Google announced that it is raising the price of its G Suite subscriptions for the first time. In the U.S., the prices of G Suite Basic and G Suite Business editions will increase by $1 and $2 per user/month, respectively, while increases in other regions will be adjusted according to the local currency and market. G Suite Enterprise pricing will remain the same.

The new pricing will go into effect on April 2; those on annual plans will pay the new price when their contract renews after that date.

Usually, a $1 or $2 price increase wouldn’t be a big deal, but this is the first time Google has raised the price of its G Suite subscriptions. The company argues that it has added plenty of new services — like video conferencing with Hangouts Meet, team messaging with Hangouts Chat, increased storage quotas and other security and productivity tools and services — to the platform since it first launched its paid service with its core productivity tools back in 2006.

That seems like a fair argument to me, though a 20 percent price increase may be hard to swallow for some small businesses. It’s also worth remembering that G Suite is now big business for Google. There are now more than 4 million businesses on G Suite, after all, and while some of them are surely on enterprise plans with a price point their teams negotiated privately, the vast majority of them are surely on the standard monthly or annual plans.

Official announcements from Google:

• https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/01/g-suite-price-change.html
• https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/new-pricing-for-g-suite-basic-and-business-editions

Newspapers:

• https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/16/google-raises-its-g-suite-prices/
• https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-raises-g-suite-prices-basic-from-5-per-user-a-month-to-6-business-from-10-to-12-per-user-a-month/
• https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/16/google-gsuite-price-raise.html
• https://www.businessinsider.com/google-raises-g-suite-prices-for-the-first-time-ever-2019-1
• https://www.techradar.com/news/google-hikes-g-suite-prices
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/maciejduraj/2019/01/21/google-g-suite-apps-continue-to-evolve-and-soon-prices-are-set-to-rise/