If you’ve considered moving to cloud-based productivity packages, odds are that you’ve considered either Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) or G-Suite (now re-packaged as Google Workspace). Both options have a huge customer base to recommend them, similar offerings in terms of their foundational service packages as well as security, innovation, and efficiency. However, they each function slightly differently, and you may find that one suits you better than the other. So, rather than having to compare both yourselves, we’ve done the hard work for you! Read on to discover the headline components of both platforms and, if you’d like to discuss the possibility of using or migrating to on or the other, you can speak to one of our experts here.
Microsoft 365
For many years, Microsoft has been the standard in the productivity software marketplace with the household names of Word, Excel, Outlook, and others synonymous with their reliable and efficient software. However, while they’ve been available for many years, that isn’t to say that Microsoft hasn’t been equally committed to renewing and expanding their services as their younger competitors. More recently, it has committed to a subscription based financial model, and phased out most of its individual services, instead pushing consumers to treat the Microsoft Office 365 as a comprehensive ecosystem.
Cost
- As mentioned above, all Microsoft payment plans are now paid on a subscription basis, allowing for increased flexibility, something especially useful for small or newly established businesses.
- The price points vary across Microsoft’s offerings, with plans starting at £4.50 per user, per month for Business Basic to Microsoft Business Premium for £16.60 per user per month.
- Even on the most basic packages, users can use a wide range of Microsoft’s services including the foundational packages like Word, Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive, as well as being able to host calls with up to 300 attendees.
Benefits
- Work anywhere with Internet access for seamless, efficient collaboration: anywhere, at any time.
- Microsoft’s security updates are constant and effective, providing world class security for your data, including filtering potentially damaging emails.
- Tailored plans for business, which can adapt to almost any mode of working, for businesses of pretty much any size.
- Plans include desktop versions of all of 365’s apps, meaning that if you are anticipating internet downtime (a significant hindrance for cloud based solutions), you can download your work and continue without being affected by connectivity.
Drawbacks
- Happily, there aren’t too many drawbacks to Microsoft 365.
- However, some users do experience compatibility problems with 365’s system. Given the continuous updates and security patches that Microsoft brings out, it can be the case that older pieces of hardware simply cannot keep up. There are ways around this, but they can be long and expensive. If this is a possibility, it could be something you need to consider.
Google Workspace
Formerly known as G-Suite, Google Workspace provides a subscription-based upgrade to the free services available to people with a Gmail account. If you are willing to completely rely on a cloud-based, online-only platform, G-Suite is widely accepted as one of the best offerings out there, unrivalled for user experience, responsiveness, and security. With over 3 billion users worldwide, and a 17% increase in users last year alone, Google is consistently and doggedly proving to be a serious competitor to Microsoft, who has dominated the market since its inception.
Costs
- Like Microsoft, Google’s subscription based pricing system encourages increased flexibility ideal for small or medium sized businesses.
- Google’s most basic plan starts at £4.14 per use per month (usually £4.60, but they are currently offering a 12-month discount to new users), which provides their standard support packages, secure and professional emails, 100 participant video meetings and 30GB of cloud storage per user.
- Their business standard package, which costs £8.28 (formerly £9.20), upgrades this to 150 participant meetings with recording, as well as 2TB worth of storage per user.
Benefits
- Google’s aesthetic and elegant user interface provides a pleasant and easy user experience, something that many of its customers note as a favourite feature.
- Google workspace works the same on any browser, although it’s worth noting that in order to download any files, users either need to operate on Chrome or install a Chrome extension.
Drawbacks
- However, Google’s online only operation can prove to be a little intimidating for some, given that any internet connectivity issues could have the potential to significantly affect your business’s operations. While Chrome users are able to circumnavigate this somewhat with downloads available via Chrome or its extensions, some users report that the extension process is clunky and not always compatible with older pieces of hardware.
What do you think? Both platforms have much to recommend them, with Microsoft’s more familiar (and more widely used) platform providing the on- and offline capability to Google’s top-quality user interface and unrivalled collaborative capabilities. If you’d like to discuss Office 365 vs G-Suite with one of our experts, our team would be happy to hear from you; you can contact us here. Still not sure? Why not take a look at some of our other blog posts: we’ve covered everything from Managed IT Services to personal CCTV.
