Vs (or, as it used to be known, Google Apps).which is better? This is a question that many businesses, particularly startups, have trouble answering.
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In this post I’m going to try to help you decide which is best for your business, by putting the two product suites head to head in a detailed comparison review. Read on to see how G Suite and Office 365 fare against each other in the key areas of pricing, features and ease-of use. We’ll explore all the pros and cons of each product in depth and explain why, and when, you might want to use one over the other. If you find the review useful, I'd be really grateful if you could share it or leave a comment — it’s always really helpful to get other people’s opinions on the apps we review. And finally remember that we now offer setup and migration services for both Office 365 and G Suite: do if you need help with either.
Right, so what do Office and G Suite actually do? What do Office 365 and G Suite do? And are a suite of productivity tools that let you perform common business tasks 'in the cloud'. Office 365 also provides a comprehensive range of desktop applications (programs that you install on your computer as opposed to using in a web browser). Both Office 365 and G Suite allow you to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and collaborate with team members whilst doing so; they also provide video conferencing functionality. (As an aside, both these productivity suites have undergone name changes in recent years. Up until recently, G Suite was called Google Apps for Work, and many of its users still refer to it simply as as Google Apps.
With regard to Microsoft's offering, before it evolved to offer cloud-based apps and became known as Office 365, people used to refer to it as 'Microsoft Office'). Pricing - how do G Suite and Office 365 compare?
Office 365 vs G Suite: the features File storage If we’re talking entry-level plans, then is a clear winner here: you get 1TB of storage with the ‘Business Essentials’ plan compared to Google’s rather paltry 30GB on its 'Basic' plan (to add insult to injury, Google also counts emails as taking up space in this 30GB limit). However, if you move up a notch to the, you'll find that the Google plans beat all but the most expensive Microsoft plans in the file storage department (so long as you have 5 or more users - more on that in a moment).
With the G Suite Business plan, you get unlimited storage, which is extremely useful to any business that has a need to store large files in the cloud. Although Microsoft Office 365’s 1TB limit (which applies to most of its plans) sounds very generous, you’d be surprised how quickly you can burn through 1TB of storage if working with large image, video or audio files.
That said, if you're just talking about working with standard documents and spreadsheets, a 1 TB limit per user should be perfectly adequate for most small to medium sized businesses. Ultimately however, if having acres of cloud storage is your primary concern, then it’s mostly a win here for G Suite, so long as you are prepared to live with the more expensive $10 per user per month plan.
One important thing to note is that the G Suite 'Business' plan only provides you with unlimited file storage if you buy more than 5 user accounts. Otherwise you're restricted to 1TB per user. This is a bit of a shame really, as it renders Google's USP rather less unique for ‘solopreneurs’, or any companies with less than 5 employees. Both Office 365 and G Suite give you the option to buy more storage on a per user basis. As far as I can make out from the information provided by Microsoft — its website isn’t at all clear on this — every 1 GB extra on Office 365 costs $0.20 per user. With G Suite, you'll generally only need to worry about storage limits if you’re using the 'Basic' plan or are on a 'Business' plan and, as discussed above, have less then 5 users in your organisation. If you're on a 'Basic' plan, there are several tiers of additional data storage purchase options which start at 4GB ($4 extra per user per month) and go up to 16TB per user ($1430 per user per month!).
As the table below shows, depending on how much storage you need for particular users, you may find it works out cheaper to simply upgrade all your G Suites users to the 'Business' plan than buying a few users additional storage. Similarly, if you're on a G Suite 'Business' plan with less than 5 users and are hitting your storage limit, you might find it cheaper to buy a couple of new accounts than buying additional storage. Email The entry level $5 per month is considerably more generous than G Suite's entry level offering when it comes to email storage - a dedicated 50GB inbox is available on top of the 1TB file storage provided. By comparison, the $5 per user per month ‘’ plan caps total storage at 30GB, emails and files included.
