r/googleworkspace

Recently upgraded our license to business plus to obtain device approval restrictions. We set up a test OU created a new user in that OU grabbed a new laptop that had never been turned on before, fresh from the box, system is running Linux. Signed in with the new users credentials and they were able to get in and access workspace. We got a notification that a device activation request is pending. And we have not approved that yet. That device is named specifically after the hardware that the new user signed into. However there is an additional device in the mobile and endpoints list that has the new users name associated with it and the device is just referred to as "Linux". And it was already approved which we did not do for this user. This is not a laptop that we have approved before nor is it some sort of company laptop that we enrolle. And we have not set up any sort of automatic device approval conditions or anything. What would allow this generic Linux device and how to we stop it?

In my contacts list, I've found that for some users, the same (correct) email is repeated twice. I deleted the second instance on several last night and they appear to be back this morning. Any ideas on how this could happen?

We've been all-in on Workspace for a while now (Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Calendar) and while it mostly gets the job done, it feels like the suite has kind of stuck in place. Gemini got bolted on, but the core experience hasn't really evolved that much.

- Everything works fine in isolation, but the apps don't really feel like one connected product

- Admin console is very detailed but a maze as simple tasks take way too many clicks

- Storage and licensing get expensive fast once you scale past a small team

- It's "good enough" at everything but not really great at anything anymore

Idk if I'm the only one struggling with it or if there are others to

Yesterday, for some reason, I needed to COMPLETELY delete my organization's Workspace account (which means I can't access it anymore). I waited 24 hours, then tried to create a new account with the organization and link it to the same domain, but it was already taken. Why and how could I fix that?

I need Google Workspace and Gemini AI Plus for my business.

Gemini AI Plus is $20/month. Google Workspace’s Standard plan includes “Google’s most capable AI models for complex tasks,” which the Starter plan doesn’t include.

Does anyone know the difference between Gemini AI Plus and Google Workspace’s Gemini access on the Standard plan? I can’t seem to find anything. Gemini’s not giving me clear answer either.

Since it offers “the most capable AI models” and it’s less money, I’m assuming the Gemini through Workspace gives less tokens?

Note: I’m not talking about things like “Gemini in Drive,” “Gemini in Gmail,” etc. I’m talking about straight-up Gemini.

I am a school psychologist on Day 29 of what has been the worst month of my professional life - being tormented by lack of actual help. I've lost hundreds of billable hours but mostly I'm in trouble right now.

This began with a BAA clerical error in March. Following weeks of begging, pleading, and unanswered promises to help with the migration (I only just received a response regarding that yesterday), I created a temporary domain and signed up for a new account while waiting for my primary domain to be "released."

I waited two days to ensure the files had synced; believing the process was complete and following the advice I had been given, I deleted that temporary account. It was only after the deletion was finalized that I realized the files had not actually migrated to the new account.

Now, those critical school and student files, years of professional work product, and my active working documents are inaccessible— ***even though I can still see them sitting in the Trash of the Shared Drive ("The Move").

This temporary organization (bridge domain) was officially deleted on April 13.

The Crisis:

I can still see years of professional records sitting in the Trash of the Shared Drive ("The Move"), but they are "frozen" because the owner account was decommissioned. I need the Organization reactivated please.

I know its not been that many days but this has been a MONTH long nightmare & I really need these documents for student special education records/mtgs that need to happen right now. They said 72 hours or whatever but all but 1 of my cases has actually had a response (but it was still just that it would be "escalated" almost a month after request.

What I've Done:

• Primary Case: 70200423 (plus 10+ other case numbers).
• Verification: I have provided all proof of ownership (Payments Profile, Customer ID, and Cloudflare logs) through official channels.
• Local Effort: I secured a 24gb local cache, but without the original account index, the files are mostly unreadable hex blobs. I have exhausted all manual workarounds.

Request:

Is there a Product Expert here who can help escalate this to Engineering for a manual restoration of the Org? I have the financial and infrastructure proof ready to provide to a verified representative.

I would sincerely be grateful.

I get this question all the time. Here's my honest take after 10+ years working with both.

Stick with Microsoft 365 if:
🔹 Your team lives in Excel or desktop Office apps
🔹 You're in a regulated industry already standardized on Microsoft
🔹 Changing tools would cause more disruption than it's worth

Switch to Google Workspace if:
✅ Your team works remotely or across locations
✅ You want real-time collaboration without version control chaos
✅ You want a simpler, lower-overhead admin experience
✅ You're tired of licensing complexity and per-app add-ons

For most small businesses under 200 people? Google Workspace is simpler to run, easier to secure, and more cost-effective long term.

The migration is the hard part; once it's done, most businesses never look back.

What's your take on this? I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets these questions all the time.

Hi, im trying to get a handle on AI usage across our company (roughly 1k employees, google workspace, slack, azure AD, mix of mac and windows) and im drowning in vendor pages that all claim to solve this problem. Half of them didnt exist 18 months ago which doesnt inspire confidence.

our situation: people are using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and probably some other sw/tools I haven't discovered yet. We had an incident last month where someone pasted a customer contract into an AI tool and that's when leadership decided we need to "do something about this" which apparently means i need to figure it out.

