Many businesses and individuals often get bewildered while choosing the suitable suite between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for their organization. But which one is the best and why should you choose one over another? In this article, we explain the services, pricing, pros, and cons of each other with an in-depth and detailed analysis. Read on!
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What are Google Workspace (G Suite) and Microsoft 365 (Office 365)?
Both Google Workspace (Formerly known as G Suite) and Microsoft 365 (Formerly known as Office 365) are a suite of various productivity tools designed to execute common business needs and tasks. Google Workspace is a suite offered by Google and Microsoft 365 is offered by Microsoft Corporation. You can use these tools to perform various tasks in the cloud. While many of the services included in these suites are free, you can purchase one of the plans to enable the full potential of the suite.
The Services offered by these suites include:
- Email Services
- Online Storage Drive for file management
- Calendars and Notes
- Video Conferencing
- Team Management and collaboration
- Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations
- Contacts
and More.
Google Workspace Vs Microsoft 365: Pricing
The pricing of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 differs based on the services you purchase. Both suites offer customized options that can be suitable for your organization’s size. In the section, we analyze the pricing for services offered by Workspace and 365 in USD.
Google Workspace Pricing
You can choose any of the following Google Workspace plans. The starter plan starts at just $6/month and can go up to $18/month. You can also contact the sales team at Google for enterprise-level plans.
The major differences in these plans are:
Video Conferencing: The Business Starter plan supports up to 100 participants in video meetings, 150 participants in the Business Standard plan, and up to 500 participants in the Business Plus plan.
Cloud Storage: The Business Starter plan is limited to 30GB cloud storage per user, the Business Standard plan offers 2TB storage per user and with the Business Plus plan you can store up to 5TB of data in the cloud.
Security Features: The Business Standard and Business Plus plan offer enhanced security plans with management control, vault, and advanced endpoint management while the Business Starter plan only offers basic security and management control.
Microsoft 365 Pricing
Users can find the pricing of Microsoft 365 a little bit more complicated because of various plans including Home, Business, Enterprise, Non-Profit, Government and Education. In addition to these plans, there are more sub-plans included within the suite. Let’s expose these plans and the features offered!
Microsoft “For Home” Plan: Microsoft 365 offers a “For Home” plan starting from $6.99 user/month or $69.99/year. Additionally, you can purchase this plan one time for $149.99. The Microsoft 365 family plan is available to purchase at $99.99 that supports up to 6 users.
Microsoft “For Business” Plan: The Microsoft 365 Business Basic Business plan starts at $5.99 user/month, Microsoft 365 Apps for Business plan costs $8.35 user/month, Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan costs $12.50 user/month, and the price of Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan is set at $20 user/month.
The Major difference in all these plans is the features and software packages that come along. Below are the software and apps that are included in different plans:
All of these plans come with 1TB of cloud storage, business email, chat, calls, meetings/video conferencing, and security features that are most essential for any organization.
Google Workspace Vs Microsoft 365: Services and Features
Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are rich in features, and services. In fact, both of these suites go head to head when it comes to the efficiency and reliability of the apps and products. Below we discuss the most popular productivity tools offered by both suites and compare their features in detail!
Business Emails
Google Workspace, as well as Microsoft 365, provides custom, security-enhanced, and easy-to-manage business emails. These emails use your business’s domain name from the website itself in the email address. The Email service offered by Microsoft 365 is Outlook and the one provided by Google Workspace is called Gmail. Both of these email services offer unique features that are built to boost the productivity of the user.
Gmail: Gmail is a web-based email service offered by Google and used by billions. Gmail offers various features like Email Scheduling, Email Aliases, Signature, Keyboard Shortcuts, Auto-responder, Multiple Email Accounts, and many more. Most of the features are available for Workspace users as well as for free Gmail users. You can access Gmail on any Mobile, PC, or Mac with just a web browser and internet connection. You can also download and use Gmail apps from Play Store or App Store. However, Gmail doesn’t offer desktop apps, for which you can download third-party apps like Boxysuite and install them on your Mac desktop.
Here’s how you can create a Gmail account!
Outlook: Outlook, on the other hand, is an Email service from Microsoft, that is no less than Gmail. Outlook allows users to manage the organization’s emails, create new emails, schedule meetings, aliases, and more with an easy-to-use interface. Outlook is pre-installed for Windows users but if you are a mobile or MAC user, you have to download the Outlook app from the store.
Communication / Video Conferencing
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer tools to enhance communication and collaboration between teams, clients, and stakeholders within an organization.
Google Meet: Google Meet is a video conferencing app from Google that offers chats, video calls and supports up to 250-participants at a time depending upon your purchased plan. Google meet allows users to create instant meetings, schedule meetings, and share meeting links with anyone within the organization. Google Meet can be integrated with Google Calendar so that you don’t miss any important sessions. With the latest update, Google Meet now allows live translated captions to the attendees.
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft teams is another great video conferencing app offered by Microsoft. Microsoft Teams is considered to be a more business-oriented video conferencing tool with enhanced security features than any other similar tool. Microsoft Teams can be integrated with over 250 apps and supports up to 300 participants at a time depending upon your purchased plan.
Both of these apps can perform tasks effectively and reliably as expected from a video collaborating tool and are rich in features to enhance your experience while creating, scheduling, or attending meetings.
Cloud Storage
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both offer a hefty amount of cloud storage to help you create, store and share your files online. You can also purchase more storage as per your need. However, Microsoft 365 clearly wins in the case of offering cloud storage over Google Workspace. With Microsoft 365, you get a massive 1TB of cloud storage on any package you purchase. But Google Workspace provides only 30GB of storage in the Business Starter package.
Apps
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace offer a suite of apps to perform your day-to-day tasks on the web. These productivity apps are created to provide an effective way to communicate between teams and stakeholders within an organization.
Google Workspace Apps: Google offers Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Slides, Google Drive, Books, Keep Notes, Hangouts, Chat, Meet, Calendar, and many more. With Google Docs you can easily create online documents and share them with your team. In addition, these apps can be integrated with hundreds of other applications.
Microsoft 365 Apps: Microsoft Teams also offer various apps to collaborate within a team online. These apps include Word, PowerPoint, Excel, outlook, cloud storage, and many more. These apps are also available as desktop apps on Microsoft windows.
Security
Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are known to have the best security in the world. The basic standard security is enough in most cases but if you want enhanced security for your organization, you can purchase a premium plan. With premium plans, you can get the highest level of security both of these suites have to offer including cyber threat control, vaults, enterprise endpoint encryption and management, and one-click security check and reporting.
Google Workspace Vs Microsoft 365: Which One Should You Choose?
Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer impressive features that stand out in the market. There are millions of users for both of these suites and both of these will help your business grow smoothly and boost your productivity by providing access to its services.
But in case you are wondering which one you should go with, it really comes down to which one you find easy working and managing your tasks with. I personally have been using Google Workspace all my life and never had any problem with it and I can tell, it suits my needs the way I want it. However, if you are a workaholic, and need a more sophisticated business-centric suite then Microsoft 365 can be a better option. What do you want to choose – Workspace’s simplicity and easy to manage tools vs 365’s sophisticated yet steep to learn tools? It’s for you to decide!
