Move account and email away from Google apps, but still retain all other Google services, e.g., Drive, Analytics

Question

I've got an email and user account (lets call it [email protected]) setup inside of a Google Apps account.

I have several domains and lots of users inside of this Google Apps account. All the other domains and users will stay with Google Apps; it's just this one domain and that domain's users (there is only 1) I want to move.

I want to move the email for *@example.com to another provider, but I would still like all my other Google products/services: Drive, Calendar, Analytics, Places, etc., to still work with this account.

I can easily change the MX record with my domain registrar to point at the new email host, which will point the emails to the new provider, but I'm unsure as to what to do with the Google account products/services as listed above.

I don't want to keep the [email protected] user as a paid user in the Google Apps account. In an ideal world I'd now like:

• emails to be managed by my new email provider
• my existing Google products/services to still be accessible by logging into Google with the same [email protected] login

Answer 1

It appears that the only way to stop paying for a user is to delete them. This Google page explains that even a suspended user will still incur license fees.

This Google page describes what happens when you delete a user from a G-Suite organization. It essentially says that all of the data will also be deleted, some immediately and some after a bit of time.

• G Suite access — The user can’t access any of your organization's G Suite services, such as Google Drive files, Gmail, and so on.
• Files and calendars — All events the user created will stay on invitees' calendars. The user's G Suite data, including all file types, Gmail, and calendar data (except for shared calendars), is deleted after 5 days. For some data, you can transfer ownership to another user.
• Sites pages — Pages created by the user aren’t deleted. As administrator, you can remove the sites.
• Google Vault — All the user's Vault data is deleted after 30 days, regardless of any retention settings or holds that might be in effect.
• Google Play — The user's Google Play developer account is also deleted. You can transfer some apps to another developer account, but apps that offer subscription products can't be transferred.
• Google+ — The user's Google+ profile and circles are deleted. If the user is the sole owner of a community, collection, or event, it’s deleted as well.
• Brand account — If your organization uses a Brand Account, any assets owned solely by one user, such as Google+ pages, Google My Business listings, and YouTube channels, are deleted immediately. If there are other owners, the assets are transferred to another owner’s G Suite account.
• Non-core services — Content in the user's non-core services, such as YouTube and Blogger, is immediately deleted.

So, to continue using the non-email Google products with the same login, your options are:

1. keep paying for the G-Suite account
2. migrate all of your data to a personal account

Data migration is super complicated because each product has its own capabilities and instructions. Some of the instructions on this page might help, but they're designed for migrating between paid apps (just like the data migration tool).