.
Beyond my personal case, the receipt of this email nevertheless proves that “cloudflation” still exists. Last year, YouTube Premium raised its prices, Spotify Premium raised its prices, Apple raised some of its subscription prices.
We recently conducted an audit of our monthly cloud computing expenses. They represent a fairly large percentage of our overall operating cost. The fact that it could suddenly skyrocket to such proportions will likely cause any IT leaders who are basing their strategy on cloud computing to lose sleep.
How to change your Google Workspace Enterprise subscription
If you want to lower your plan to save money, that’s possible. On the same main dashboard, go to the Billing module and click on the link that contains the name of your plan:
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
From there you will access the plan details page:
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Click Upgrade or Downgrade, and you can change your plan accordingly.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Keep in mind that downgrading may impact your storage space. While it is unlikely that Google will delete everything you have downloaded, it is certain that you will not be able to download more data.
Also note that the price increase we discussed in this article does not appear in the subscription plan selection page. You may choose a plan and experience a price increase at a later date.
Have you experienced a price increase? Will you upgrade or downgrade? For what services? Are you going to keep these services? Are you stuck? Let us know your reactions in the comments below.
Source: “ZDNet.com”