Google Workspace got more expensive. What now?

Check which billing plan you are on, because the two differ by 20 percent. Then ask what the team uses beyond Gmail. If the honest answer is "not much", move the mail to a flat-rate host and keep free Google accounts for Docs.

On workspace.google.com/pricing, checked 6 October 2026, the prices shown with the annual-commitment toggle are $7 per user a month for Business Starter, $14 for Business Standard and $22 for Business Plus, billed monthly in US dollars. Starter has 30 GB pooled storage per person; Standard 2 TB; Plus 5 TB.

The Flexible plan, which has no commitment and lets you add and remove users month to month, is priced on Google's Admin Help page comparing the Flexible and Annual plans, checked the same day: $8.40 per user for Starter, $16.80 for Standard and $26.40 for Plus. Many small businesses are on Flexible without knowing it, because it is the default when you skip the commitment at sign-up.

The pricing page also carries a promotion for new customers: up to 50 percent off the first three months, with Starter shown at $3.50, after which standard pricing applies to all users. That is a sign-up discount, not a price you keep.

Five people on Business Starter: $420 a year on the annual plan, $504 on Flexible. Ten people: $840 annual, $1,008 Flexible. Twenty people: $1,680 or $2,016. Every role address that needs its own inbox, such as support@ or billing@, is another seat unless you route it through a Google Group.

The same five, ten or twenty people on Faivelo pay $72 a year on Starter ($6 a month, or $5 on yearly billing), with unlimited mailboxes on up to three domains. The difference is not a discount; it is a different unit. Google prices the person, a flat-rate host prices the account.

Most small teams that feel the price are using Workspace for three things: Gmail on the domain, a shared calendar, and the occasional Google Doc. The first is what you are paying per seat for. The third works on free personal Google accounts, shared with anyone, and the second comes with most email hosts.

So the route is: move the mailboxes to a host that charges per account, keep a free Google account per person for Docs, Sheets and Drive, and share documents by link as before. What you lose is the company domain on those Google accounts, shared Drive owned by the organisation, and the Admin console. For a team that collaborates all day in shared Drive, that loss is real, and the side-by-side says so plainly.

Open the Admin console, Billing, and read the plan name and the per-user rate. Count the seats, then count how many of those people open anything other than Gmail and Calendar in a normal week. If the second number is small, the per-seat price is buying a suite nobody uses, and the step-by-step for leaving takes an afternoon.

If you are on Flexible and decide to stay, switching to the annual commitment is a 20 percent cut for the same product, as long as the headcount is stable. If you decide to go, do it before the next annual term starts, because an annual plan cannot be cancelled mid-term without owing the remainder.