Google workspace with emails hosted by a non-google provider

[Agnos]

Hello Google Workspace community !

I am setting up the "non-profits" version of google workspace for an NGO. This NGO has been using for years about 1000 email addresses hosted by a provider other than google, which provides them for free and without limits (as many addresses as we want and no storage limit. Some of these addresses contain much more than 30GB of data).

It would be very cumbersome to migrate all these addresses to be hosted by google from now on and it is therefore certain that we will not do it in the short term.

So I'm wondering if it's possible to use Google Workspace while leaving our emails hosted with this other provider. I don't think it will be a problem for using google Drive but I have a question about the impact it will have on the use of other services (calendar, chats, meets, contacts).

Have any of you already tried such a configuration?

Thank you for your answers/feedbacks/suggestions

Kind regards,

[cryptochrome]

Hi, this is absolutely possible and even supported by Google, albeit not really recommended. There are various configuration options to suit your needs here. The short of it is that you can use external email without any impact on the other Workspace apps. You could even disable Gmail entirely, if you wanted. 

Without knowing more about your particular setup, I'll leave it at that for now. 

[Agnos]

Thank you very much Cryptochrome for your answer.

So I can, I think, consider doing the migration in two phases :

• Phase 1 : creation of accounts for our users in the workspace => they can use calendars, drive and other tools but email addresses remain hosted by the current provider and users keep their current setup based on MS Office and outlook. Gmail is inactivated.
•  Phase 2 : Email migration

I was a bit skeptical because :

• the gmail setup seemed to be a mandatory step to finalize the workspace setup (I did a test during the trial period with a temporary domain name before switching to the official domain name of the NGO)
• the integration between gmail and other services is very deep and so I was afraid that some of these other services (calendar in particular) could not work properly.

you mention "various configuration options to suit my needs" : could please give me link ?

Thanks again for your support,

Kind regards.

[cryptochrome · Accepted solution]

Yes, the integration with Gmail and the other apps is in fact very deep, and that's why we typically do not recommend hosting email externally. But it can be done. It will just be cumbersome for your users, because they have to switch back and forth between two entirely different "ecosystems". 

If you host your emails in a different environment, everything inside Google Workspace that is creating Email notifications etc. will have to be routed to the external email addresses. You can find out more about the different options here:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/2685650

You probably want to take a closer look at the first delivery options, which is called "Split Delivery". 

All that being said, I would encourage you to make a clean cut and put your phase 2 into your phase 1, e. g. migrate email from the get go. While Google's own email migration options are very rudimentary, there are options available from third-parties that really make this very easy. A tool like CloudM for example can migrate all your data and emails and automatically create the corresponding users for you in Google Workspace all in one go. Take a closer look at the CloudM Migrate product. 

[Agnos]

Thank you very much for this additional information which I will study in detail. I really appreciate your support.

Transferring our emails to google immediately is unfortunately not an easy option because, as I mentioned, some accounts already exceed the 30GB entitlement of the "non-profits" version of workspace and our users, not very IT savvy, are scattered in many countries and quite difficult to reach to reconfigure their setup.
I'm going to find out more about the constraints of a two-step transition and do some testing before making the decision.

[KAM]

@Agnos I wanted to add a note that I have an NPO with this exact setup but have you gone through the hurdles to request the 1000 licenses for the free version?  -KAM

[Agnos]

@KAM  : yes, we got a "nonprofits" license that includes unlimited users (30GB private storage per user) and (almost) unlimited storage in shared drives (if I understand correctly...)....