HACKER Q&A
📣 fastball

Google support is the worst, good alternatives to G-Suite?


Hi HN,

The other day we got notified that our Google Ads account had been suspended, citing "circumventing systems policy". We have no idea what this means (beyond reading the generic description that's vague and broad) and to our knowledge we have not violated anything. Google Support over email will (of course) not tell us what in particular is in violation, and when we try to call support the system says "you're banned" and hangs up.

To be honest, we've of course heard stories like this in the past, but kinda like Gell-Mann amnesia, you forget as soon as you're done reading – until it happens to you.

Given this experience, we've decided to move away from all Google products as they don't seem to want our money. Luckily, the only other thing we're currently using is G Suite (for email hosting and G Drive). Anyone have good alternatives for a small startup with currently only two employees?

Thanks!

  👤 smt88 Accepted Answer ✓
Office online (forget the brand name right now) is excellent software with excellent service.

The only other advanced web email/office suite that I know of is Zoho, which I've never used and can't comment on.

👤 avinashjn
Email there is protonmail,Zoho mail and a few others

Gdrive - onedrive, Dropbox, etc

Gsutie - office 365, Zoho

If you want an integrated solution, then it's office 365.

Zoho is ok to start with, but there is not depth in their gsuite and email products. It feels like they have a minimal team on it

👤 fastball
Status update: so far we're looking at using hey.com for email ($12/u/m) and Microsoft OneDrive for storage (5/u/m). For the two of us (plus an extra email), that makes a grand total of $46/m, which is actually ~$7 cheaper than what we were paying for G Suite anyway haha.