I'm not trying to ban AI usage. People are getting real work done with these tools. but we need some visibility into what's happening and some guardrails around sensitive data.

Do you guys have any recommendations on what to check first? Would really appreciate thanks!

How was your experience switching?

Which plan did you switch from and to?

How many users?

Do you find it easier to manage everything?

Do you like the support provided by Google?

Do you use any third party backup service to backup your Google Mail and Drive?

I'm looking at switching from MS365 Basic to Google Starter or Standard plan. I mainly just need emails. It's been exhausting dealing with MS Admin Center and the million+ other admin centers that keep changing, renaming, and making it harder to find certain settings. We're mostly on Macs as well.

I have seen this posted numerous times so it seems to be a common issue many users face. This is what has happened to me so far!

- When creating a workspace account I made the mistake of upgrading my personal Gmail rather than creating a new account so it then merged the inboxes.

- I deleted the subscription I had and can confirm this because I no longer have access to the admin console.

- when attempting to create a new account with the domain it gives me the error that the domain is in use.

- I have followed the recovery steps and have been sent an email confirming that the domain has been freed and is available for use after I verified that I owned it via a DNS record.

-it is still showing domain in use and it has been nearly a week and a half since deleting the subscription and 4 days since receiving the email saying it has been freed.

-when trying the recovery form again it just says that a takeover is in progress and I can’t go any further

Can someone please help me with this! I have read another comment saying I can buy a new domain and register with that before bringing over the previous one but would rather not do that.

I'm trying to set up a distribution list that will allow a small number of members to receive emails from both inside and outside the org to a common info@ email address.

The only way I've found so far was creating a group that then results in discussion group messages. Is there any way to have the group just be for email?

((If this is a repeat question I'm happy to get a link and delete this.))

I am trying to set up a workspace studio flow to look at a folder and do things with the documents there. I set up a test to see if it can just look inside a folder, and it keeps getting stuck. It gives various errors, like

"I am unable to access the contents of your private Google Drive account, including the folder named "testing folder." I do not have the capability to interact with external cloud storage systems or send emails due to security and privacy restrictions."

or

"I am unable to access the documents in the Google Drive folder with ID 10_8V9BrHesC36nli_XXXX887iCLgbe30. The system failed to retrieve the documents"

Is this an admin level setting, or am I doing something wrong here? They are my folders, I am the owner, so it shouldn't have access issues.

Hey all, just looking for a sanity-check here...

I'm at a small non-profit that's currently paying $21/mo to have Business Starter, and I suggested we move to Google for Nonprofits. There's literally no reason to stay with the paid plan, right?

Right now we have 3 emails and a few gigs used on a Shared Drive. That's all we're likely to need... maybe a few more emails if they're free and easy to administrate. I'm sure the person in the position of "IT volunteer" simply wasn't aware of the free version, but I wanted to double-check with the collective power of Reddit before I go making changes.

One last question, will I need to do anything else? Right now our Google subscription is purchased via Wix. Will I need to update any records anywhere to keep our email working?

Thanks in advance!

Quick question for y'all!

I work for a non-profit and we're in the process of migrating to Google from Microsoft O365. We're about 8 months into the project, and got approved for a Google Non-profit Workspace about 4 months ago. In that time, we've been making some accounts, testing, and creating documentation. 

This week we went to batch upload our account list into Google and got a message that we'd hit our "300 licenses" limit. Everywhere, Google advertises that non-profit Workspaces have a 2,000 account limit, so we were rather confused.

Our Workspace owner opened a ticket with Google, which didn't get us anywhere. (He was told that we needed to make multiple complaints before we could be elevated to the team who could help us).

So, he opened a second ticket the next day to request more licenses, got elevated to the "specialist support", and then were denied for reasons Google wouldn't disclose. They were told the 300 cap was for "security reasons". We asked what sort of documentation we could provide to prove our legitimacy, and Google hasn't yet responded. 

After doing an internet search with the specific keywords, notably "300", we were able to find Non-profit Workspace documentation that does say there's an initial 300 account limit. However, it also says you just need to request more licenses via the admin console—which we've done.

We've tried searching Reddit and other forums, and found almost nothing. We were only able to find an unanswered Google support post where a Workspace owned had filled out the form previously linked in said documentation, and hadn't received a response in over a month. But that's it. Everyone on our team reached out to their professional contacts and friends—nobody has heard of this before.

We have some time padding built into our project plan, but not a ton. Our Microsoft licenses expire in August, and we'd announced to our organization that we plan to do the cutover in June. At this point, we are pretty concerned about getting more licenses, because Google is denying us for unknown reasons and nobody else seems to have had this problem. We absolutely cannot afford to buy the Enterprise 300+ account tier, even with the "non-profit discount". (it's an astounding $30,000 more than O365)

My question for y'all is:

Has anyone encountered this problem before? How did you resolve it?

