OltranoSwitching from Google Workspace
Google Workspace is a good product. The reason people leave is usually that they are paying per seat for addresses that are not people.
Where the money goes
Workspace is priced per user. If three of your "users" are info@,
sales@ and jobs@ landing in one person's inbox, you are paying for
four people and employing one. Here those are
aliases, they are free, and the one mailbox can still
send from all of them with a signature each.
The move
- Add your domain and create the mailboxes.
- Generate an app password per account in Google's security settings — Google refuses plain IMAP sign-in.
- Run the migration. Gmail labels become folders; a message with two labels lands in the first.
- Export contacts and calendars from Google and import them here.
- Switch the MX record, then run the migration again for the last messages.
What you will miss
Docs, Sheets and Slides. Meet. Drive as a collaboration surface. We are honest about this: if your company writes documents together all day, Workspace does that and we do not. What we have is files, mail, calendar, contacts and the whole money side.
What you gain
- Free aliases and groups, so you pay for people rather than for addresses.
- Invoicing, e-invoicing, subscriptions and stock in the same account as the mail.
- Sending from your own domain for the invoices, with DKIM we manage.
- Your server-side signature works on every device, because there are no devices to sync — the single most-voted request on Microsoft's feedback portal, and architecturally free here.
Offboarding somebody
A leaver's mailbox can be turned into a shared mailbox other people open, with the access logged. No separate compliance product to buy for it.
Questions people actually ask
Is Oltrano cheaper than Google Workspace?
It depends on how many of your seats are actually people. Aliases and groups are free here, so if several of your Workspace users are shared addresses, the difference is large.
Do I lose Google Docs?
Yes. We do files, mail, calendar and contacts, plus the whole invoicing side. We do not do collaborative document editing, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Can I move one domain and leave another on Google?
Yes. Domains are independent. Many people move a secondary domain first and watch it for a month.
Next
- Move your mail from Google, Zoho or anywhereIMAP migration you can run twice without duplicating anything.
- Mailboxes, aliases, groups and catch-allWhat costs money, what is free, and when to use which.
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC without the folkloreWhat each one does, what breaks them, and what to actually set.