So way back in the day, I started using Google Workspace (then known as Google Apps) as a method to allow me and my family to use our newsome.org email addresses with Gmail. Google Apps were free, and, while it was annoying to be denied some Google features that weren’t made available to Google Apps users (for example, we still cannot family share YouTube TV), things were solid and reliable for a long time.

In order to make your email work with one service (Gmail in my case), and your domain (e.g., website) to be hosted by another service (WordPress in my case), you have to configure your DNS settings a very specific way. To simplify things (or at least to reduce my web travel), I moved all of my domains to Google Domains.

Things were cool for a while.

Then Google decided to charge for Google Apps, but grandfathered us long-timers and allowed us to keep our free accounts. Then Google decided to end the free accounts, presumably to make a few extra dollars. After we all simultaneously begged and lost our shit, they decided to keep the free plan.

All was cool for a minute.

Then Google decided to exit the domains business, and sell Google Domains to Squarespace. I have no desire to be a Squarespace customer, so I decided to move all my domains to WordPress. WordPress (smartly) makes it very easy to do, and even pays the transfer fees and adds an extra year to your domain registration.

Moving the domains is simple, takes maybe 3 minutes, with little or no interruptions whatsoever.

But what about the (now renamed to) Google Workspace account? Would I lose my free account if I transferred newsome.org? Would my email (via the Gmail front-end) stop working? Would my kids angrily descend on me when their email stopped working?

I inquired with both WordPress support (very helpful and responsive) and Google Domains support (pretty responsive, no doubt at least partially due to a “don’t piss off our prospective customers” clause in the Squarespace purchase agreement). Both gave me fairly encouraging- though not unequivocal- responses.

So after texting my family to chill if they experienced any temporary problems, I pulled the trigger on the newsome.org transfer.

With one small hiccup (which I’ll get to in a minute), no problems whatsoever. The transfer took just a few minutes, email was not affected, and my website remained in place and reachable.

Cool.

Until this morning when this happened:

“Safari can’t open the page newsome.org because Safari can’t find the server newsome.org.”

After digging around some, I realized that, because of the DNS configuration I mentioned above, I had been using custom name servers (at Google), and that custom configuration transferred over to WordPress (exactly as it should have). Once I changed the setting at WordPress to use WordPress’s default name servers and waited a few minutes, the problem resolved.

So the moral of the story is that grandfathered, free Google Workspace customers who use Google Workspace for their domain’s email addresses can transfer their domain to WordPress without any interruption or loss of their email service.

Just be sure to check those name servers.