However, if you’re on the $10 G Suite 'Business' plan (and have 5+ users in your team) there isn’t a cap on your inbox size; and on paper, this contrasts positively with all the Office 365 plans, because the best you'll get with Office 365 is a 100GB mailbox on the $20 and $35 Microsoft plans. However, Microsoft’s email storage limits are more generous than the numbers suggest, thanks to a feature called ‘auto-expanding archiving.’ This allows you to archive old emails to an archive which is essentially unlimited in size. It’s slightly more involved than just having an inbox which is unlimited in size, but it does mean that you don’t really have to worry about inbox storage limits on any Microsoft Office 365 plans.
In terms of the email apps that are available to you, Gmail is robust, fast and very easy to find messages with, thanks to its powerful search functionality (you’d expect that side of things to be good, given that it’s Google we’re talking about here). Also, given the popularity of Gmail, there is a huge range of third-party apps available for it which add all manner of useful functionality to proceedings.
However - and incredibly frustratingly - Gmail doesn’t allow you to sort or group mail, something most users will routinely require from an email client. As such you may find yourself wanting to use Gmail in conjunction with another email program - for example the excellent (and free), or, whisper it, Outlook. And speaking of which, getting your hands on Outlook is a key attraction of Office 365. On most Office 365 plans you get access to two versions of Outlook: an online version, which is okay, but - mail sorting functionality aside - Gmail probably betters in most respects; and an offline version, which is feature rich and provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to how you sort, group, label and generally manage your email. Desktop applications: the main argument for using Office 365?
Here is where things get pretty interesting, and where a LOT of potential users of Office 365 and G Suite will be tempted to go for. With most of the Office 365 plans you get all the desktop versions of their products as well as the cloud-based ones. In essence, you can install the full versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc. on your desktop machine and work offline on these applications. Despite this being the age of cloud computing, a multitude of businesses still send each other files created locally using these applications, so there is a strong argument for having desktop versions of all the above available; it allows your team to work more easily with these file formats. Another argument in favour of having the MS applications installed in your organisation boils down to functionality. It’s fair to say that the Google apps are definitely more basic in terms of what they can do than their Microsoft desktop app equivalents.
(It’s also fair to say that the online versions of the Microsoft apps are not as sophisticated or feature packed as the desktop versions of them). If you’re looking to do some advanced number crunching, Excel will beat Google Sheets; if you want to add some ‘Smart Art’ in a document, you’ll need to be working in Microsoft Word rather than Google Docs; and if you need slick slide animations in a presentation, Powerpoint will do a much better job than Google Slides. However, that shouldn’t deter you entirely from using G Suite, because it is possible to open Microsoft Office documents using them, and even save files created with G Suite to Microsoft Office format. The problem with working this way though is that you can’t always preserve the exact formatting of Office files when you edit and save them using a Google app. How much of a big deal this is for you will depend on the nature of your business: if you are expected by clients to routinely provide them with extensively, immaculately formatted MS Office files then you’re not always going to be able to do that with G Suite. But if you just need to occasionally open an MS Office file, or send something basic over to a client in MS Office format, you would be able to make do with Google’s suite of products. The other thing to remember about the Microsoft Office desktop applications is that as nice as they are, and as familiar with them as your team may be, they have to be installed locally.
This means that that somebody in your organisation will need to take care of this aspect of things - and this person (or persons) have to know what they’re doing. This 'local install' aspect of using the Microsoft desktop apps may therefore bring with it some hidden IT costs (at the very least, there’s a time implication — your team will need to devote some hours to downloading, installing and periodically updating the applications correctly). This 'hidden cost' issue becomes a bigger consideration the more users you have, which is perhaps why Microsoft offer a 'Fasttrack' deployment service for both its when you purchase 50+ licenses. There’s also something else you might want to consider about giving your team access to the desktop apps: habit or human nature. Most people like to work with tools they're familiar with, and, given the long history of Microsoft Office products, your team is likely to plump for the locally installed versions of the Office 365 products over the cloud-based, collaborative tools it also provides. This will possibly encourage 'local' or offline working at the expense of the more collaborative cloud approach (and working offline can throw up some security headaches too). Conversely, if you create a working environment where your organisation only uses browser-based applications that save documents to the cloud, then your data is arguably more secure (so long as you have backup procedures in place) and your team are more likely to make fuller use of collaboration features.
