For years, Microsoft has dominated collaboration and productivity technologies with desktop applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They quickly became standard tools for any business. Students were even required to learn these tools to prepare for their use in the professional world.
Google then launched G Suite, a suite of tools that has become highly competitive with Office 365 by providing cloud-based applications such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides that are equivalent to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively.
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
But that’s not all that Google has suggested. G Suite offers a robust portfolio that goes beyond standard collaboration and productivity. Despite this, Microsoft has successfully adapted to the challenges of today’s digital business and has kept pace with Google’s Cloud First approach by bringing its applications online using Microsoft Office 365
In a recent article, we compared the email services of these two giants (Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail) to help you understand which service might be best for your business. In this article, we’ll take a look at the entire Office 365 and G Suite portfolio to deepen the discussion. Should your business rely on a growing company or a digital disruptor?
Office 365
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
Office 365 is a collection of subscription-based products that Microsoft provides for both personal and commercial use (we’ll focus on the latter here).
Affordable Business Plans
For enterprises, Microsoft offers three subscription plans (per user, monthly, with an annual commitment).
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| Office 365 Business | Office 365 Business Premium | Office 365 Business Essentials |
| $ 8.25 | $ 12.50 | $ 5.00 |
Office Applications
- Outlook for email
- Word for creating documents
- Excel for creating spreadsheets
- PowerPoint for creating presentations.
- Database access e-government and application development
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
Office 365 Basic and Premium offer access to both desktop and web versions of the product suite, while Essentials only offers access to web versions.
Services
- Exchange for secure hosted mail services or client-hosted mail server
- OneDrive for cloud file storage
- SharePoint for company intranet.
- Commands for instant messaging in individual and group mode.
Premium and Essentials offer access to what many companies would deem business-critical, including cloud storage, mail server, intranet and chat app, while the basic one only offers cloud storage. With each plan, you get 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
Highlights of Office 365
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
The big difference between Office 365 and G Suite is that Office 365 offers its tools for both desktop and web applications. This gives teams the flexibility to choose how they prefer to work and ensures that they can do their job efficiently, without interruption, if, say, the Internet is down or the WiFi signal is insufficient.
Another important factor is that each of the Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook offers an impressive breadth and depth of rich features for creating, editing and customizing content so that most users will never use every feature.
However, the availability and advanced nature of these features is an important consideration when deciding which level of tools you prefer to use for your teams.
G Suite
G Suite is a collection of subscription-based products that Google provides for both personal and commercial use (again, we’ll focus on the latter here). Unlike Office 365 products, you can also access many G Suite products for free as an individual user with a Google account.
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
However, as an enterprise, you will want to upgrade to a subscription plan that provides a more robust set of tools and better data protection.
Affordable Business Plans
For businesses, Google offers three subscription plans (per user per month, no annual commitment).
| Base | Business | Enterprise |
| $ 6 | $ 12 | $ 25 |
G Suite Apps
- Gmail for Email
- Calendar for easy group planning.
- Documents to create documents.
- Forms for creating surveys and forms.
- Tables for creating spreadsheets.
- Slides to create presentation decks
- Jamboard, digital whiteboard
- Keep to organize ideas
Regardless of which G Suite plan you choose, you’ll have access to all of these apps, which offer varying degrees of functionality depending on the plan you choose.
Services
- Disk for storing and sharing files
- Currents for company discussion
- Hangouts Chat for instant messaging
- Hangouts Meet for video conferencing
- Sites for creating websites.
- Application builder for creating business applications.
- Google Cloud Search for G Suite searches.
- Administrator, Safe and Mobile Devices to securely manage users and devices and data
Regardless of which G Suite plan you choose, you’ll have access to core services that offer varying degrees of functionality, in addition to services like App Maker, Cloud Search, and Safe, which aren’t available with the basic plan.
Key Google G Suite Differences
Office 365 vs. G Suite: Which to Choose for Your Business?” />
One of the biggest differences with G Suite is how interconnected everything is. Easily share files and folders, have multiple collaborators in one piece of content, move from one application or service to another. It improves communication, collaboration and transparency in the organization, which are critical to business agility and success.
The aforementioned G Suite apps and services are only the core offerings that Google provides to businesses, and many of them are already available at no cost to individuals. Beyond these apps and services, there is an additional area of ??functionality with robust tools like AdWords, Analytics, and Search Console that can be used to help your business succeed in digitalizing its brand awareness. There are many others you can use to improve other areas of your business.
In addition to these stacks, Google has also made it incredibly easy to install third-party applications with seamless integration that allows your business to expand and centralize its toolbox; again, making things more affordable and increasing efficiency and flexibility.
Which is Suiter ?
What’s great is that you can truly combine these two dominant forces and use their components in tandem to create new synergistic agility and efficiency as Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint integrate with G Suite documents, spreadsheets, and slides. Gmail can even be configured with Microsoft Exchange, a Microsoft mail server, and a Microsoft calendar server.
When it comes to choosing between Office 365 and G Suite, both offer your business what it needs to succeed. Any of these might better suit your business. This decision cannot be made by the toolbox; this is what you need to define based on the needs, processes and cultural backgrounds of your business.
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