The COVID-19 pandemic era normalized the new office culture compelling the professionals and organizations to embrace working from home. As a result, the team members had to switch to productivity and collaboration tools that facilitate communication and collaboration amongst the team members. Amidst this crisis, Google launched Google Workspace, the revamped version of G Suite, which enabled the users to create, communicate and collaborate from a single platform. Simply put, Google Workspace is an innovative solution that comprises all the productivity apps that you as an organization may require to get a task done, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet being the prominent ones. Within no time, Workspace suite gained momentum. Consumers, enterprises, and education segments began using apps like Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and more to create, collaborate, and share ideas every single day. At the time of its debut, Google Workspace was only available for businesses and enterprises, which means individuals did not have access to their innovative solutions. But later on, with the launch of Google Workspace Individual on June 14th, 2021, Google decided to make Google Workspace available to individual users as well. This welcoming decision implies that Google Workspace is accessible to anyone who owns a Google Account. Let’s take a deeper dive into Google Workspace Individual and discover what all it has to offer to people.
What is Google Workspace Individual?
Branded as Google Workspace for Everyone, the individual edition offers a slew of features that enables small business owners to provide professional services to their customers and creators to develop new business ideas and get involved in the community. The Google Workspace Individual offering adds premium features to improve the booking services, conduct professional video meetings, personalize email marketing campaigns and that’s not it! New features are. Workspace Individual will allow the users to administer all the personal and professional obligations on a single platform using their existing Google account. As of now, the individual edition of Google Workspace is only available in six counties, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and Australia.
What makes Google Workspace Individual different?
Before the launch of the Individual edition, Google Workspace was only available as Business and Enterprise editions. While the other two editions are suitable for large organizations where several users access the Workspace apps using the company domain, the individual edition is dedicated launched to improving the productivity of small business owners and individuals who, unlike large enterprises, operate their business with their personal account domain. While this may come as a surprise, Workspace Individual offers much more innovative features that you are unwilling to find in the business edition. The USP of Workspace for Individuals is the email marketing and appointment scheduling tools, which are absent from the business version of Google Workspace.
Features of Google Workspace Individual
Google Workspace Individual has brought appointment booking and email marketing capabilities needed to grow your business right into the Google Productivity apps. All these new features are directly integrated into the Google Products such as Google Meet, Google Calendar, and Gmail. Hence less time needs to be spent on tedious tasks, and you can engage more with customers. Let’s take a look at all the features that Google Workspace Individual has to offer to its subscribers.
#1. Longer group meetings in Google Meet
Once you sign up for Workspace Individual, you can conduct longer group calls on Google Meet, record the ongoing calls and even join the meeting by phone. Apart from this, you also get access to the add-on features like breakout rooms, polls, and hand raise. The subscribers can host group meetings of over 100 participants for as long as 24 hours.
Conduct group meetings for more than 60 minutes on a computerAn option to record meetingsNoise cancellation modeAbility to join meetings using a smartphoneAdvanced features like breakout rooms, hand raising, and polls
#2. Design an appointment scheduling page in Google Calendar
Google Workspace Individual offers simple yet effective scheduling tools within the Google Calendar, which allows you to design a customized appointment booking page that auto-updates itself after each booking. This booking page directly integrates with Google Calander, and anyone with the email address can book the time slot without hassle. All you need to do is to pick your free time slots and tweak the appointment schedule to suit your needs, and that’s it.
Create appointment schedulesShare appointment schedules via web app or mobileDirectly receive appointments from the website over the button clickEmbed your booking page onto your websiteAssign start and end dates for appointment schedulingNotify the date availabilityAssign buffer timing between appointmentsSet a maximum limit to appointment numberVerify email before confirming appointmentsCustomize the appointment booking formSend emails to remind the upcoming appointments
#3. Get a robust email marketing tool in Gmail
Workspace Individual Edition bestows email marketing capabilities to Gmail, empowering you to set up powerful and engaging email campaigns in style. An option to use branded visual layouts and professionally designed newsletters help your marketing emails stand out in the customer’s inbox. It is possible to choose the background color, design a custom footer, and include social media links in the email. You also get a multi-send option that sends the email to several users listed on your mailing list in Google Contacts.
Multi send featureCustomized layouts to create marketing emails
Google Workspace Individual Pricing Details
An individual subscription to Google Workspace costs USD 9.99 per month. A 20% discount is available for a limited time. Once the offer ends, you will be charged the usual price.
Workspace Individual – Is it ideal for you?
As mentioned, anyone with a personal email account with domains such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, or yahoo.com can sign up for Workspace Individual. The Individual Edition is entirely meant for such business users or solo entrepreneurs who attend to their business commitments from their personal email accounts and are not willing to add multiple users or accounts at the moment. If you are someone who runs a side business or manages a freelancing gig which your personal email account, Workspace Individual is definitely the right choice for you to provide professional services to your users.
How to set up Google Workspace Individual?
Provided that the Individual edition is only available in the six countries mentioned above, you will not be able to purchase the individual subscription if you do not reside in these regions. Signing up for Google Workspace Individual is a straightforward task. Keep your email account and the credit/debit card details handy, and visit the Google Workspace Individual site to get started. Google offers a 14-day free trial of the Individual edition from the day you sign up for the service using your email account. Once the trial period ends, you will automatically be charged from the linked credit/debit card every month unless you cancel the monthly subscription. After you successfully sign up for a workspace individual plan, you need to wait patiently for at least five minutes so that the new features automatically reflect in your account. You can refresh the browser tab if you are unable to access the new features.
Conclusion
Workspace Individual is undoubtedly a robust solution capable of fulfilling the communication needs of a small business single-handedly. Using this Workspace offering, small business owners or solopreneurs can improve their productivity and serve the customers more professionally. If the Individual Edition is available in your country, you should consider signing up for the 14-day trial and avail of its innovative features and offerings. You may also look at how you can turn your Google Workspace and Gmail into a powerful helpdesk and collaboration tool.
