Google and Microsoft both offer a productivity suite that consists of all the important tools that you need for performing daily business tasks. But which one to select for your business? For deep understanding let’s dive into the comparison of G Suite and Office 365.
G Suite and Office 365- What are they?
G Suite and Office 365 are productivity tools that let you handle all the daily tasks at ease. Tasks such as creating spreadsheets, writing documents, making presentations and interacting with team members and clients can be managed using G Suite.
Microsoft initially had programs that could be installed on PCs which later became Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. During the past years, Google introduced G Suite for the cloud to stand in the race with Microsoft. It covered word processor, an online collaboration center, spreadsheet processor, presentation creator and more.
Making these services available on the cloud have revolutionized the potential of the office suite completely and made the communication much easier and better. Considering this major shift by Google, later Microsoft took their service to the cloud with the motto of optimizing and simplifying the services for better productivity.
What is Office 365?
Office 365 has two main packages: Business and Premium. Both these packages let you have a desktop as well as the web versions of the suite. That means you can use/modify your files on the computer when you are offline as well as from your web browser.
Office 365 Business
The price of this package is $8.25 per month. This package is ideal for those who need cloud collaboration and storage along with office applications. However, a business email is not included in this package.
Features included in Business plans are as follows:
- Word – Word processor is the most popular application of Microsoft. It helps you write intelligently and confidently. The suite enables you to perform the task with group members in real-time on the same project.
- Outlook – Outlook is an all combined web-based application which comprises of emails, calendars, tasks as well as contacts and allows you to be productive and share attachments via OneDrive directly. You can even schedule meetings, book a space for the conference, allot project duration and do a lot more from Outlook calendar.
- PowerPoint – Create beautiful presentations with PowerPoint. More than one person can work on the same presentation at the same time.
- Excel – Excel has come a long way over the past few years. All because of the enhanced tools, formulas, charts and templates that enriches data organization and output.
- OneDrive – This app helps you upload files from anywhere, which can be later accessed from any device.
- OneNote – Make notes and get organized. OneNote is a digital notebook, especially for tablets where you can doodle, make notes, highlight or underline sections.
With OneDrive you get 1 TB of storage space and fully licensed version that comprises of a complete office solution for 5 PCs/ Macs, 5 phones and 5 tablets. This package is ideal for small businesses.
Office 365 Business Premium
The price of the business Premium package is $12.50 per month per user. This is suitable for businesses that need an Office suite, business email and other Microsoft services:
- Business Email Hosting – Get custom email ids for your business with 50GB storage per inbox.
- Exchange – The business version of Microsoft Outlook is fully robust and comes with a complete toolkit that a business needs for their email services and calendaring. The inbuilt intellectual and, versatile and smart calendar lets you skillfully communicate and organize.
- Skype Call – Up to 250 users can make a conference call.
- Microsoft Teams – Organize notes, chats, meetings and attachments in Office or Skype.
- Sharepoint – Web-based document management and collaboration platform, which can be run by Intranet, Internet or Extranet.
- Support – Web and phone support all round the clock.
What is G Suite?
The G Suite provides the browser-based office suite which comes in three packages: Basic, Business and Enterprise. G Suite is much flexible in terms of payment, which lets you purchase their subscription on a monthly/annual basis. Although monthly contract might be quite expensive, it provides an option to remove users or discontinue services.
G Suite Basic
Just at $5 per month, you get 30GB of storage and accessibility to G Suite’s basic applications. G Suite offers business email via Gmail with their basic plan. This makes them stand out from Office 365.
Other features of G Suite basic:
- Docs – Web-based word documents that let your teammates view, edit, share or comment word file effortlessly. There are fewer chances of losing any files because all the files are stored in the cloud which increases accountability and lets you access the older versions of the document.
- Calendar – Schedule and manage your daily tasks with the calendar, invite or request other members of the team for meetings or you can even set a time for DND. Your team members can view this calendar when you share it with them and later, can schedule the work accordingly.
- Gmail: A well-known and vigorous email service used worldwide. With G Suite basics you can create emails with your business domain that can be accessed via Gmail’s inbox.
- Slides: Slides lets you create attractive presentations with Google’s PowerPoint.
- Hangouts: A strong tool that lets video conference for up to 10 people with Google’s video conference service.
- Forms: Create simple forms and get data input from others. You can also create surveys or polls with your teammates.
- Google Drive: Store any file such as video, pdf, doc, music sheet, picture or anything you want on Google’s cloud storage.