You could argue that G Suite - due to its cloud-only nature - is likelier to nudge people in this direction. Finally on the subject of apps, don’t forget that there is nothing to stop you from using both G Suite and MS Office apps in conjunction with each other. If you are tempted by the unlimited cloud storage provided by G Suite, but want to save Word documents in it, you could buy the offline versions of the Microsoft applications that you use regularly, and save files created in them to your Google Drive. (However, you would be closing down a lot of real-time collaboration possibilities by working in this fashion). Collaboration A huge advantage of working in the cloud is the collaboration possibilities it opens up.
Instead of faffing about with markup and ‘tracking changes’, people who want to work on the same file can simply open up a document in a browser and see, in real time, the edits that everybody looking at the file is making. Both and make this sort of online collaboration straightforward using their online apps. Additionally, you can now use Microsoft’s desktop apps to work on documents in real time with other team members (who can collaborate with you whilst using either the online or offline version of Word). In my experience this isn't quite as smooth a process as collaborating using the online version of MS Word only - I found that the installed version of Word was a little sluggish when it came to displaying updates to my documents - but on the whole, it works fine. I would on balance say that collaboration functionality in G Suite is a bit easier to get your head around than Office 365’s, possibly because the product is 1) less feature packed and 2) was conceived with collaboration as a key feature (Office 365, by contrast, has evolved from being a suite of desktop applications into a solution that features collaborative tools). All in all though, both product suites definitely allow you to collaborate with co-workers effectively - but to get the smoothest collaboration experience with the Microsoft apps, you might want to use the cloud-based versions. See below for a video highlighting some collaboration options in Google Docs.
Video calls Both and provide video conferencing functionality: Hangouts and Skype respectively. In my experience I’ve found Hangouts to work a bit better than Skype - it seems to drop calls less frequently and crash less. It also loads faster. But I have also found that more people are on Skype and are more comfortable with using it. This means, predictably, that I’ve ended up using both tools for making calls.
However, Office 365 is much more generous when it comes to participant limits on video calls -you can have 250 participants in a business call, whereas the maximum number of participants in a Google Hangout is 25 on 'Basic' and 'Business' plans, or 50 if you use 'Meet by Google Hangouts' and are on an Enterprise plan (more on that in a moment). If you’re looking for serious voice calling functionality in general — both in terms of conference calling or general telephony services, Office 365 definitely offers a lot more options.but note that you will have to be on one of the most expensive plans to avail of these features. One thing you should note about Hangouts is that there are, in fact, two versions: the 'classic' version of Hangouts and a second product, 'Meet by Google Hangouts.' The latter product provides a larger participant limit (50 participants can join a call, so long as you're on an Enterprise plan) along with instant messaging within the app (on Hangouts, IM is technically a separate affair). For a more detailed look at Hangout vs Meet features, you can check out Google's.
Google Drive Stream vs One Drive - what are the syncing options in Office 365 and Google Apps like? Both and provide desktop apps for syncing local data with the cloud and vice versa. There are currently three apps available for this purpose:. Google Drive Stream. Microsoft OneDrive. Microsoft OneDrive Files on Demand These apps allow you to save a file in the cloud which then appears locally - or vice versa.
This is handy for when you want to work on documents offline, or want to back up or upload local files to your cloud storage (the downside of this is that it makes your data less secure - if your laptop gets stolen for example, so does your data). These apps work in slightly different ways:. OneDrive makes all your files available locally (or at least the ones you choose to sync) - this is handy for users who know they will be doing quite a lot of work offline on a lot of files. With Google Drive Stream and OneDrive Files on Demand, files are not actually downloaded to your computer until you open them. You still see all your files and folders as if they were present on your computer - but they actually live in the cloud until you double click on a filename (at which point it is downloaded and opened).
