Google and Microsoft are the top two companies battling to become leading cloud-based productivity software and service. Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace, which suite is better for business is a never-ending debate. However, this debate took a new turn in the year 2020. When both Google & Microsoft decided to offer a 3-month free trial of the cloud business suite. Due to this, the demand for migration to these platforms drastically increases.
Here’s the demonstration of features offered by Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, along with their business edition plans.
Following are the common features of both suites:
- Business email service with the custom domain name.
- Cloud storage space covers the shared and personal storage space of each user.
- Business applications for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, shared drives.
- Communication application for messaging, meetings, video conferencing, etc.
- Admin Center for compliance and eDiscovery for managing organization user data as well as maintaining security.
- Worldwide data center with robust and highly reliable infrastructure.
Both Microsoft and Google are dominating other cloud-based collaborative suits such as Zoho, AOL, Yahoo, etc.
Apart from some common superficial features in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, there are a number of other features that are better than another suite. So, to select the best suite for your organization you should know the basic difference between both, along with their subscription plans.
Following are the factor on which we are going to compare between Google & Microsoft cloud suites:
- Pricing
- Features
- Storage Space
- Security
- Data Migration
Microsoft 365 VS Google Workspace Pricing Plans?
The base factor of all comparisons is the pricing of both products. Depending upon the size of the organization, the subscription plan of suits impacts the organization’s budget. Below is the chat of pricing comparison between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
After finishing up with pricing, the next deciding factor is the feature that a cloud suite delivers. Depending upon organization requirements and needs, features offered by cloud suites place an important role.
Let’s compare the features of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 one by one:
Email Application
Business Gmail Service:
- Google Workplace offers separate new domain names or organizations can use their existing domain name for creating email accounts.
- The domain name will be [email protected].
- Permits 30 email aliasing for each user.
- Mobile Applications to access emails (Gmail)
Outlook Email Service:
- Microsoft 365 admin can create a custom domain name
- Domain Name format: [email protected]
- Mailing application apps are available for web, desktop, and mobile.
- Allows 400 email aliases for every user.
Business Applications
Google Workspace offers business applications such as:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Drive
- Google Contacts
- Hangout
- Google Sheets
- Google Docs
- Google Slides
- Google Meets
- Photos
- Chats, Forms, etc.
Microsoft 365 business applications are:
- Outlook contains Emails, Calendars, Contacts, Tasks, Notes
- OneDrive
- Word
- PowerPoint
- Excel
- Publisher
- Access
- Exchange
- Teams
- Sharepoint
Note: The business application availability differs between Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Microsoft Business Premium provides all its applications.
Google Workspace Vs Microsoft 365 Storage Plans
Google Workspace offers a Google Drive application for storage and archiving of Google account data. In the basic plan, it offers 30 GB of storage space. More storage space can be purchased upon requirement.
OneDrive offers 1TB of storage space for the subscription plan that contains the OneDrive application. The 50 GB storage space doesn’t come under the 1TB space, which is an upside of Microsoft 365 over any other cloud suite.
Security Comparison Between Google & Microsoft Cloud
Organizations Cloud security is the biggest concern for any organization working on the Cloud. Choosing the right cloud platform that offers the best security to your organization is quite important. Following are the security features of both suites:
Google Workspace Security Feature –
- Automatic alerts of sign-in attempts, hacking attempts, phishing, etc.
- Two-factor Authentication (2FA) to make account security stronger
- Protection from data breaches by offering keywords for blocking any outgoing messages.
- Offers build-in spam, malware, virus detection.
- OAuthentication when sign-in using a third-party app
Microsoft 365 Security Features –
- Two-factor Authentication
- Automatic detection of suspicious activity using AI
- Spam, Virus, and Malware detectors for emails & attachments along with documents
Comparison of Ease of Data Migration
Google Workspace offers its own data migration service to migrate data to Google Workspace accounts. However, the data migration is only available for Emails, Contacts, and Calendars only. Where only one type of data can be migrated at a time.
Microsoft 365 doesn’t offer any direct technique or feature in Admin Center to migrate data to it. First, Admin needs to convert the data into .pst format. And, then use Import Service to import .pst files into Microsoft 365 accounts. The .pst file only contains the emails, contacts, and calendars.
So, in comparison, both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 only offer migration of emails, contacts, and calendars to their cloud. While leaving the main application data, i.e., Drive. The Google Workspace doesn’t offer simultaneous data migration, while Microsoft 365 requires the database to be in a .pst file only. However, to manage cloud migration there are cloud migration service providers that can help you perform the complete data migration quite easily.
Using these above-listed differentiations, you can compare both the Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 suites and select the right one for your business.