- Sheets: An online tool that lets you keep your data organized. Create a new sheet, share with team members and collaborate easily.
G Suite Business
Just at $10 per user, G Suite Business package offers you all of the tools as of G Suite basic with addition to 1 TB of data storage per user for less than or up to 5 users, or unlimited storage for more than 5 users.
This package also includes:
- Set retention for email and chat.
- Archive policies for email and chat.
- 24/7 Support by phone, email, and web messaging.
- Audit reports that track user activity.
- G Suite Data Regions.
- eDiscovery for chats, emails, and other files.
- Smart search via Cloud Search.
G Suite Business package is most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. The expanded storage and search capabilities make this package robust.
G Suite Enterprise
At the price of $25 per user per month, the purpose of G Suite Enterprise is to reach organizations that need a lot of storage, more control and advanced security. Google hangouts are improved to Google Meet that helps in refining video quality and lets 30 members to attend a video conference.
Along with the features above the Enterprise package includes:
- Automatic mobile device management.
- Data regions for G Suite.
- BigQuery Gmail log analysis.
- Gmail logs BigQuery analysis.
- Enterprise-grade security with Google Drive.
- G Suite Security Center.
- Data loss prevention for Gmail.
- Data loss prevention for Drive.
- Hosted S/MIME encryption to improve your mail’s security.
- Email traffic scanning.
- Third-party email archiving.
- Suspicious activity detection.
- Image scanning for text.
Related: Reasons Why You Need G Suite
Which one to choose Office 365 or G Suite?
From what is mentioned above, one can say that the services offered by these products are quite similar. Both these platforms are broadly used and are very popular in the market. The answer to which one to choose among both depends upon your business and its requirement. Here, we will discuss some of the factors that differentiate the two.
File Storage
Considering entry-level plans, the storage space offered by G Suite is 30 GB whereas Office 365 offers 1 TB storage. The email messages are also counted under this 30 GB storage. But, when you go up to the Business plans, G Suite beats office 365 overwhelmingly. For more than five users, Google’s business plan offers limitless storage which is strikingly more than Microsoft’s 1 TB storage.
Price
Even though the prices don’t vary much, G Suite’s basic plan is comparatively less costly and moreover, it comes with a business email. When you move to Business and Enterprise levels the features and prices are highly comparable. With G suite you get an option for buying the subscription either monthly or annually but with Office 365 you also get a desktop version of the app. This gives Office 365 an upper hand for the price that you are paying for and the number of features you are getting.
As compared to G Suite’s basic plan, Office 365 offers far more email storage. Despite that, it restricts at 100 GB, but Gmail offers unlimited storage with its upper-level inbox storage.
When we talk about the functionality of these email services Gmail is well-known, much easy, pairs with third-party apps and makes communication easy. At the same time, Office 365 is much stronger among the two but it can be quite difficult for newbies. Moreover, Gmail is very simplified and Office 365, on the other hand, is likely the more powerful of the two and has greater organizational tools, but a much steeper learning curve. Furthermore, Gmail is much more streamlined and visually attractive.
Apps
Office 365 weighs more when it comes to the main apps. These apps were originally from Excel, Word and PowerPoint and have become flawless over a period of time. G Suite’s Sheet, Docs and Slides are easy but shortfall some advanced features that are present in Office 365. Although G Suite’s real-time collaboration is the key point, if you depend more on word, presentations or spreadsheets, Office 365 wins the point.
Video Conferencing
Video conferencing apps for both G Suite and Office 365 are robust. The reliability, quality and functionality of Hangouts are quite simplified and enhanced as compared to Skype. Furthermore, Hangouts also has an amazing feature that lets you magnify the other person on the screen. This feature is very useful when there are multiple people in a single conference video call.
Collaboration
Both platforms provide an opportunity for online collaboration. This feature was already present in G Suite while Office 365 added this feature later to compete with G Suite. G Suite’s ease of use and sleek features help in making the collaboration effortless. Also, for a newbie, it’s very simple to navigate.
Take the right step for your small business needs
Your company may need desktop features for using Word, PowerPoint and Excel or it may need supreme features for collaboration and extra space offered by G Suite. The decision depends completely upon the individual needs of your business.
No matter which services you select, both the services are offered by MilesWeb and can be utilized for your custom domain. Ultimately, both the services are dignified tools that help you achieve success and daily tasks execution effortlessly.
