Google Apps a.k.a G Suite legacy account has always been a point of interest among all webmasters and website owners, as it allows users to have custom branded email id like [email protected] for free of cost. But unfortunately from December 6, 2012 mother Google has stopped providing this free service. So, if you no longer use the domain with which you have registered your Google Apps legacy account, the account itself become nothing but useless. Though initially Google allowed legacy users to add secondary domain within their Google Apps a.k.a G Suite legacy account, but later they stopped providing that too.
But this never stopped geeks to find a way around to add secondary domain within their Google Apps a.k.a G Suite legacy account with the help of a small loophole within the upgradation system. At the end of 2015, Google has patched that loophole too. So, literally if you use a Google Apps legacy account you cannot add secondary domain. Now this bold move by Google again made those Google Apps legacy account useless, unless you still use the primary domain. But as we all know in the tech world, nothing stays forever and there is always a work around to figure things out. So, today in this article I’m going to share the most anticipated thing about Google Apps legacy account i.e. how you can change your primary domain for your Google Apps legacy account.
Prerequisite
There are a few things that we must need to do and you must need to have before we go further down the rabbit hole.
- You must need to have a Google Apps legacy account
- Please upgrade your account to “30 days Free Trial” from the Billing tab of your Google Apps admin dashboard.
- Please make sure that your Google Apps Legacy account is a normal Google Apps account is NOT a partnered account with Godaddy or any other Domain Registrar in Partnership with Google. If it still confuses you, take a look at the image below. The primary domain can’t be changed for those partnered Google Apps account.
Step 1 – The Upgrade
Google Apps legacy account has most feature turned off so you cannot do any complicated stuff. So, first go to your Google Apps admin dashboard and then click on the Billing icon. Here you will find a link to upgrade for 30 Days Free Trial. Fill up the details and click on upgrade.
Step 2 – Add Secondary Domain
Now go to the Domains tab from your Google Apps admin dashboard and click on “Add a domain or alias” button and then after the pop-up comes, click on “add another domain” option. Make sure that you do not click on “add domain alias”, otherwise the rest of the process will not work.
Also after you add your secondary domain within your Google Apps account, Google will ask you to verify the domain ownership. Make sure you follow any of the instructions on that page to verify your domain ownership. This is very important for the entire process. If you do not verify your domain ownership, the primary domain will not be replaced with the secondary domain. So, make sure all verification are done before you proceed further.
Step 3 – Swapping Primary Domain
To swap your existing Google Apps primary domain with the secondary domain that you just have added, first you have to visit Google Developer Console Customer Update SDK and have to follow every single step below exactly as they are mentioned.
- Within the textbox of customerKey, type: my_customer
- Within the textbox of fields, type: customerDomain
- Within the textbox of Request body, select customerDomain as the property (from the drop down menu). Then type your secondary domain name (that you wanna make primary) within the textbox besides it.
After you are done typing all these things exactly as I mentioned above (all texts are case-sensitive), it should look like the image below.
Now it’s time to click the “Authorize & Execute” button. As soon as you hit that button, Google will ask you for a bunch of permission and make sure you allow every single one of them. Another important thing to keep in mind before the migration is that, make sure you are logged into Google with your Google Apps super admin login credentials.
Otherwise you won’t be able to allow all the permission that Google will ask to you. So, this is very important stay logged into Google with your super admin email of that Google Apps account whose primary domain you are swapping.
Step 4 – Clean up the mess
After the above process is done executing, it will show you an HTTP response header just below the “Authorize & Execute” button. If you see the response code as 200, then your primary domain has been swapped with the secondary domain. If you see any other number on the HTTP header besides 200 e.g. 500, just click on the “Authorize & Execute” button to retry and it will be done within 2 seconds.
Now it’s time to clean up your mess and going back to Google Apps legacy (free) edition. To do that first you have to delete your secondary domain (which used to be your primary domain and after swapping has become secondary domain) from the “Domain” tab of your Google Apps Dashboard.
After the deletion of secondary domain along with all email ids which were associated with that domain has been deleted, now it’s time for the downgrade. So, head over to the “Billing” tab and click on the three dots showing besides your Google Apps plan. From that drop down menu, select “Cancel Subscription” and as soon as you do that Google will redirect you to a page where Google will ask you whether you want to cancel your Google Apps account completely or wanna downgrade it back to the free version. So, select the “Downgrade” option and now you have a free Google Apps account with any domain as the primary domain.
Some FAQ
Here are some frequently asked questions by most of the people on whose Google Apps legacy account I’ve already worked on. Hope this will help you to get your required answers easily.
What is a Domain Alias in Google Apps ?
As the term “Alias” suggests, Domain Aliases are the domain name which will not be used to create new separate emails ids, rather it will link to the email ids you already have with your primary domain.
As an example lets say in your Google Apps account you have primary domain named example.com, but as you have a multinational business, you have country specific domains too, like example.co.in, example.fr, example.tk etc. Now if you create 3 separate email ids for each of your employee, say [email protected], [email protected] & [email protected]. That person (Jhon) has to maintain all three email accounts daily and it would become a nightmare.
Now if you add example.com as primary domain of your Google Apps account but example.co.in, example.tk as domain aliases, then even if someone sends an email to [email protected] it will still go to [email protected] and the person has to maintain only one email id.
What is a Secondary Domain in Google Apps ?
My primary domain of Google Apps is showing eNom Partnered. Can I change my primary domain ?
Do you provide Google Apps legacy account ?
Is it possible to reduce the price from 30$ ?
Now to do this, I have to work really hard on each and every single one of the accounts. I’m more than proud to say that I’ve already worked on more than 300 accounts and not a single one of them has ever faced any single issue. So, trust me when I say this 30$ is a very reasonable price that I’m asking from you considering the amount of work I’m putting in each account.
Do you provide discount on bulk order?
Why my emails are not getting sent properly after domain change ?
Can I upgrade my account after you change my domain?
Is this process still working?
Conclusion
So, even if you have a Google Apps account associated with a very old domain which you do not own/use anymore and you cannot use the account for good, but now you can change the primary domain and start enjoying the goodies of Google Apps. Please note this is not any kind of illegal thing. Google allows their Google Apps users to swap their primary domain if they need it. So I do not thing they are going to ban this in future for legacy users. But I will definitely suggest you to read this Google support article before you swap your primary domain, in case you have important things associated with your existing primary domain.
Feedback
So, have you guys ever used this Google Apps primary domain swapping process before or this is completely new to you? I would love to hear your feedbacks about the Google Apps legacy account primary domain swapping process in the comment section below. So, feel free to share your comments and findings.
You can also connect with me via twitter @iSaumya. If you like this post, please don’t forget to share it with others who might enjoy reading it. Also if you have any other ideas or request about future posts, you can let me know in the comment section below or via twitter.
Related Posts:
