Over the last few months, I have had numerous conversations around whether to use Office 365 or Google’s G Suite. It can be difficult as a small to medium business to pick one over the other. My intention in this blog is to dissect each of the offerings at a high level and provide you with some direction on which integrated productivity suite is most suitable for your organization.

The Short Answer

From a collaboration and productivity perspective, if you are a scalable business using the advanced features of Excel and using Word to collaborate and want to take advantage of cloud apps – Office 365 is your winner. G Suite, on the other hand, is best for smaller businesses to start out using apps like Google Doc or Sheets.

Pricing – Office 365 vs Google’s G Suite

Office 365	G Suite
Business Essentials – $5/u/m	Basic – $6/u/m
Business – $8.25/u/m	Business – $12/u/m
Business Premium – $12.50/u/m	Enterprise – $25/u/m
Enterprise plans – ranging from $8 to 35/u/m

*note – $/user/month is abbreviated as $/u/m.

Overall Comparison

Office 365	G Suite
Products include Outlook, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power BI.	Products such as Gmail, Google Docs, sheets, slides, hangouts and google Drive.
Includes 1000 GB of storage for all licensing options.	Includes 30 GB storage for basic (min. 5 users) and unlimited for business or enterprise. If you have less than 5 users with business or enterprise, you have 1TB of storage.
Includes calendaring, web-based or desktop versions, mobile apps with cross-platform experience.	Calendaring, mobile apps, and web-based versions available. However, NO desktop versions.
Admin tools such as setup options, creating new users, assigning application and permissions to users.	Admin tools available for users with setup options.
Best option for scalable businesses including small/medium businesses or large enterprise corporations.	Great for small businesses.
Some apps included at no cost (within the license)	Some apps included at no cost.
Automatic updates. No upgrades required.	Upgrade through Google admin.
Customer Service: Live phone and email support to business customers. Also, includes extensive knowledge base with training materials, self-guides, and how-to videos.	Customer service available using a 24/7 phone/email support as well as self-help through Google Help.
Free 30-day trial available for all users.	14-day free trial available for up to 10 users.

Both Office 365 and G Suite offer a variety of productivity tools and applications that allow you to create, communicate and collaborate through documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video conferencing and cloud storage. Microsoft has a number of different licenses designed to meet your specific business needs, whereas Google categorizes you into three simple licensing plans. Please contact us to find out more details about licensing.

Although all plans are comparative, there are some major differences such as in storage, scalability, archiving and more. At the end of the day, the battle between Office 365 and G Suite is best answered when taking an immersive view at the features of each product and how it fulfills your business requirements. Reach out to us for an in-depth analysis of how these products can cater to your business.