The latter 'streaming' approach provides two key benefits over the 'save everything locally' one: first, a minimal amount of local disk space is required to store your files. Second, you don't have to sit around waiting for all of your files to sync - just the one you're working on (and anyway, with Drive Stream and Files on Demand, there's an option to do make files permanently available offline simply by right-clicking on a file and choosing an option to do so). There's a couple of other things worth noting about file syncing in Office 365 and Google Drive:. In One Drive, you can just right click on a file to get an option to share it with others. If you want to share a file on Google Drive Stream you have to go into the browser version of Google Drive to do so, which can interrupt workflow. One Drive Files on Demand is currently only available for Windows 10 users.
Mobile apps As you'd expect, there are mobile apps (iOS and Android) available for both G Suite and Office 365, which allow you to access and edit your files on the go. My experience with both has been fairly positive; it's certainly possible to access the information quickly on both sets of apps easily, but I'm not sure how inclined I'd be to do a lot of editing of spreadsheets, for example, on a mobile device (particularly a phone: far too fiddly!).
The good thing about both sets of mobile apps is that they make editing your work on-the-go in areas where you don't have Internet access very straightforward - so long as you save the files you want to work onto your mobile device before you go offline (see the section below on working offline for more details). Realistically, a majority of users will end up using the mail applications the most - and these are the apps I've had the most experience with. Until recently I was highly averse to using the Gmail mobile app, because it forced you to use a ‘conversation view’ when browsing through emails — something which a lot of users find disorientating. The good news is that conversation view can now be switched off, which makes the app behave much more like a conventional email client. And the app is undeniably brilliant when it comes to searching for old messages (as you'd expect from a company specialising in search engine functionality). However, as with the browser-based version of Gmail, you can’t sort or group mail by sender, something which will annoy many users. The mobile version of Outlook is a bit disappointing too - you can filter mail by unread or flagged messages (as well as those containing attachments), but like the Gmail app, you can’t sort or group mail by sender.
There is a 'focused inbox' available however which some might find handy — this looks at your interactions with other senders over time to automatically create a list of messages that Outlook believes need your attention more urgently than others. In terms of which of these apps is best, I would say that it depends on whether you value searchability over having urgent emails flagged up via the ‘focused inbox.’ Advanced features in Office 365 and G Suite There are various features that are available on certain and plans which will be of relevance to users with advanced requirements. You could also argue however that the simpler, more stripped-back productivity tools bundled with G Suite generate a less steep learning curve for users who are new to online collaboration.
In terms of user interfaces, the Google apps feel less cluttered than those bundled with Microsoft Office, simply because they are not as feature packed. I personally much prefer working in Google Docs to the desktop version of Word, because there’s no load time and only a few menu options to be distracted. My Google document is always saved to the cloud and I can pick up where I left off on it at any point, on any device.
The online version of MS Word lets you work in a similar fashion, it has to be said - but it feels a little bit more ‘fussy’ and in my experience takes a bit longer to load. But it is unquestionably much better - as you might expect - for editing MS Office documents and saving them without creating problems with the formatting.
Ultimately I think both products are fairly straightforward to use - if editing MS Office files is going to be a big part of your job, then Office 365 will feel a lot more familiar and present less of a learning curve; if internal collaboration is more the concern, then G Suite is arguably a slightly better bet. Working offline with G Suite and Office 365 Given that is essentially designed to run in a browser, a key question many potential Google Apps users typically have is 'will I be able to work offline?' The answer is: yes. On a desktop computer, you'll need to do two things: 1) ensure that you've installed and 2). This will allow you to access and edit Google documents, sheets and slides offline; any changes you make to them will be synced to the cloud when you reconnect to the Internet. With regard to Gmail, you can use it offline so long as you are using Chrome and have.
