having alot of issues with getting split subscription

[fscithome_admin]

I'm try to keep this short and sweet, but I have a little bit of a story to tell to give some insight on why I need help so please bare with me.

I have been trying to work with Google Chat Support, Phone Sales Support, and even been assigned an Account Manager and they all give me the "I can't help you". I acually received that in an email from them on this topic.

I currently have a "Google Standard" account with 1 user, created as a proof of concept for our corporate leaders, they are onboard with me moving forward with adding 20-25 users, but only as "Starter" as we don't need anything more then that. Google Chat support is telling me I need at least 100 users added yet multiple posts here state the limit is 10. Google Sales support is telling me they can't do this at least because my first/current/single account is setup as yearly and not monthly. The Account Manager that was provided to me stated they can't do anything, and my only option is to purchase all the users as Standard, or for me to wait till it's due to renew and then cancel and renew as Starter, changing my current account down to Starter.

I'm be honest, i'm really confused on all this. I have had the account for about 3 months and I want to expand to include 20-25 added users, and google support is basically not wanting to take my money.  I can understand they want me to pay more for the standard accounts, but if we are force to do that, the corporate leaders for my company will not approve that and they will simply return to office365/sharepoint/etc and tell me to drop Google Workspace entirely or I could have the users create personal accounts and share the content to them and Google is out that money entirely.

I don't want to go down that road but I feel like I'm at a total lose with there support team. Please can someone help or give some guidance? 

[KAM]

@fscithome_admin to my knowledge for split sku, you need to be working with a reseller and yes, it will need to be aligned on Annual vs. Flex plans. -KAM

[fscithome_admin]

thanks for the reply. Figured as much based on what I'm seeing on the other posts. maybe you or someone else know of a reseller you would recommend?

[KAM]

That's a little bit of a COI with my volunteer work here but it's no secret that my $dayjob is at Dito which is a premier partner and Google Cloud Security Partner of the Year.  You can find other partners here: https://cloud.google.com/find-a-partner/

-KAM

[christiannewman]

@KAM is correct and to my knowledge, aside from working with a Google Cloud Partner and aligning your account on annual plan, in order to qualify for partial domain licensing you also need to have (if I recall correctly, it's been a while since I last looked into this) a minimum 100 licenses, of which at least 10 must be on the higher SKU. This could be what's driving the 10/100 confusion stated in your original post.

Speaking of confusion: The challenge with partial domain licensing is some users not having access to functionality others do, which can cause confusion amongst users. Just a few of many examples: Business Starter users wouldn't be able to create Shared Drives or record meetings in Google Meet.

Hope this helps @fscithome_admin