I’ve been thinking about how organizations use Google Workspace data (Gmail, Meet, Calendar, Drive and Chat), especially admin audit logs and activity data and whether it actually helps them understand how work happens inside teams.

In theory this kind of data could show things like:

• who is stuck in too many meetings
• who talks with who in the team
• how much people use tools like Gemini
• who is overloaded with emails
• alerts when something sensitive gets shared outside

But I’m not sure how much of this is actually used in practice.

It feels like all this data already exists in Google Workspace admin logs, but it doesn’t really get turned into something simple that helps understand day-to-day work.

I’m curious how this works in real companies.

For example:

• do managers or admins actually look at this kind of data?
• or is it mostly ignored unless something goes wrong?
• does it actually help with anything day to day?

Would be really interested to hear how people here handle this in their orgs.

I was signing up to google workspace with my new domain, I was on the page that requested to verify my card when the page stopped loading and I was forced to reload. I am now stuck in a loop, every time I try to login it says I need to choose a plan, but when I click on it it says that billing details already exist and asks me to press the button "accept and continue". When I click it it just gives me an error. Can't do anything anymore and really need help urgently. 

Anyone a solution for this?

Recently I’ve been slowly moving away from the Apple ecosystem into the Google one, and I want to know what others are using.

The main reason was Apple Calendar. I started using it more in-depth over the past few weeks, and it just felt a bit limited for how I want to plan my things.
That made me try Google Calendar, which i can already see is more powerful (integrations, etc.)

After that, I started rethinking my whole setup.

Up until now I was fully in the Apple’s ecosystem - Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Journal. It kinda worked, but once I started optimizing my workflow more, I began noticing the limitations.

Right now my setup looks like this:

• Notes - Still using Apple Notes for longer notes, but this is where I’m most unsure right now.
• Calendar - Switched to Google Calendar
• Tasks - Swapped Apple Reminders for Todoist
• Email - Gmail

Side note: I tried Google Tasks, but it felt too simple compared to Todoist or even Apple Reminders. Also, I’m using Apple Shortcuts for a morning routine, and Todoist fits better there (Google tasks is not "shortcuts-friendly")

What I want to know now is:

Where does Google Keep actually fit? And how does it compare to Apple Notes?

From what I see:

• Apple Notes feels like a full note-taking app (long notes, structure, organization)
• Google Keep feels more like quick capture (short notes, ideas, checklists)

So I’m not sure:

• Is Google Keep a replacement for Apple Notes?
• Or is it more of a companion tool (Keep + Docs)?
• How do you actually use it in a real workflow?
• Is there anyone who switched from Apple notes to google keep and what was your experience ?

Also curious more generally:

What productivity system are you using and why? Do you combine different apps, and how does your setup look?

Hello, I am a person who uses Google in Korea.
I received a text message from The G Suite Team" <GSuite-customers-noreply@google.com &gt; asking me to pay for the unpaid Google workspace on April 8th, Korean time. We applied for the Google workspace around August last year, but we couldn't delete the account by entering a domain that doesn't exist, so we searched the Internet for about half a year and proceeded with the deletion. In addition, we couldn't cancel the subscription immediately because we entered the wrong domain. If you think the deleted account needs payment, please let me know how to pay for the deleted Google account. Payment is not possible every day sent by Google.
I hope you have a good day.
(Since this email was written through automatic translation, there may be incorrect or incorrect sentences.)

My husband is starting a business, and I registered the domain with Namecheap today. He decided he wanted an email address of firstname@domain.com, and it seemed like the least expensive way to do this with tools we're already familiar with was through Google Workspace, so I signed up for it through his existing personal Gmail account. However, he does not want any emails sent to firstname@domain.com coming into his personal Gmail inbox (which is already disorganized and overly full). Is there a way for me to change this so any emails sent to firstname@domain.com go to a separate inbox, like domain@gmail.com? I am not particularly tech savvy and just doing my best over here, sorry if this is a dumb question. Thank you for any help you can provide!

Hey r/googleworkspace!

I’m beyond excited to be heading to Google Cloud Next 2026 next week (April 22–24 at Mandalay Bay)

This is my first time at the big show in Vegas and I can’t wait to soak up all the keynotes, sessions, expo energy, and the latest on AI, cloud architecture, and collaboration tools.

I’m a Google Workspace Solutions Architect and freelance consultant, working on tenant architecture, Okta/SSO integrations, automation, security/compliance, and migrations. Super looking forward to meeting fellow cloud practitioners, admins, devs, and anyone geeking out over what’s next from Google.

If you’re going too, let’s network! Whether it’s swapping session recs, grabbing a quick coffee between keynotes, or just saying hi, I’d love to connect. DM me here on Reddit (or drop your LinkedIn below and I’ll reach out).

Who else is hyped?! Drop a comment if you’ll be there and let’s make this event even better together. See you in Vegas! 🎉