In a new development, tech giant Google announced that the price of its G Suite subscriptions will be raised for the first time. The hike in price in the U.S. will be $1 and $2 for the G Suite Basic and G Suite Business editions respectively. The hike in subscription charges in other regions will be in accordance with local currency and market. The price for G Suite Enterprise will remain unchanged.
The new price will be in effect from April 2, subscribers that have annual plans will be subject to the new price at the time of renewal of the contract.
Add-on Services to Base Service justifies Hike, explains Google
In general, the hike of $1 or $2 is not a big deal. But hike in price of Google’s G Suite subscription is for the first time. Google explains that it has added plenty of services to its base service first launched in 2006. This includes video conferencing with Hangouts Meet, increased storage quota, team messaging with Hangouts Chat feature, and other productivity and security tools and services.
Google further explains the increase to be a fair, though a 20 percent hike may be difficult to accept for small businesses. At this point, the thing to recollect is G Suite is already a major revenue earner for Google. G Suite has more than 4 million business subscribers, with some of them on enterprise plans at prices discreetly negotiated by their teams. Howbeit, most of them are on standard monthly or yearly plans.
