Gmail is Not Free
Nothing in fact is free in this life
My First Gmail Accounts
My first Gmail account was created in 2008. It accompanied me until 2011 when I created a new one with a more professional address, as some articles I read suggested. I had a few more accounts after that for different purposes. I still have them all. In fact, I never deleted any of them.
Current Email Accounts
I have ten mailing accounts. Only three of them are not Gmail. The rest are all Gmail accounts. Why? Because it’s free and very practical to use, not to mention all the associated services.
Gmail in Education and Work
Even the university I studied at used Gmail for education. I still have access to that account as well. My last employer, ZAD Group, provided us with Gmail accounts as part of their Workspace subscription. Gmail has its place in my online life.
Upgrading to Google One
About five years ago, I decided to upgrade to the basic plan. The reason behind that decision was to keep everything in Drive since I use an Android phone. My personal stuff syncs to Drive. Additionally, I was using Google Docs for everything. I use it at least five times a day for writing journals and tinkering with stuff.
Backup Initiatives
The backup feature caught my attention when I saw a notification from Google saying that Google Photos is free and unlimited. That’s when I started doing backups to my account. Before that, I was copying the files from my phones and saving them on my external disk drive.
Issues with Subscription Renewal
Until recently. I left my job around April or May of this year. I started working on something personal with deep focus. One day in June, I checked my mail and found it full of notices about my MasterCard expiring. I checked with the provider of my card, and they needed more information to send the new card. Later, I stumbled on a post in a local community saying that Algerian customs stop all foreign cards from coming through the airport, including the financial institute I get my card from. So, I requested to change from a physical to a virtual card since I am only using it for online payments.
Fast forward to today. I am still cardless 😅. I can’t pay for anything online, either nationally or internationally. I got my local spending card renewed, but it is still stuck in the center where I lived prior to 2022. Most of my subscriptions were canceled, and to my surprise, I found out that I don’t need them. I created a Notion database with all the subscriptions I have. It summed to around $2500 of yearly subscriptions, with over $200 for domain names! Another part of it was hosting plans with different companies. The rest were continuous learning platforms such as Pluralsight, Egghead, Duolingo, Laracasts, etc.
Google One
Then Google sent me a notice about my Google One subscription. I couldn’t renew it and wasn’t interested in any of those messages by that point. Google didn’t suspend my account immediately like some other service providers did. For example, Namecheap, a platform I used for more than eight years, shut everything down the moment I stopped paying. Yes, they gave a three-day grace period, but it wasn’t pleasing to experience that breakup. One of my websites was down for days until I changed hosting.
Not Everything Kept Working
Well, Google did keep my account alive. However, they restricted access to my drive and its content. I no longer have the right to change stuff or edit my files, even the ones I share with others. My brother called me about being unable to update a shared document. I checked and found out I no longer have the ability to create, edit, or upload files to my drive.
Gmail Stopped
To be honest, when I kept receiving emails in my account, I was a little relieved. However, when I logged into LinkedIn recently to share the last post I wrote, I found a notice saying that their emails aren’t going through anymore.
I checked my account later to find out that Gmail no longer receives emails. I have to pay for the subscription to revive everything.
Were they linked?
I never thought the Gmail inbox was linked to other Google services, even in storage capacity. I always thought the inbox was limitless and had nothing to do with how many gigs you have in your drive. When I created this account, Drive wasn’t even a thing. Amidst all of this, I remembered my manager at ZAD Group advising me to have a NAS at home to keep my files. I was skeptical about that advice and thought he was just paranoid about privacy. However, now, I am working to set up my own storage and maybe my own mailing service.
At the footer of any Gmail account, you can see this space usage bar indicating how many gigs are free/used 😅. Mine looks like this.
Since I am still cardless and busy with important matters, I am not planning to renew this subscription anytime soon. I will switch important websites and services to my main account hosted by Zoho and see how things unfold with Gmail until I can pay for renewal.
