BIGGER AND BETTER PRODUCTIVITY
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are the most widely used suites of business productivity tools out there. Microsoft 365 is used millions of companies worldwide, with over one million customers in the United States alone. In terms of global market share, the two are neck and neck and Google Workspace controls about 48% while Microsoft 365 has 46%. Four out of five Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365, including Accenture, Caterpillar, PayPal, IKEA, Mattress firm, Porsche holding, Scania, L’Oreal, Alcoa, and many more. By comparison, Google’s customers include Sony, HSBC, Walmart, Korean Air, Wayfair, Airbus, and the US Army.
BIGGER AND BETTER COLLABORATION
Both solutions provide a comprehensive package of cloud-based applications and services to make communication and collaboration much easier. Both suites are powerful, dependable, and offer numerous benefits to businesses of all sizes. Choosing the right productivity suite for your business can be challenging. We will analyse their features, plans, pricing, and key differentiators to help you make an informed decision as to which one is best for your business.
IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE?
Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are designed to enhance productivity, streamline communication, and facilitate team collaboration, making them quite similar in many respects. However, they each offer distinct applications and management tools. These suites provide essential applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email, instant messaging, video conferencing, calendars, web hosting, and note-taking, which organizations rely on daily to perform critical business tasks. You can access a summary comparison chart here.
EMAIL SUITE
Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace offer custom business email, allowing you to use your organisation’s domain name as your email address. Outlook is Microsoft’s email program that facilitates sending and receiving email messages. It also helps manage and organise emails, schedule meetings, and track tasks. Available on PC, Mac, and mobile devices, Outlook allows you to sort, group, or add labels to your emails, simplifying email management. Gmail, Google’s web-based email service, features an AI-driven tool that suggests words and phrases as you type. Gmail supports several third-party apps to enhance its functionality, though navigating and using these separate apps can be time-consuming. While Gmail lacks a desktop app, it can be connected to third-party apps like Outlook or Thunderbird.
MICROSOFT TEAMS VS GOOGLE MEET
While both Microsoft Teams and Google Meet offer robust business functionality, Microsoft Teams is particularly tailored for business use. It integrates with over 250 apps to enhance collaboration and allows hosting video calls for up to 300 participants, as well as chatting with colleagues within the same app. Google provides Meet and Chat for video calls and messaging. Google Meet supports video and voice conferencing for up to 250 participants, depending on your plan. It integrates seamlessly with other Google apps like Calendar and Gmail, making scheduling and hosting meetings straightforward. Both platforms offer common features such as file and screen sharing, background customization, search functionality, meeting recording, and in-transit encryption. Google Meet’s simpler layout and intuitive UI make it easy to use, while Microsoft Teams’ advanced features provide an excellent overall collaboration and communication experience.
PRODUCTIVITY AND COLLABORATION
As productivity and collaboration platforms, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are designed to boost productivity while enabling work from anywhere. Let’s take a closer look at the productivity apps of each suite:
- Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace include applications for word processing, spreadsheet calculations, and presentations. Microsoft 365 offers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Google Workspace offers Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides.
- Microsoft’s suite can be accessed via PC, mobile, and web applications and includes powerful collaborative features like real-time co-authoring, allowing teams to work on the same document concurrently.
- Unlike Microsoft’s productivity tools, which include both desktop and web versions, Google’s apps are exclusively web-based.
- Google’s productivity applications have a cleaner interface and are simple and easy to use. Real-time co-authoring capabilities in these apps allow teams to suggest, comment, make notes, and review changes on the document.
MICROSFT 365 SECURITY
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are designed to meet stringent data privacy and security standards and are regularly updated to ensure their security. Both platforms allow administrators to customize security protocols to control user access and permissions. Microsoft 365 offers email protection from spam, malware, and other threats with Exchange Online Protection, and provides more than 1,000 security and privacy controls to help meet industry standards and regulations. It includes security groups and custom permissions to protect business information from unauthorized access. Microsoft 365 Enterprise editions offer advanced threat protection features like identity and access management, Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics, Data Loss Prevention for email and files, Windows Information Protection and BitLocker, the Microsoft Security and Compliance Centre, eDiscovery and advanced audit, and Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Device Guard to secure Windows devices against viruses, spyware, and other malware.
