Turn Gmail on or off for users

If you have G Suite Essentials edition, upgrade to G Suite Enterprise to get this service.

These instructions are for turning Gmail on or off for some or all users.

As a G Suite administrator, you can control who uses Gmail in your organization. Just turn Gmail on or off for those people in your Google Admin console. People who have Gmail turned on can see the service in their account. If you've also set up mail flow for your domain, they can use Gmail to send mail with your organization's address.

Before you begin

To stop using your G Suite domain's business address with Gmail, redirect mail flow to the email service you do want to use. If your domain's MX records are pointing to Google servers, update the records to instead point to the server that should get your mail.

Notes:

  • Google Calendar—If Gmail is turned off, calendar invitations emailed from users outside the G Suite domain, or other services such as Exchange, Yahoo, and so on, won't automatically show up in Calendar. Invitations from users in the same G Suite domain should continue to work.
  • If you turn off the Gmail service while your MX records are still directing mail flow to Google servers, the messages will still be delivered. 

To control who uses Gmail in your organization

Before you begin: To turn the service on or off for certain users: Put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or put them in an access group (to control access for users across or within departments).

  1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

    Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

  2. From the Admin console Home page, go to Appsand thenG Suiteand thenGmail.

  3. At the top right of the gray box, click Edit Service .

  4. To turn on or off a service for everyone in your organization, click On for everyone or Off for everyone, and then click Save.

  5. To turn on or off a service only for users in an organizational unit:

    1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
    2. Select On or Off.
    3. To keep the service turned on or off even when the service is turned on or off for the parent organizational unit, click Override.
    4. If the organization's status is already Overridden, choose an option:
      • Inherit—Reverts to the same setting as its parent.
      • Save—Saves your new setting (even if the parent setting changes).

    Learn more about organizational structure.

  6. To turn on a service for a set of users across or within organizational units, select an access group. For details, go to turn on a service for a group.
Changes typically take effect in minutes, but can take up to 24 hours. For details, see How changes propagate to Google services.  

You're not done with Gmail setup yet

Turning on the Gmail service doesn't make mail start flowing to people's Gmail accounts. You must first give everyone a user account, then switch your mail flow to G Suite.

For complete setup steps, see Set up Gmail for your team.

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