It is an age of remote working where any business’s survival is based on its productivity, creativity, and collaboration. According to Review42 says that 88% of the businesses encouraged their employees to work from home after the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are thousands of tools and applications that help your business grow better no matter where you work from. However, we will compare the two Google Workspace and Office 365, making differences and competing with each other at a different level. Both Office 365 and Google workspace are suites of cloud-based applications that help you be more productive.
Moreover, it isn’t easy to decide which one is right for you, Google Workspace or Office 365. In this article, we have compared their price, plans, features, security, ease of collaboration, and more. You’ll surely come to know many core features and differences that help you choose the one suitable for you.
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Which is More Popular, Google Workspace vs Office 365?
Google workspace has more than 2.6 billion monthly active users, whereas Office 365 has 230 million monthly active users. However, it doesn’t make Google Workspace better than Office 365; there are more factors to be taken into consideration. Office 365 for businesses now has 200+ million monthly active users, and Google workspace has 6 million paying businesses.
The Google Workspace helps you better in real-time collaboration and remote working, while Microsoft Office 365 packages are around for the longest time. So Office 365 is perfect if you are planning to shift into a large enterprise accustomed to Microsoft office 365 applications.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 pricing
Google Workspace Plans | Pricing | Office 365 Plans | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
Business Starter | $6 | Business Basic | $5 |
Business Standard | $12 | Business Standard | $12.50 |
Business Plus | $18 | Business Premium | $20 |
Enterprise Edition | Custom | Apps | $8.25 |
Enterprise E1 | $10 |
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Enterprise E3 | $20 |
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Enterprise E5 | $35 |
In the above table, you can notice the Business basic plan of Office 365 is a dollar less than Business Starter of Workspace, which means Office 365 is comparatively easy to start. Moreover, Office 365 has more plan options, so you select one that suits your needs.
Whereas the Enterprise edition of Google Workspace also provides you with the flexibility to choose a custom plan depending on your organization’s size and requirements. The prices vary in different countries and locations, so here price is listed for the USA region.
Pricing Scheme
Google Workspace:- You can pay for the plan you choose in two ways, either on a monthly (Flexible Plan) or an annual (Fixed Plan) basis. However, if you are going to use a business subscription and want to pay through a flexible plan, you have to contact the Google sales team. Moreover, you need to pay for half of the price in a flexible plan if you purchase a plan in half of the month. In a fixed plan, you are required to use Google Workspace at least for a year.
Microsoft Office 365:- For Office 365 plans, you can pay monthly or annually. If you buy an annual plan, you will pay comparatively less than you would pay in a monthly plan. It is suggested if you are going to use Office 365 for less than a year, you must go with a monthly payment plan. There is no half-month payment accepted in Office 365; you have to pay for the entire month even if you want to use services for 15 days.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 User Limit
Both Office 365 and Google workspace allow up to 300 users limit in their business plans. If you are a business plan of Google workspace with 300 users and want to add 10 more users, you have to buy Enterprise addition of workspace for all 310 users. Having the same scenario with Office 365, you can add 10 users in a business standard plan without moving all 300 users in a different plan. This is the best thing about Office 365 that allows your users some flexibility to choose what works well according to their dedicated tasks.
However, Google Workspace may also make an exception if you talk with their sales team and tell them your requirements.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 Productivity Apps
Office 365 and Google Workspace both have a good number of productivity apps that make your work easier. Each app is designed to collaborate with your team and clients in a better way. Here are the productivity apps that work similarly to some extent both in Google Workspace and Office 365.
Functionality | Office 365 | Google Workspace | Key Differences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word Processing | Word | Docs | Docs are accessible by anyone having a Google account. While you have to buy MS Office or 365 to use MS Word. However, Word has better formatting and layout features than Docs. |
| Spreadsheets | Excel | Sheets | Sheet is free and allows better collaboration due to the ease of sharing. On the other hand, Excel is more professional and has advanced built-in formulas and functions. |
| Presentation | PowerPoint | Slides | Google Slides has some basic animation and transition that is flexible and free to use even for a beginner. In comparison, Powerpoint is advanced software with special 3D effects and fancy transitions. |
| Outlook | Gmail | Gmail has a very clean interface that manages everything very well. All folders are clearly listed in the upper section of the label hierarchy. Outlook is feature-rich and has more learning curves. | |
| Calendars | Outlook | Calendar | Google calendar creates events, while outlook creates an appointment or meeting. Outlook runs on the desktop allowing you to manage events without an internet connection. Offline access to Google Calendar is allowed only on Chrome browsers with limited features. |
| Storage Place | One Drive | Drive | Google Drive allows you to back up more file types, but One Drive gives more customization options. Also, OneDrive supports block-level copying that makes it faster. |
| Document Management | SharePoint | Sites | SharePoint has a more variety of document management features like metadata tagging, check-in/out, and records management. Google Sites is much easier to set up than SharePoint. It is best for the organization to have a simple need of sharing documents. |
| Contacts | Outlook | Contact | The outlook supports more platforms including Windows, Mac, SaaS, and Android. Google Contact doesn’t support the Windows and Mac platforms. |
| Messaging | Skype | Chat | In hangouts, you can share only images, whereas you can send a file up to 300 MB on Skype and have it available for the next 30 days on all devices. |
| Video Conferencing | Teams | Meet | Microsoft Teams offer chat, audio, and video conferencing. Google Meet provides Audio and Video Conferencing options only. |
| Taking Notes | One Note | Keep | The OneNote offers more widgets on Android than Keep. It has rich text editing on the desktop and web. |
Google Workspace vs Office 365 Storage
Google Workspace
Google workspace has starter packs that give you only 30GB of storage for a business starter plan. If you go with the business standard, you get 2 TB, while business plus gets you 5TB storage space. This storage is shared with Drive in Google Workspace that beats Office 365’s 1 TB storage space.
Office 365
Microsoft Office 365 provides 1TB of OneDrive storage for their all-business subscription. Apart from that, you get separate 100 GB for email, distinct space for SharePoint, and Microsoft Stream. You cannot get extra storage if you want. Instead, you have to upgrade to an Enterprise subscription and get unlimited storage.
Note:- Both in Office 365 and Google Workspace, you get unlimited storage space. To get unlimited storage, you must have at least 5 users to take advantage of unlimited storage.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 Email
Google Workspace
Gmail for business allows you to send up to 25MB of email in size and receive up to 50MB of email. If you want to send a file larger than 25MB, then you can send it as a Google drive link, so your recipients download that file directly from Google Drive. Google Workspace allows you to send 2000 Emails and reach up to 10,000 people in 24 hours.
Out of which, you can send emails to only 3000 recipients outside your business domain. In case you cross the limit, you will get a temporary suspension for 24 hours. In Gmail, you can receive 60 emails per minute, 3,600 emails per hour and 86,400 emails in 24 hours
Office 365
On the other hand, Microsoft allows you to send a file size up to 150MB of email in size online using the Microsoft desktop application. If you are using the Outlook web application, you can send an email file up to 112MB in size.
However, encoding may increase a file’s size by 33% additionally, but the encoding applies only if the email is routed outside the Microsoft data center. In Office 365, you can send emails to up to 10000 recipients per day and only 30 emails per minute. If you try to send more, it will be sent in the next minute automatically. It allows you to receive up to 3,600 emails in an hour across all subscriptions.
Shared Calendar
Both Google Workspace and Office 365 calendars work fine. You can schedule meetings using Google meet and Microsoft teams, respectively. The meetings will be updated on the calendars for the people who want to join.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 Ease Of Collaboration
The Office 365 and Google Workspace both are highly collaborative suits. Both of these provide live collaboration that means you can see all changes made into the documents in slides, Docs, sheets in real-time. Here Google Workspace users get a great advantage as it was specifically designed for the cloud, so it goes better with remote work and real-time collaboration.
