Google Workspace Essentials Starter is a free plan that provides teams within an organization with access to Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Chat, and Google Meet.
Google offers several Workspace plans for businesses and schools – virtually all plans require a paid subscription. But you may not need a full Google Workspace subscription; instead you may want google drive, Google Docs and other functions for a specific team or project within your company. In that case, you can sign up for a free plan called Workspace Essentials Starter.
Available for up to 25 employees, this plan offers Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, as well as Google Chat and Google Meet† The plan does not offer gmail, because it works with your existing business email address. Each user gets 15 GB of storage for the various services with access to team chats, meetings and shared files.
TO SEE: Google Workspace Cheat Sheet: Complete Guide to 2022 (TechRepublic)
You don’t need to own or manage a domain, but you do need a business email account. After you sign up with your own email address, you can add up to 24 other users with addresses in the same domain.
Browse to the Google Workspace signup page. Enter your business email address in the field provided. Click next (Image A†
Image A
You will be informed that you will receive a verification email. Log in to your email account, open the email and click the Verify Email button (Figure B†
Figure B
Type your first and last name on the Google Workspace page. Create a Google Workspace account name, which can refer to a team, department, project, or other resource within your organization. Click next (Figure C†
Figure C
On the next screen, create the password to log in to your workspace. Check the box to indicate that you are not a robot and then click the Agree and Create Account button (Figure D†
Figure D
You will be taken to your Google Workspace dashboard page where you can access its various features. To invite other colleagues, click the Invite People button (Figure E†
Figure E
In the next window, enter the person’s email address. You can enter multiple email addresses, each separated by a semicolon. Click Add and then Submit (Figure F†
Figure F
The person accepts the invitation via email and is prompted to create an account with their name and password. After logging in, they are placed on the Dashboard (Figure G†
Figure G
As the person who initially set up the Google Workspace account, you are the only administrator, so you can manage other users. Click the People entry on the left to see all users of the subscription. Click the three-dot icon for a specific user to activate a menu from which you can change or remove their role altogether (figure H†
figure H
Click the menu item for Manage in Admin Console. This will take you to a special console where you can see how they have used the plan, email them, recover deleted data from their Google Drive, delete or move them to another workspace (figure I†
figure I
Now it’s just a matter of all of you using the different features of the Google Workspace account. From the dashboard you can directly access Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Meet and Google Chat. You can also upload files and create new files (figure J†
figure J
