What I Learned Building 3 Google Workspace Add-ons
Lessons from developing, pricing, and preparing to launch productivity tools on the Google Workspace Marketplace.
After months of building Google Workspace add-ons, I’m preparing to launch three products on the Marketplace. Here’s what I’ve learned.
The Idea Pipeline
It started with my own pain. Managing Google Groups through the Admin Console was unbearable - clicking through pages to add members one by one. So I built a better way.
That became Groups Manager Pro: bulk management from a spreadsheet.
Then I noticed another pain point: downloading email attachments manually. That became Email Attachment Importer.
And finally, Google Forms analytics are surprisingly weak. Enter FormVue.
Pricing Strategy
I landed on a simple model:
- Free tier: Enough to be useful, limited enough to convert
- Pro tier: $9.99-14.99/month based on value delivered
The key insight: don’t price based on what you think it’s worth. Price based on the time/pain you’re saving.
Technical Lessons
Google Apps Script is both amazing and painful
- Amazing: it just works inside Google products
- Painful: debugging is primitive, no real package management
OAuth verification is a gauntlet
- Sensitive scopes (like Gmail) require extensive justification
- Plan for 2-4 weeks of back-and-forth with reviewers
Centralize your licensing I built a shared backend (heirloom-licenses) that all products call. This was absolutely worth it.
What’s Next
February 2026: Groups Manager Pro launches. March-April: The other products follow.
Target: $500/month in revenue by June.
If you’re building for Google Workspace, feel free to reach out - happy to share more details.