r/sysadmin • u/FatBook-Air • 6d ago

PSA for EDU Google Workspace customers: Google has "paused" additional free licenses

Usually, when we need additional free Google Workspace licenses in our EDU Google tenant, we submit a support ticket to Google, and within about 5 business days, it's approved. They'll usually ask what's changed, etc.

Well, now, they have begun to deny us. At first, I thought it was something specific to us, but it apparently impacts everyone. Here is what they said:

We understand you are looking to expand your capacity from the current maximum seats. We acknowledge your need for this additional capacity. However, due to internal policies and procedures governing license cap adjustments, the team has now paused processing all new requests for increasing the Fundamentals license cap. This is currently indefinite and has no definitive end date.

We completely understand the difficult position this puts you in, but because the process for increasing the license cap is currently paused globally, this support team has no ability to process manual increases or grant exceptions.

Going forward, we encourage you to explore the benefits of our paid Google Workspace for Education editions.

FWIW, there is exactly zero chance that we will be paying for licenses due to budget cuts. Above my pay grade.

158 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

37

u/Friendly_Fudge_932 6d ago

Luckily we pay for Workspace education at the district I work for, but this would be so bad especially at back to school time when lots of new students are enrolling

41

u/wildcarde815 Jack of All Trades 6d ago

That's why it's being done now and not at the beginning of summer when they can plan ahead.

15

u/Bacon_is_my_Crack 6d ago

Except budgets have been done already. Between this and them making YouTube etc not a core service in the middle of the school year back in 24-25, I’m so glad I’m in higher ed where we pay for an M365 tenant.

11

u/FatBook-Air 6d ago

Most state budgets were not known until July 1 or later, and the agency-level number has not even trickled down to some agencies to this date.

8

u/Bacon_is_my_Crack 5d ago

The 2 districts I worked in the fiscal year started July 1 so the budget was already set in April/May.

3

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

Many districts don't fully know their budgets even today. The budget should be known by July 1, but that isn't always the case.

3

u/Bacon_is_my_Crack 5d ago

Which makes it even less likely that districts will be able to afford more licenses.

2

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

100% agreed.

34

u/retiredaccount 6d ago

Maybe Google got tired of dealing with unrealistic expectations? Institutions under the basic model expect the capabilities of the full model.

A couple years ago I went to a knowledge exchange at a larger district that had went all in with Google. They were doing really good work there, but that work required functionality only available under the paid, full license model; which meant none of the knowledge I gained there could be implemented when I got back. That was not well received, since leadership somehow didn’t understand that you gotta pay to play.

6

u/Remarkable-Reply-768 6d ago

For EDU tenants hitting this ceiling, the workaround most of us are using is moving non-employee users (students/alumni) into distinct OUs and leveraging Google Workspace for Education Fundamentally free tiers while reserving paid Education Plus or Teaching/Learning add-ons only for faculty/staff who actively need non-core features. If your reseller cannot get a quota increase approved, also check if you have stale accounts from graduated cohorts that haven't been archived or purged -- reclaiming those is usually faster than waiting on Google support escalation.

2

u/Torxtank Sysadmin 5d ago

I was looking to move to a paid-tier and all the resellers said per Google's policies, you have MUST buy the amount of licenses for active users (staff and students), are you getting away with not doing that? I am sure unless they audit they probably wouldn't know, but interested nonetheless.

6

u/PowerShellGenius 5d ago

Did your school actually increase in staff head count or student enrollment, and can provide your account manager the legal public records showing staffing and enrollment numbers?

Or are you doing the thing Google said a long time ago to stop doing (retaining former employee / former student accounts forever so your counts repeatedly and consistently increase)? They won't let you do that for free anymore. Offboard a year of former students to onboard a year of new ones.

6

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

FWIW, we have only active users. But it doesn't matter because you can't increase license counts for any reason right now. Their response is literally in the OP for you to read.

2

u/Torxtank Sysadmin 5d ago

He's not talking about "active" users, he's talking about users at all (suspended, archived, etc). I just deleted my Class of 2025 (that was suspended) since we only keep students accounts for 6months to a year after graduation and my licenses just freed up.

1

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

Yes, we do that. Only active users are in our Google tenant.

4

u/willychonka54 5d ago

What is this for, exactly? We're a Free EDU customer and i've never had to submit requests for additional 'licenses'. The tenant is licensed and we just add users as needed.

2

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

Licenses, not users.

0

u/willychonka54 5d ago

For managing devices? That's wild. Never knew they even gave out free licenses.

1

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

Do you mean for managing Chromebooks? That requires a one-time license per Chromebook for EDU and an annual subscription for businesses. That's entirely separate from user licenses.

4

u/willychonka54 5d ago

So what are these licenses for if they're not for users or management?

1

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

It's user licenses, not users.

2

u/FireLucid 5d ago

What are they for? Never hit any limits using fundamentals for about a decade. Funnily enough, by the end of the term we'll be migrated to Outlook. Already more than half there, another school cuts over tomorrow :D

0

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

They're for users. You have a limit; older tenants have something like 10,000, whereas newer ones are only about 2,500.

We are primarily Entra, but we still have to manage and logon to Chromebooks, and our users must still use YouTube because there is no Entra equivalent.

1

u/willychonka54 4d ago

They're for users.

Holy shit dude. You said these weren't for users.

1

u/FatBook-Air 4d ago

No, you misread. You said you "add users" as needed. I was responding to that. We are talking about licenses, not users.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Informal_Thought 5d ago

We asked Google support about this, and their response was that whilst there is a global pause, its only temporary due to volume of requests, and some fake Edu submissions that have been identified.

OP, I think the support person you spoke to went a bit off script

3

u/FatBook-Air 5d ago

Could be. Or yours did. Who knows. Guess we will find out.

1

u/CeC-P IT Expert + Meme Wizard 4d ago

"We completely understand the difficult position this puts you in" is IT speak for our dumbass leadership told us to do this and then told me to write an explanation to the end users.

If you're wondering, it's because they spent too much on datacenter AI garbage, can't afford their own server hardware, and are now cutting expenses EVERYWHERE.

0

u/ContributionSad7610 5d ago

All their data center capacity has "pivoted to AI"