(disclosure: googler on workspace here)

This was/is a domain account, right? @yourdomain.com? You upgraded from the free "google apps for your domain" account to a paid workspace account, and now you can't downgrade? If that's the case, that's unfortunately works as intended - that free domain-level tier doesn't exist anymore, so anyone who is on it (myself included) who starts paying and thereby upgrades to one of the current SKUs, can't downgrade to a SKU that no longer is offered.

No, I upgraded from a completely personal account, like your mom might have, to Workspace. I cancelled my Workspace subscription and now have no access to Gmail, calendar, keep, etc. I never used "google apps for your domain".

Starting from an @gmail.com account? We've always required you to have an accompanying domain for workspace accounts, as far as I know.

Reading over your previous post again I guess it was a "google apps for your domain" account. I did use my own domain and it was free, before I upgraded it (and when I upgraded it the product was still called GSuite). I wasnt aware the free tier was called "google apps for your domain". I guess then that the situation you described with the free tier no longer existing is what happened to me.

Good to know at least that I didn't do something wrong. However, there was no warning about this happening in either direction that I recall - no warning that I would not be able to downgrade and no warning upon cancelling my Workplace subscription that I would not go back to my previous free tier. Nothing I could find by some searching that described this either. I appreciate your response here, otherwise I would never have known if I did it wrong...

There was a significant period of time (~6 years) where one could upgrade to a free trial and downgrade again to the grandfathered free tier.

That feature was unfortunately removed some time in 2018.

If you had Gmail on your own domain, then it was the legacy Google Apps Free Tier. You can still create a Google account for free with a non-gmail address, and people can use that email to add you to docs and such, but it doesn't have Gmail. The days when it was called Google Apps was the last time you could get free email hosting on a custom domain.

> You can still create a Google account for free with a non-gmail address

Yeah - my email is elsewhere now, and I was hoping that by cancelling Workspace, my account would convert into the type of account you get when you sign up for Google services with a non Google email. But it didn't.

Can't OP move to Cloud Identity Free to keep access to most of the free services[1]? They wouldn't have access to Workspace-specific services like Gmail and Google Calendar, but they would still have access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, and Meet. I assume other non-Workspace services like Google Play will also stay available.

1. https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251