(Again you'll need to ensure you download all your mail before going offline). After that, when you send emails offline in Gmail, they will go into a new 'Outbox' folder and get sent as soon as you go back online. You can also work offline using Google's mobile apps - however, you have to first (by checking an option that downloads it to your mobile device). With, the best way to work offline on a desktop computer is by using the standard desktop applications in conjunction with the desktop version of OneDrive. As with G Suite, ensure you've synced everything to your desktop before going offline - you can then work on any file in Word, Excel etc.
And when you reconnect to the Internet any changes you have made will be synced. Office 365's mobile apps also let you work offline, but as with Google's mobile apps, you'll need to.
Extending the functionality of G Suite and Office 365 If you are not happy with the functionality provided by the G Suite apps and Office 365, there are two ways you can extend the functionality of both suites of products. The first, and simplest, is by installing an 'add on' to the products. Both Microsoft and Google have online stores that provide a wide range of apps to beef up their productivity tools - the 'Office Store' and the 'G Suite Marketplace' respectively. Both free and paid-for apps are available for both systems.
The other way to enhance the functionality of both products is to code something yourself. If you have the know-how, you can use the Microsoft or Google (application program interfaces) to add a bespoke piece of functionality to your chosen set of productivity tools. You can read more about the Google Apps API on the; the relevant If you are on a Google 'Business' plan or higher, you can also use Google's new ' tool. The idea behind this is that it's a 'low-code' way to make bespoke apps that perform functions or automate processes that are specific to your business or organisation.
The below video gives a brief overview of the sort of things you can do with App Maker. G Suite vs Office 365: the conclusions After reading our vs comparison, I hope you have a clearer idea of why or when you might pick one of these products over the other. For me, I would probably focus on six areas in making the final decision:. The need your organisation may have to edit MS Office documents. Your file storage requirements.
Your email storage requirements. The nature of your working environment. IT implications.
Scalability I'll summarize my thoughts on these areas in turn below before rounding up this Office vs G Suite review with a list of key pros and cons of both products. Editing documents If you work in an organisation that absolutely has to work with MS Office files regularly - and particularly if you need to use the advanced functionality that MS Office applications provide - then the natural choice is definitely going to be (just make sure that you select a plan that includes the desktop applications).
Although G Suite can be used to produce and edit MS Office documents, this functionality is limited and you can expect hiccups when you try to edit and save a complex Office document or spreadsheet with a G Suite app. Also, you won’t be able to collaborate with others on this Office document in the cloud. That said, G Suite technically allows you to edit both documents produced with G Suite.and. MS Office apps - this is not true of Office 365.
So if you have a client base that works with both Office and G Suite files, there may be an advantage in going for G Suite (so long as your needs are relatively simple on the Office formatting front). Cloud storage If having a serious quantity of cloud storage available is your overriding concern, then the G Suite 'Business' plan is hard to argue with. So long as you intend to buy 5 or more G Suite accounts, for $10 per user per month, you get unlimited file storage and unlimited email storage - all the MS Office 365 plans, even the most expensive ones, cap the standard storage figure at 1TB.
Email If your organisation sends and receives a large amount of mail, then might find yourself drawn towards a 'Business' G Suite plan, as these come with unlimited email storage (with no need to archive). If you're on a budget however, and email storage is a big issue for you, you'll find that the Office 365 entry-level plans are considerably more generous when it comes to email storage, especially when you factor in the ‘unlimited archive’ functionality provided by MS Office 365 (which, whilst not quite as straightforward to work with as an inbox with unlimited storage, nonetheless ultimately gives you unlimited storage space for your emails). Working environment The working environment that you are hoping to deploy G Suite and Office 365 in should also be factored into your final decision. If your organisation uses a wide mix of devices and operating systems, then you could potentially make life easier for your users by plumping for G Suite, which is designed to run online (ideally in a web browser but apps are available for all the major OS devices). With G Suite, it simply won’t matter whether your team members use Macs, PCs, Linux-based machines, or Chromebooks.everything will look, feel and function exactly the same. But if your organisation is entirely MS Windows-based, there's a lot to be said for Microsoft Office 365 - a plan which involves the desktop apps will slot neatly into such an environment. This is especially true if you intend to use Access and Publisher - these Office 365 apps are exclusively available to Windows-based users.
