Teams of up to 100 users at a company or school can use Google Workspace Essentials Starter edition for enhanced collaboration.
Video meetings, Drive, and collaboration tools for teams
With Essentials Starter, you get these familiar, easy-to-use tools for work or school:
- Docs, Sheets, and Slides for content creation
- Drive for cloud storage
- Meet for secure video meetings
- Chat for efficient group and direct messaging
Note the following details:
- Any number of teams can sign up—Although an Essentials Starter team can have up to 100 users, there's no limit to the number of teams that can sign up at your organization.
If you signed up for Essentials Starter before June 3, 2022, each team can have up to 25 users.
- Support and Gmail are not included—Essentials Starter edition doesn't include access to Google Workspace support.
- If you need Gmail (and don't already have a Google Workspace edition), sign up instead for a Google Workspace Business edition.
- If you already have an Essentials edition and now need Gmail, you need to upgrade to a Business edition
- Paid upgrades are available—You can upgrade to a paid edition of Essentials at any time from your Team dashboard to add more users, get additional business features, and access Google Workspace support.
You can also buy a paid edition of Essentials through a Google Sales representative or local reseller.
Educational institutions aren't eligible for Essentials Starter—Instead, qualifying institutions can sign up for Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, which is available at no cost, or a paid Education edition.
All you need is a business email address
Use Google Workspace Essentials Starter at no cost with a team of up to 100 users at your company, simply by signing up with your business email address. You can then add other users who have email addresses in the same domain. For example, if your address ends in @yourbusiness.com, you can use Essentials with other people whose addresses end in @yourbusiness.com.
If your organization uses Microsoft 365, you can let everyone join Essentials with their Microsoft account (if your IT administrator allows it).
Note: You can't sign up with an address at a public web host like gmail.com or yahoo.com. Instead, you must use a custom address, such as for a business or organization.
Includes Meet, Chat, Drive and other features
Video calls, content storage, and collaboration
- Voice and video conferencing—Host and join a video meeting from anywhere with up to 100 participants.
- Group and direct messaging—Communicate and collaborate efficiently from anywhere with Chat.
- Productivity suite—Easily create and co-edit files with Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Google Forms.
- Files available any time, any place—Store and share over 100 file types—even Microsoft Office files—and co-edit them in real time, from any device.
- Tasks tracking—Assign tasks while collaborating in Chat spaces, and keep track of all your tasks on your computer or phone.
- Easy scheduling—Schedule video meetings and other events more easily, get reminders about upcoming activities, and share calendars.
- Shared notes—Capture, share, and collaborate on your notes on any device, anywhere. Easily create check lists, action items, voice memos, and more with Keep.
Team management
- Add and remove team members—Control who in your organization can use Essentials.
- Assign a Team admin role—Give another user full administrative control over your team's Essentials account.
Upgrade for even more features
Paid edition | Features | |
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Enterprise Essentials |
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Enterprise Essentials Plus | Everything from Enterprise Essentials except Calendar, plus:
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Unlock advanced features for your domain
If you upgrade to a paid edition of Essentials and you're the owner or IT administrator for your organization's domain name, you can get advanced business features by verifying your domain:
- Account (identity) management features, such as the ability to create user accounts and manage user profiles
- Advanced security and compliance controls, such as 2-Step Verification, password monitoring and enforcement, Security center, access transparency, data regions, and client-side encryption
- Advanced mobile device management
- Delegated admin access based on role
- Data retention and eDiscovery with Google Vault
- Connected Sheets BigQuery data connector
- Work Insights
The features that you can access depend on your paid Essentials edition. You also take over management of any existing Essentials users in your organization.
Sign up for Essentials
Sign up so your team can:
- Host and join secure video meetings with Google Meet.
- Collaborate with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
- Store files and work in over 100 file types in real-time, from any device in Google Drive—even Microsoft Office files.
- Communicate with groups or one-on-one with Google Chat.
- Assign tasks in Chat, and track tasks on their devices with Google Tasks.
- Share notes with Google Keep.
Note:
- Support isn't included—Essentials Starter edition doesn't include access to Google Workspace support.
- Paid upgrades are available—You can upgrade to a paid edition of Essentials at any time from your Team dashboard to add more users, get additional business features, and access Google Workspace support.
You can also buy a paid edition of Essentials edition through a Google Sales representative or local reseller.
Educational institutions aren't eligible for Essentials Starter—Instead, qualifying institutions can sign up for Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals at no cost or another Education edition.
To sign up, you need...
- An email address where you plan to use Essentials—This should be an address where you can get mail. During sign-up, we'll email an invitation to your address. To show us you own the address, you need to respond to the email. You need to verify your email address to make sure that no one else can use Essentials with your address.
If your organization uses Microsoft 365: You can sign up with your Microsoft account, if your organization's IT administrator allows it. You just need to authenticate using your Microsoft account using using single-sign on (SSO).
- Team member addresses at your same domain—After we create your Essentials account, you can invite other people to use Meet and Drive with you. They must have an address at the same domain you signed up with. For example, if you sign up the address you@your-business.com, everyone else should have an email address that ends in @your-business.com.
Other teams are using Essentials at my organization
If you sign up and see a message that other teams are already using Essentials at your organization, you can do one of the following:
- Join an existing Essentials team—You'll be able to use Meet, Drive storage, and Docs editors with other members of the team.
- Create a new Essentials workspace—Use Essentials solo or invite others to join your new Essentials team.
- Become the Essentials admin for everyone at your organization—If you're the owner or IT admin for your organization's domain, you can take over management of Essentials for your whole organization. First, create a new Essentials workspace. Next, verify ownership of your domain and upgrade to Enterprise Essentials to get more features, such as user account (identity) management and additional security features.
My address has other Google services
If your email address is already associated with a Google Account that has Google services like YouTube or Google Ads, your account will be converted to a managed Essentials account:
- You'll lose access to any Google services that aren't available with Essentials.
- You won't have access to some services, like Gmail.
- You'll keep access to dozens of other services, including YouTube, Google Ads, and Google Analytics.
Get Essentials apps for your mobile devices
You can access the Essentials apps that your organization uses directly from mobile devices, such as your phone or tablet.
What you'll need: Your mobile phone
Your email address at your company or organization; for example, johnsmith@your-company.com.
Get Google Workspace on your phone or tablet
The following services are available on mobile devices:
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Cancel Essentials
Cancel your organization's Essentials subscription to:
- Stop using Essentials with your team or organization.
- Stop incurring new charges for Essentials services if you have a paid edition.
Important: You might still be charged for services used since your last payment. - Free up your domain within 24 hours for use with a new Google Account. This requires canceling all subscriptions managed in your Admin console.
Step 1: Save your data
Step 2: Cancel your Essentials subscription
Find steps below, depending on whether you verified your domain to use with Essentials. If you have a paid edition of Essentials, canceling your subscription stops further charges for Essentials services
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