We asked if you regret having a personal G Suite account. Here's what you said.

Last week, my colleague Dhruv wrote about how having a personal G Suite (now Google Workspace) account became his worst tech nightmare. He called buying into any Google service “a game of Russian Roulette.” Why? Because over the years, Google introduced several apps and products that weren’t compatible with G Suite/Workspace accounts. So we wanted to know if you owned a personal G Suite account and had the same regrettable experience. Here’s how you voted in our poll.

Do you regret using a G Suite account for personal and family use?

Results

We received over 5,800 votes in our poll, and the results are clear. While 35% of the poll takers have never used a personal G Suite/Workspace account, those who have regret their decision.

32% of the respondents in the poll say that they are unfortunately locked into their G Suite accounts but regret having signed up for a personal account in the first place.

14% of the voters who previously owned a personal G Suite account say that they regretted having one and have already migrated away.

That means a total of 46% of the voters used G Suite at some point or are still using it, and none of them have had a great experience.

Meanwhile, 10% of the surveyed readers said they had some issues using a personal G Suite account, but none of them were deal breakers.

Only 9% of the voters said they had no complaints with their personal G Suite accounts.

Your Comments

Glenn Batuyong: Holy smokes, this headline was EXACTLY what I have been thinking for years now. Using Google G-Suite for personal use was likely the WORST tech decision I’ve ever made, and screwed up so many interoperability opportunities for me ever since.

Tony Diep: I had the same problems, was told by Google that my free Gsuite account would no longer be free and that I would lose my apps, exported my data to a regular Gmail account, bought new apps, and then was told by Google my free Gsuite account would still be honored after all leaving me with two accounts Google cannot merge. I now pay for a Microsoft subscription because I don’t want to burned by Google again.

Reese Wilson: Same, did 90% of the work to migrate away (countless hours), only to learn that if I had only procrastinated more, I wouldn’t have had to do anything. Now I’m de-googling as much as possible because I resent them, and am tired of how they treat their customers. (Also, they suspiciously got rid of the “don’t be evil” motto).

EKatowitz: I had a similar thing. Except I waited until they announced that there will be a way to convert personal G-Suite accounts to regular accounts. I was thrilled by this as they were finally going to grant my freedom!! They announced this in Mid-March and said there would be a waiting list that we had to be on by May 31st. However the list wasn’t available yet and according to “Google will be available in the coming weeks.” Two weeks before the May 31st deadline the list still hadn’t appeared. I was honestly wondering if Google was only going to put the list up on May 31st itself (just to minimize its usage). Then suddenly about a week before the deadline Google announced that we all get to keep our accounts exactly the way they were. For most people this was great news, but for me, it just meant that I was locked into the little cell Google confined me to.

Paul_i_us: The legacy G Suite account is still very limited though – not being able to buy additional storage is just one of the limitations.

Discendo Discimus: I was hoping apparently against all hope that with the legacy GSuite fiasco that Google would finally allow us to migrate all our purchases, etc. to a normal Gmail account so I could escape this endless purgatory which is GAFYD, GSuite, Workspace or whatever is the next branding. Like you, I wanted to use Nest… I ended up buying an Ecobee. I wanted to use Google Pay, but wouldn’t work with my email, so switched to Paypal, which works fine. Problems with Google Assistant? Just use Alexa.

Lex1020: I have a Gsuite account for my family that we use for storage. It’s back from the legacy days of $12/account/month for unlimited storage. But I’ve gradually moved away from that to regular Gmail accounts for personal usage and my gsuite exists solely for storage.