If you have multiple Google Workspace editions

Customers who are new to Google Workspace should start at the basic setup. The steps are the same when you want to use multiple editions. The main difference is that you must work with a Google sales representative or partner to buy licenses for multiple editions. Go to Set up ​Google Workspace​ for your organization.

Contact a Google sales representative or partner.

The billing processes are mostly the same when you have multiple Google Workspace editions, with the following differences:

• For customers who have automatic payments or invoiced billing, your invoice shows each Google Workspace edition as a separate line item.
• All of your editions have the same monthly draw date. The first month is prorated, as needed, to bring the draw dates into alignment. However, the annual renewal dates for each edition stay separate based on the date you bought each one.

For more information, go to Billing and payments.

If your organization's edition of Google Workspace doesn't include Vault, you might be able to buy Vault add-on licenses. For details, go to Buy Vault licenses for your organization.

Note: If your organization has multiple Google Workspace editions, you can’t purchase add-on subscriptions. If you need additional features for some users, such as Vault, consider assigning them a Google Workspace license that includes these features. 

In general, licensing for multiple Google Workspace editions works the same as for a single edition. If you manually assign licenses, you simply assign the correct license to each user.

Note: If you set up organizational units, users in child organizational units can have different licenses from users in the top-level organizational unit.

Automatically assign licenses

• You can set up automatic license assignment for only one of the editions. When you do, all new users and users with no licenses are automatically assigned licenses for the edition. Any existing users continue on their current license unless you manually reassign the license.
• You can switch automatic licensing to another Google Workspace edition at any time. When you do, all new users and users with no licenses are automatically assigned licenses for the new edition.

Learn more about assigning licenses.

The process for getting more licenses or adding users is the same when you have multiple Google Workspace editions. If you have automatic licensing turned on for one of your editions, the number of users you can add is limited to the number of seats you have for that edition.

You can change a user’s license to a different edition—for example, to upgrade a user from Business Standard to Business Plus.

You can adjust licenses based on your payment plan:

• If you’re on the Flexible Plan, you can upgrade some or all of your users at any time.
• If you’re on the Annual Plan, contact your Google sales representative or partner and request the new license levels. You have 15 days to assign licenses. After 15 days, we tally your committed license count for the licenses and charge you based on the licenses as you assigned them to your users.

  For example, you start with 1,000 users with Business Standard licenses on the Annual Plan. You upgrade 500 users to Business Plus through your Google sales representative or partner. Now you have 15 days to move the 500 upgraded users to a Business Plus license. If you move only 300 users to Business Plus in that time, we update the committed license count for Business Standard to 700 (the original 1000 minus the 300 you reassigned) and charge you accordingly.

Learn how to change a user’s license to a different edition.

1. Make sure you have enough licenses for all your users.
2. If needed, get more licenses.
3. For each user, assign the correct license type.

   You can upgrade or downgrade the license type. Learn how service and administrative settings change if you downgrade a user.

If you have users with multiple licenses in your organization, some features might not be available for all your users. Also, some Enterprise edition advanced features might be enforced for Business edition users in the same organization. These advanced features include Gmail data loss prevention (DLP) and Google Drive sharing and data access.

Example: Set up session length

You can’t set the session length for users with Business Starter or Standard licenses.

Example: Devices audit log

Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Standard; Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Standard, Education Plus, and Endpoint Education Upgrade; G Suite Business; Cloud Identity Premium. Compare your edition

You won’t see data for users with Business Starter or Standard licenses.

Example: Drive sharing policy

If some users in an organization have Enterprise edition licenses and an administrator configures an organizational unit to allow sharing to users in whitelisted domains, all users in that organizational unit can share Google Drive items to users in the whitelisted domains.

If you turned on automatic licensing for one of your Google Workspace editions, a restored user automatically gets a license for that edition, if one is available. As a result, the user might get a license that’s different from the one they had before they were deleted.

If automatic licensing isn't turned on, you need to manually reassign a license to the user.

If the user had an Archived User (AU) license, manually reassign that license to ensure that the user’s data and policies are appropriately restored. Read Manage former employees and their data.