Google has recently announced a significant change to its Workspace Business Starter plan. Starting May 15, new subscribers will have access to pooled storage. This means that if an organization signs up for five users in the Business Starter plan, it will have 150GB of pooled storage, rather than the previous 30GB per user. Existing Starter plan customers will see this change applied starting on May 22.
With this new pooled structure, there will be no default storage limit. If an admin doesn’t set a storage limit for individual users, they will have access to the pooled storage, with each user adding another 30GB of storage to the organization’s storage pool.
If an admin sets a storage limit for a user and the user reaches their quota, they will be notified to contact their admin to increase their quota. Unfortunately, there’s no option to automatically notify the admins.
It’s worth mentioning that, once the pooled storage is applied to all Starter users, existing ones will inherit the storage limit settings on the account (if there is one). If there’s none, admins will need to set a limit for their users.
In addition, Shared drives will now be available to Business Starter plan users, previously only offered to Business Standard plan users.
This new change to the Business Starter plan will give small businesses more flexibility with their storage and access to Shared Drives. Keep an eye out for this change if you’re a current subscriber or considering subscribing to the Business Starter plan.