IT Whilst it’s always a good idea to have some IT resource available, the resource and IT cost implication for deploying, maintaining and supporting G Suite will in my view be lower than for Office 365, particularly if the desktop apps are involved. That's possibly why Microsoft offer a free Fasttrack deployment service if you buy 50+ accounts - something that is potentially very useful for medium to large-sized businesses. Scalability With regard to scalability, you'll need to remember that the more affordable Office 365 plans (the 'Business' ones) currently cap the numbers of users at 300 - no such limit applies to G Suite plans. So after all that, you're probably thinking that choosing between these two products is still a tough decision! But hopefully this review has helped resolve the Office 365 vs G Suite debate a bit for you. I’ll leave you with a summary of some reasons which you might prioritise one solution over the other.
Do leave a comment below if you have any thoughts of your own in the two products, and feel free to share this comparison with others. And make sure you contact us if you are thinking of using G Suite or Office 365 in your organisation — we can help arrange a successful setup or migration. Pros and cons of using Office 365 and G Suite Reasons to pick Office 365 over G Suite.
Most come with desktop versions of the Microsoft Office applications, making the product a much better fit for any organisation with clients that expect it be able to send, receive and edit MS Office files without difficulty. This is in my view by far the strongest argument for choosing Office 365.
The Office 365 apps are generally more feature-rich than the G Suite equivalents. The file storage and email storage quotas on the Office 365 entry level plan are much more generous than those provided by the G Suite entry level plan. And the inbox archive functionality ultimately gives unlimited storage space across all plans. Outlook provides you with an easy means to sort and group mail - Gmail doesn’t (unless you use a client like Outlook or Thunderbird to access it).
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You can have far more participants on a Skype call than a Hangout - 250 vs 25/50 respectively. More advanced phone call management options are available with Office 365. It’s easier to share files on desktop computers using the sync app for Microsoft’s OneDrive than the Google Drive equivalent. More advanced functionality regarding virus protection and rights management is available with MS Office 365 (for a price, though). Office 365 may provide a more natural fit for businesses that are exclusively Windows-based (more apps — notably Access and Publisher — are available on the Windows-based version, along with performance monitoring tools too)., or read more about our services. Reasons to pick G Suite over Office 365. File storage: at $10 per user per month, the is better value data-wise than most of the Microsoft plans, giving you an unlimited amount of cloud storage to play with (as long as you are buying 5+ G Suite accounts).
It’s very scalable - there are no limits on the number of users regardless of what plan you’re on (the cheaper Office ‘Business’ plans cap the number of your users at 300). G Suite was built as collaboration-focused solution, and as such its collaboration features are arguably a bit stronger. eDiscovery, site building tools, email archiving and legal holds on inboxes (amongst other advanced features) are available for a lower cost with G Suite. The Google Apps interfaces are clean and, so long as a good internet connection is being used, the apps load fast (certainly faster than Microsoft Office desktop equivalents).
It’s a good solution for businesses where multiple devices and operating systems are used. There are a large number of third party web applications which integrate neatly with the G Suite apps and enhance their functionality. Google's new App Maker product can help automate business processes without a huge investment in development being necessary.
The fact that everything is cloud-based may encourage users to use the cloud more, with all the collaboration-related benefits this brings. Or read more about our. Is a nice, 'clean' set of productivity tools; as with the G Suite apps, you'll encounter a more minimalistic interface than in.
As with both Office and G Suite, you can use iWorks in a browser on any device and collaborate in real time with other users; desktop apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) are also available, but these work with Apple products only. In terms of costs, the browser edition of iWorks is free, but you will need to potentially pay for iCloud storage.
The desktop apps cost $10 to $20 each. Is a well-known open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases. The good news is that it's completely free - the less good news is that there isn't an official 'cloud' version of the software. If you are particularly keen on using Open Office though, some cloud functionality will be available to you using, an 'online application virtualization platform', which - in theory at least - allows you to run any application on any device in a web browser.