Google Workspace Price Increase

The Google Workspace Price Increase, and What to Do About It

In 2025 Google raised Business Starter from about $6 to $7, Business Standard from $12 to $14 and Business Plus from $18 to $22 per user per month on annual billing, bundling Gemini into every plan and retiring the separate AI add-on. For a 20-person company on Business Standard that is roughly $480 more a year for features it did not ask for. This page shows the arithmetic and the alternative: MassiveGRID's Nextcloud Hub at $5.90, $12.90 and $19.90 with the data in the region you choose.

See Nextcloud Hub Plans Migration Service

+17 to 22%

Google's 2025 increase

$14

Business Standard now

$12.90

Nextcloud Hub Business

$10.32

Hub Business, annual billing

What changed

The plans, before and after

Google Workspace plan	Before (annual)	After (annual)	What was added
Business Starter	About $6	About $7	Limited Gemini features
Business Standard	About $12	About $14	Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more
Business Plus	About $18	About $22	Gemini plus the existing Vault and endpoint management
Flexible (monthly) billing		About 20% above annual	Same features

Figures are Google's published U.S. list prices per user per month at the time of writing and change by region and over time; Google's own pricing page is the reference. Third-party reports of the increase vary, so check your invoice for your actual before-and-after.

What it means for a 20-person company

The arithmetic

	Google Workspace	Nextcloud Hub (monthly)	Nextcloud Hub (annual, 20% off)
20 users on the entry plan, per year	About $1,680	$1,416	$1,132.80
20 users on the standard plan, per year	About $3,360	$3,096	$2,476.80
20 users on the advanced plan, per year	About $5,280	$4,776	$3,820.80
Three years, standard plan	About $10,080	$9,288	$7,430.40

The switch cost calculator runs the same comparison for your own seat count, plan and term.

Three responses

In order of effort

Downgrade and tidy

Check how many seats are on Standard that could be on Starter, remove former employees, and move to annual billing if you are on flexible. Many companies recover the increase this way without changing suite.

Move files first

Nextcloud Files replaces Drive for a fraction of the cost and keeps Gmail for now; Business Starter's 30 GB limit is usually the thing forcing the Standard upgrade. The Drive alternative page explains the pattern.

Move the suite

Nextcloud Hub does Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet and Calendar's jobs at $5.90, $12.90 and $19.90, with the data in the region you choose and no AI you did not enable. Four weeks for most companies; the migration service does it for you.

The part that is not about price

Gemini and where the data goes

The increase paid for Gemini, which is now in Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Meet whether or not a company wanted an AI assistant reading its mail. Administrators can switch it off per service, which our Gemini page walks through, but they are now paying for it either way. On a Nextcloud instance the Assistant exists only if you enable it, runs against models you choose, and is not part of the per-user price on Hub plans. For companies whose objection was never the money, that is the reason to read the plan-by-plan comparison.

Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

By roughly 17% to 22% in 2025 on annual billing: Business Starter from about $6 to $7, Business Standard from $12 to $14, Business Plus from $18 to $22 per user per month in the U.S., with Gemini bundled. Flexible monthly billing is about 20% higher again. Check Google's page and your invoice for your region.

Partly: move from flexible to annual billing, put seats that only need mail and Drive on Business Starter, and remove unused seats. The increase itself applies to every plan. Moving to Nextcloud Hub at $5.90 to $19.90 per user, with the data in the region you choose, is the alternative.

Yes, since the 2025 change, with limited features on Business Starter and fuller access on Standard and above; the separate Gemini add-on was retired. Administrators can turn Gemini off per service in the Admin console.

Starter $5.90, Business $12.90 and Enterprise $19.90 per user per month on monthly billing, 20% off annual and up to 40% off 36-month terms, with mail, files, office, chat and video included in every plan, in the U.S., E.U., U.K. or Asia.

About four weeks for a company of 10 to 50 people: pilot, one live project, data migration, then mail cutover and training. The migration service runs it, or the Google Workspace export guide walks you through it.

Same suite, your region, from $5.90 per user

Order a Nextcloud Hub plan and the first month is $1 with coupon code NEXTCLOUD. Move one team, run a month of real work, then decide.

Order a Hub Plan Migration Service