Hacker News Reader

Comment by kej | Hacker News Reader

If you don't want to pay the $5/month/user for G Suite, you can buy an account with a grandfathered free Google Apps plan and change the primary domain to yours.

View on HN

Now, there's no way to change primary domain. Any methods were blocked from Apr. 2016.

This - sadly.

I also own a legacy account but google really wants you to stop using it.

- At first you were able to just change the primary domains / add new domains at will - Then it was only possible for full gapps accounts. There was the trick to upgrade to the trial, do all the domain changes, revert back to the free tier - Then google changed that as well. Adding a domain in the trial will block you from downgrading until you remove the domain again

I think you can still change the primary domain by upgrading through a gapps partner, but then it's not a legacy account anymore.

That's strange, I still have a change primary domain button on my free account, but I've not used it.

Edit: just tried it and was able to change primary domain and then change it back.

Can't the original owner find a way to recall the account? Saying he was hacked.

Buy with a credit card through one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts and you should be okay.

Edit: I just remembered reading an article [1] about hooking up a regular gmail account to the free tier of mailgun, so you send and receive through your custom domain but otherwise have a plain old gmail account.

[1] https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom...

> one of the companies that resells grandfathered Google Apps accounts

wow, this is really a thing.

https://www.gappsdomain.com/

http://getgapps.com/

I personally picked up a 1k account from eBay for $199.

It'll never be used but I'm glad I can say I have it.

What is a "1k account"?

Is there a "reputable" reseller that HNers use? I can find tons of resellers but e-mail is too central to my identity to gamble like this. At least I would be able to transfer my domain again, but if they get full access to my stuff even for a few hours I'm already screwed.

(edit: what I mean is that he can recall the account and get full access to it while DNS still points to Google)

You shouldn't have to hand over control of your domain at any point. You buy a placeholder domain from them, log into the placeholder Google Apps admin settings, add your domain to the account, and then switch your domain to be the primary.

None of that works after April afaik

This is almost certainly against the Google Apps TOS. So do so at your own risk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com