However, Office 365’s desktop applications ability makes a difference where you don’t need to open a browser for different applications to collaborate with someone. It has a SharePoint which is a team collaboration platform to serve as a centralized location to serve MS Office files.
While there is an alternative to SharePoint in Google Workspace called Google Sites, which has a bit different features than SharePoint. The Google Sites is easy to start with, and SharePoint needs some learning and time to be proficient.
Google Meet vs Microsoft Team
The Microsoft Team has Chat, audio, and video conferencing; all are managed and integrated on a single platform. It has a 300 participants limit for video conferencing, even if you have a basic plan of Office 365.
In Workspace, you will need Google Chat for chatting and Google Meet for audio and video conferencing. You get a limit of up to 150 in the basic and 250 meeting participants in the enterprise plan of Google Workspace. If you are organizing live webinars or large meetings, you can create a live event in both Google Meet and Microsoft Team.
Meet allows you to have up to 100,000 viewers in their live events and the Microsoft team allows you up to 10,000 which is probably going to increase up to 20,000 in June 2021. They both support recording and screen sharing for meetings and live events.
Google Workspace vs Office 365 Security
It is an argument that Google uses customer data to feature targeted advertisements. But when you go through the Google Workspace security whitepapers, you will find that they do not share data for advertising if it comes to their core services.
However, avoid visiting non-core services to deter data harvesting or disable access using the admin panel. The privacy policy of Office 365 is very similar to Google workspace, and this also keeps your data secure. However, there is always a chance of human error, and each suite provides the features to limit these errors.
Data Loss Prevention- It ensures the organizational data doesn’t go to inappropriate hands or third parties. The use of DLP is allowed in enterprise editions and not in business subscriptions of Google Workspace.
Office 365 also enables the use of DLP in Enterprise packages E3 and E5 only. However, you can purchase an add-on for your business standard or premium at $3 per user if you want. Additionally, It also provides protection for Teams and information sent in Chat.
However, you get a pre-defined content editor that keeps track of your bank password, SSN, and other relevant information to block your sensitive information.
What is the difference b/w Microsoft 365 and Office 365?
Office 365 is a suite of cloud-based productivity and business applications similar to Google Workspace. On the other hand, Microsoft 365 is a bundle of services including Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise, Security (EMS), and machine learning.
Is Google Workspace the same as G suite?
The G Suite and Google Workspace both are one. In October 2020, Google rebranded the G Suite and changed the name to Google Workspace. Moreover, Google came up with better plans and new features through Google Workspace to better equip their customers for the future of work.
Which one is better, Google classroom or Microsoft teams?
Microsoft Teams was initially designed as a collaboration tool for businesses, but Microsoft and Google Classroom have essential features for Classrooms. Google Classroom is easy to use and very well organized, so it doesn’t take much time to get familiar with. Microsoft Teams is bundled with features that may take a while to get fully comfortable with it.
Google Workspace is free, while to use Microsoft Teams, you have to buy Office 365 that costs you a price. However, Microsoft Teams has a better-inbuilt communication system like video conferencing and chatting where a student can have a one-on-one conversation on his doubts. On the other hand, the only way to communicate with students on Google Classroom is to go through the entire class.
However, there are alternatives like Google Meet and Chat for conferencing that allow better communication between teacher and student or student to student. I will recommend you Microsoft Teams if you require a lot of functionality to better communicate with students. If you want to start quickly with an easy-to-use interface, Google Classroom is something you must get.
Which is better: Google Workspace or Office 365?… Final Verdict
We tried to understand the difference between Google workspace and Office 365 above. If you are looking for an alternative to any Google Workspace application in Office 365, or vice versa, then there is no perfect replacement. You need to consider various factors before choosing one for you like, your business size, employee preference, and security requirement.
There is, of course, one better between Google workspace and Office 365 is you know your business requirements. Write down what features you require and then choose accordingly. If you want to start quickly and work remotely with more ease of collaboration, Google Workspace is perfect. Office 365 is feature-rich that takes time to understand and be habitual of everything, but if you want more features, Office 365 will be the best choice.
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