No More Free Google Apps for Business

I've been a fan of Google Apps for Business since 2007, particularly the free version for businesses with up to 10 users. Many of my clients fall into this category, and it has been a no-brainier to set them up with this suite of tools that offers company-branded email accounts, 5gb of cloud file storage per user, calendars, document collaboration, and more.

I still believe Google Apps is an excellent software suite, but as Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Apps, wrote in a blog post this morning, the free version is going away. The change has no impact on existing customers using the free version, but from now on only the premium (paid) version of Google Apps for Business will be offered. At $50/year per user, it is still a good deal, it just isn't the great deal it once was.