In February 2025, Google will transition Workspace for Education customers to a new licensing model. Google emailed notice of this change to primary admins in November 2024, so check that inbox.
Email Subject: [Update] Upcoming changes to the Education Fundamentals licensing model and new license types
Caution: Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals will continue to be free of charge.
While this new licensing model impacts the assignment and management of Fundamentals licenses, the cost is not changing. This change also has no impact on the Chrome Upgrade (Chromebook management) license—this change applies to user licenses only, not device licenses.
January Licensing Changes Webinar
CDW Education will be hosting a webinar in January to detail these changes. Click to register for Understanding Google Workspace for Education Licensing Changes.
Timeline: What is changing?
Google is making three important changes to Google Workspace for Education licensing. Click a link below to read more on each change.
November 2024
Google emailed notice of this change to primary admins in November 2024.
Additional information covered in this article
What Questions are CDW Education Researching
Sign up for our January webinar covering License changes
2025 Licensing Model
The new licensing model will require all users in your domain to be assigned a Workspace for Education Fundamentals license. Previously, all users automatically received this license, and each domain had unlimited Fundamentals licenses. With this change, users will need to be assigned a Fundamentals license to access all the basic features and core services of Workspace for Education, and each domain will have a finite number of licenses to use.
For Existing Education Domains
For existing Education domains, Google will transition you to the new licensing model between now and February 2025:
- Your domain will receive enough Education Fundamentals licenses to cover current users with an additional buffer. This licensing means you should have enough licenses to cover your users for the foreseeable future.
- Admins will be responsible for managing their provisioned Education Fundamentals licenses, either through the Admin console or an automated license management tool. We expect this process to be similar or identical to existing Workspace Standard and Plus license management.
- For existing users in your domain, Google will assign their Education Fundamentals licenses for you and their ability to interact with Google services will not change. Based on this information, Google admins do not need to take any action during the transition between November 2024 and February 2025. Existing users will retain their Fundamentals license automatically.
For New Education Domains
For new Education domains, created on or after November 13, 2024, you will be on the new licensing model:
- Your domain will receive a set number of Education Fundamentals licenses (2,500 maximum), which you may assign to users in your domain or save for future users. As a user graduates or leaves their institution, admins may un-assign their Education Fundamentals license to free it up for another user.
- Education domains may request additional licenses via Google Support. CDW Education is not able to increase this cap for you.
New License Types for Education
Starting in February 2025, Google will add a new license type and status to Education domains: Gmail Only User and Archived User.
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Gmail Only User License Type: This license allows users who don't need access to all of the tools in Google Workspace for Education to keep access to Gmail. This license is beneficial for alums. Education domains will receive 2,500 of this license type. Admins can request additional licenses via Google Support. CDW Education cannot request additional Gmail Only User licenses on your behalf. Files in Drive owned by users with a Gmail Only license are still accessible by collaborators and impact Drive storage.
Note: Assigning a user the new Gmail Only license type will automatically un-assign their Fundamentals license, returning it to your license pool for assignment to another user. Changing a user’s status to Archived will automatically un-assign their Fundamentals or Gmail Only license, returning it to your license pool for assignment to another user.
- Archived User Status: This status ensures that user data is retained and protected by the same industry-leading security as users with an Education Fundamentals license but does not allow users to sign in to their Google Account on any system, including Workspace services. For many organizations, you'll likely designate staff no longer employed by your organization to preserve their accounts for file retention needs as archived users. Education domains will receive 2,500 archived user statuses. Admins can request additional count via Google Support. CDW Education cannot request additional Archived User statuses on your behalf. Files in Drive that Archived users own are still accessible by collaborators and impact Drive storage.
2025 Minimum Purchase Requirements
Starting January 1, 2025, new minimum purchase requirements for Workspace for Education Standard and Plus will go into effect.
- Institutions purchasing Education Plus or Education Standard receive one staff license at no cost for every four paid student licenses. Both license types access the same functionality. This requirement is not changing from the existing purchasing process.
- Education Standard and Education Plus subscriptions must purchase 50 licenses or the total student enrollment, including part-time students, whichever is greater. Previously, Standard and Plus required a purchase covering total full-time enrollment only. A new Student Enrollment Verification Letter will be provided that reflects this change.
- Renewals will have a different date for when these requirements take effect. More information is available at Google’s Help Center.
Example scenario
Take this example scenario. A domain has 4,250 users (active and suspended). When the transition to the new licensing model occurs for this organization, they will have an inventory of 4,250 Fundamentals licenses, plus a buffer of additional licenses (calculation of this buffer is TBD by Google). Google will automatically assign these 4,250 Fundamentals licenses to all the domain's existing users (active and suspended).
Moving forward, the organization's admins is responsible for assigning and un-assigning these licenses manually or through automation. If there is a dedicated OU for suspended users, which is best practice, admins could change their status from Suspended to Archived, which will return their Fundamentals licenses to the inventory for assignment to other users.
If more than 2,500 suspended users exist, admins must request more Archived User licenses from Google Support, or some users will need to be deleted.
What do I need to know
In the short term, no immediate action is required. All existing users in your domain will automatically be assigned an Education Fundamentals license, and their ability to interact with Google services will not change. The timing of this change will allow organizations time to develop or update licensing plans throughout early 2025 and be ready for the 2025–26 school year.
We advise you to plan for license and user lifecycle management as you prepare for next year and your user rollover between school years. Several automated options are available for license management, including GCDS (Google Cloud Directory Sync), GAM, and the CDW Education Licensing Tool. We expect Google to announce the new SKUs for Fundamentals, Gmail Only, and Archived User shortly so that admins can configure these automations to manage these licenses. Google has committed to sending more information about these new licenses at least 30 days before changes go into effect. CDW Education will work on updating our licensing tool to support this new licensing method so that we can support our customers who already use this tool to manage their upgraded licenses. Once our tool is updated, our Support team will be ready to assist you in updating your automations.
This change may require a review of your user retention practices and policies. We understand that many organizations have different policies for retaining student and staff accounts. Additionally, retention laws may vary from state to state, so you may need to contact your organization’s legal counsel to understand your data retention requirements. Now that a finite cap on the number of Fundamentals, Gmail Only, and Archived User licenses available will be in effect, retaining all user accounts indefinitely will likely no longer be feasible.
We recommend you review the Google Workspace for Education Licensing Guide for more detailed information on the state of license management moving forward.
What Questions are CDW Education Researching
We understand this is a significant change for many customers. We are researching several important questions to support you in this transition. Among the questions we are investigating are:
- How is the buffer for Fundamentals licenses calculated?
- What happens to Drive files for Archived Users? Are they accessible by collaborators just as files are for suspended users today?
- What happens to Drive files for users who have no license at all?
- Will the Admin console's automatic licensing be updated to include Fundamentals, Gmail Only, and Archived User?
- Will the new best practice be creating an Archived Users OU specifically for those whose accounts must be preserved for long-term data retention? Does this new model change the purpose of suspending a user?
| Document Version | Date | Description of Change |
| 1.0 | 11/25/2024 | Original Publish - will talk to cat before publishing |