GOOGLE WORKSPACE SECURITY
Google Workspace also provides phishing and spam protection for email, along with two-factor verification, group-based policy controls, the Advanced Protection Program, and endpoint management. The Business Plus edition includes access to Vault for data retention, archiving, and search, as well as Secure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for connecting LDAP-based apps and services to Cloud Identity or Google Workspace. The Google Workspace Enterprise edition offers premium features such as data loss prevention (DLP), a security centre, and Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) encryption.
PLANS AND PRICING OVERVIEW
These are the packages that Microsoft can offer you:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic – Ideal for businesses needing simple remote solutions, this plan costs £4.90 per user per month and includes business email, 1TB of OneDrive storage, and web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but does not include desktop versions of Office apps.
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard – Best for organizations seeking complete remote and collaboration tools, this plan costs £10.30 per user per month and combines features of the Business Basic plan with all premium Office apps, including desktop versions.
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium – Suitable for organizations needing advanced threat protection and remote work solutions, this plan costs £18.10 per user per month and includes all premium apps and cloud services from the Business Standard plan, plus advanced security and management services.
- Microsoft 365 Apps for Business – Ideal for small businesses and startups using Office apps and cloud storage without business email, this plan costs £8.60 per user per month and excludes business email, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint.
Here are Google’s offerings:
- Business Starter – Ideal for small businesses or new startups, this basic plan costs £5.00 per user per month, includes 30GB of cloud storage per user, and excludes shared drives, AppSheet, Cloud Search, and Vault.
- Business Standard – The most popular Google Workspace plan, costing £10.00 per user per month, offers 2TB of cloud storage per user, supports video meetings for up to 150 participants with recording, but does not include Vault for data retention and eDiscovery.
- Business Plus – Ideal for businesses seeking more storage and enhanced security, this plan costs £15.00 per user per month, and includes features like hosting online meetings for up to 250 participants, attendance tracking, Cloud Search, Vault, and advanced endpoint management.
- Enterprise – Google’s most premium plan offers unlimited cloud storage and includes all features of Business Plus including advanced capabilities like in-domain live streaming, Connected Sheets, AppSheet, S/MIME encryption, DLP, data regions, and enterprise endpoint management, with custom pricing available through Google’s sales team.
KEY DIFFERENCES
The functionality of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace is largely the same, but a key differentiator is that Microsoft 365 apps are available in both desktop and web versions. Microsoft offers licenses for browser-based apps and other licenses for full installations, allowing users to download and install desktop versions on their local devices for offline use if needed. Additionally, Microsoft 365 includes Publisher, a desktop publishing app; Access, a database app; Project, a project management tool; and Planner, a browser-based app for organizing and managing tasks. In contrast, Google Workspace does not provide installable desktop versions for use on a PC, though it does offer a web-app feature that enables offline functionality for Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Storage is another key difference: Microsoft 365 offers 1TB of cloud storage per user, while Google Workspace’s storage capacity varies by edition, ranging from 30GB to unlimited storage with the Enterprise edition. Both platforms are secure, but Microsoft’s multi-factor authentication offers an additional layer of security compared to Google Workspace’s two-factor authentication. Furthermore, Google Workspace’s integration with numerous third-party apps can pose risks when users grant permissions to these apps.
TRANSFORM WITH ME
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 underpin business process automation and digital transformation. I’ve been in the cybersecurity and IT support business for almost 20 years. While I might have cybersecurity and risk mitigation in my bones and blood, I’ve also moved on with the times, increasingly seeing why businesses digital transformation. Let’s get together soon. You’ll quickly see how digital transformation will revolutionize your business culture, transform the way you work, and keep your customers, suppliers and team happy.