What happened
In May 2026 Google started flagging G Suite legacy free edition accounts as "used for commercial purposes" and demanding an upgrade to a paid Workspace plan. Accounts that don't act within a 45-day appeal window lose access to Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. Plenty of the flagged accounts are family domains that have never sold anything, and the appeal process is opaque.
Whether you pay or not, the lesson is the same one you learn from any rug pull: the terms belong to whoever holds the data. TinyCld is the suite you already know, running on hardware you control, speaking the standard protocols so your existing apps keep working. It costs $0 per user, forever. The founder wrote it after Google cancelled his own twenty-year-old account, and the importer below exists because he needed it first.
What moves
Google Takeout exports everything below in open formats, and TinyCld reads each one directly from the zip. You never unpack it.
| From Google | Takeout format | Lands in |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | .mbox | Mail, threaded, with labels |
| Google Calendar | .ics | Calendar, one calendar per export, merged by event UID |
| Google Contacts | .vcf | Contacts, deduplicated by vCard UID |
| Google Drive | files and folders | Drive, in the original folder hierarchy |
| Docs, Sheets, Slides | .docx .xlsx .pptx | Drive, as files |
Re-running an import is safe. Contacts and events match on their UIDs and calendars match by name, so a second pass skips what is already there and adds only what is new; it does not overwrite records you have since edited. Photos, Keep, and Meet recordings are not part of this importer; keep those exports somewhere safe.
The checklist
- Decide where TinyCld runs. Self-host on any Linux box with Docker using the deploy guide, which has one-click options on Render, Railway, and Fly.io as well. If you'd rather not run a server, a hosted version is opening at tinycld.com.
- Request your archive from Google Takeout.
At takeout.google.com,
tick Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Drive. Choose
.zipand the largest archive size offered so you get as few files as possible. Large mailboxes take Google a day or two to prepare. - Point TinyCld at the zip files. Open Settings, choose Import from Google, press Select Takeout Files, and pick every part of the archive at once (Google splits large exports into several zips). TinyCld scans them, shows what it found per app with a count for each, and lets you untick anything you don't want. Press Start Import and watch the progress bars. An export can total up to 8 GB uncompressed per run; split anything larger across runs.
- Reconnect your phone and desktop apps. TinyCld speaks IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV, and WebDAV. Apple Mail, Thunderbird, iOS Calendar, and the rest connect with your TinyCld address and password. There are also native TinyCld apps on the App Store and Google Play.
- Move your domain's mail. Point your domain's MX record at TinyCld for incoming mail. For outgoing mail, connect a delivery service such as Postmark rather than sending from your own IP. Your messages stay on your server; only delivery goes through them. Keep Google forwarding to your new address during the switch so nothing is lost while DNS updates.
- Leave Google running for a month. Spot-check a few old threads, a recurring event, and a shared folder in TinyCld. When you stop noticing gaps, close the account.
Questions people ask
Do I need to know how to run a server?
No, if you wait for the hosted version. Yes, a little, if you self-host now: the Docker option is three commands and the installation guide covers HTTPS and backups. If you've ever run a Raspberry Pi or a VPS, you can run this.
Do I need my own domain?
Only for mail at your own address, which is the thing legacy accounts are losing. Calendar, contacts, Drive, and the rest work on any hostname.
What about my family's accounts?
One TinyCld server hosts many users. Each person exports their own Takeout archive and imports it under their own login. There is no per seat charge, because there is no charge.
Can I go back?
Everything you import is stored in the same open formats it came in. Nothing is locked in, which is the point.