As well as, Outlook has a left-hand pane that hyperlinks on to all of the Microsoft 365 apps, and it enables you to hyperlink to a Gmail account so you possibly can learn and handle all of your mail accounts instantly inside Outlook. Gmail has no equal.
Outlook is well-known for its complicated interface that bristles with too many options and choices. Nevertheless, the newest model has been simplified, and though Gmail remains to be far simpler and extra simple to make use of, you received’t end up as simply misplaced in Outlook as you had been up to now.
Outlook isn’t as easy to make use of as Gmail, however its latest look is cleaner than up to now.
Preston Gralla / IDG
In case your customers need each bell and whistle doable, Outlook offers all of them. For getting issues completed shortly, Gmail is a more sensible choice.
Collaboration: Google Meet, Chat, and Areas vs. Microsoft Groups
As I’ve famous a number of instances on this article, in the case of collaborating on paperwork, Google Workspace is much superior to Microsoft 365 — it’s baked proper into the interface, fairly than feeling like an afterthought because it does within the Workplace apps. Every part is in entrance of you to ask individuals to collaborate, set their collaboration rights, and chat with them when you do the work collectively. There’s a deeper studying curve for utilizing collaboration in Workplace, and even if you discover ways to do it, it’s not practically as seamless as within the Google apps.
Working collectively on particular person paperwork is just one a part of the equation, although. In the case of extra complicated, enterprise-wide collaboration options, Microsoft 365 contains instruments that beat something Google Workspace presents. Microsoft Groups, for instance, combines group chat, on-line conferences, videoconferencing, personalized workspaces, calendars, and shared workforce file repositories in a means that’s extra refined and helpful than something Google has. And Groups has deep ties to the remainder of the Workplace platform, providing easy integration with Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive for Enterprise, and extra.
Groups is a group-chat platform that integrates intently with the remainder of Microsoft 365 — however these days it’s not included with
enterprise-level plans.
Howard Wen
Groups was once included with all M365 enterprise and enterprise plans, however after going through antitrust scrutiny within the European Union, Microsoft unbundled Groups from its M365 enterprise plans, first within the EU and then globally. Enterprise prospects should now purchase Groups below a separate license, though it’s nonetheless included with M365 small-business plans.
For its half, Workspace presents Google Meet for videoconferencing and Google Chat for messaging. There’s additionally Areas, a workflow integration and collaboration software that’s out there as a part of Google Chat and built-in with Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Duties. Areas enables you to create shared workspaces the place you possibly can chat, share recordsdata, and assign duties.
These instruments are helpful and easy, though not fairly as highly effective as Microsoft 365’s choices.
Creating a brand new shared workspace in Areas.
Preston Gralla / IDG
Storage and file sharing: Google Drive vs. Microsoft OneDrive for Enterprise and SharePoint
Each suites include substantial quantities of storage, other than the most affordable Google Workspace variations, Necessities Starter and Enterprise Starter, which supply solely 15GB and 30GB per individual, respectively. The Enterprise Necessities plan contains 1TB per person, Enterprise Customary contains 2TB per individual, and Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Customary, and Enterprise Plus embrace 5TB per individual. Enterprise Customary and Plus prospects can request extra storage from Google.
Microsoft 365’s small enterprise and lower-tier enterprise plans embrace 1TB of storage per person, whereas its E3 and E5 plans embrace 5TB of storage per person. Clients with E3 and E5 plans can request further storage from Microsoft. (Subscriptions with fewer than 5 customers get solely 1TB of storage, which might’t be expanded.)
There’s little to distinguish Google Workspace’s and Microsoft 365’s storage-and-shared-documents options from each other. Each Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for Enterprise combine instantly with their very own workplace suites, and each help you entry the recordsdata on any gadget. In Workspace, the recordsdata reside within the cloud by default fairly than on the units themselves, though you can even retailer them domestically. In Microsoft 365 they usually reside on every gadget and likewise within the cloud, and all of it syncs collectively, though you will have the choice of holding particular recordsdata and folders cloud-only.
If you happen to’re nervous about offline entry for the cloud-first Google Workspace, it presents administration instruments that permit directors to set whether or not customers can entry their paperwork and use Docs, Sheets, and Slides when their computer systems aren’t linked to the web. The instruments permit admins to put in a coverage on every pc permitting that entry, or else let every person resolve whether or not to permit offline entry.
OneDrive has a pleasant characteristic known as OneDrive Information on Demand that lets customers resolve, on a file-by-file and folder-by-folder foundation, which recordsdata to retailer on particular person units and which to go away within the cloud, though the recordsdata and folders within the cloud are nonetheless out there for obtain if you need them on a tool.
Nearly all Microsoft 365 enterprise and enterprise plans additionally embrace a free model of Microsoft’s SharePoint service, known as SharePoint On-line. SharePoint On-line provides substantial options to storage and sharing. It manages and organizes paperwork, workflows, and different shared info, usually through a collection of mini-sites.
SharePoint On-line is delivered as a service and is hosted by Microsoft, so companies don’t must buy and handle their very own servers and infrastructure for it. Nevertheless, they could want admins to deal with quite a lot of SharePoint On-line duties, corresponding to content material administration and portal design.
There’s additionally a for-pay model of SharePoint, known as SharePoint Server, that’s out there below a separate license and isn’t included as a part of Microsoft 365. With SharePoint Server, your corporation hosts and manages the bodily and software program infrastructure required for SharePoint. Which means performing duties corresponding to racking servers; making use of safety patches and have updates; and monitoring uptime, reliability, and safety. With SharePoint On-line, these duties are dealt with by Microsoft.
Google doesn’t provide a real equal to SharePoint On-line in Google Workspace. Subscribers to the Enterprise, Schooling, and Enterprise plans can use a characteristic known as Shared Drives, that are Google Drive folders that may be accessed and managed by multiple individual. They can be utilized as useful repositories for members of a workforce to retailer and share paperwork, photos, and different recordsdata, however Shared Drives are usually not built-in intranet websites like these supplied by SharePoint.
One last word: Google’s search instruments for locating paperwork in Google Drive are much better than Microsoft’s search instruments in OneDrive, and its Cloud Search perform extends Google’s search energy throughout all of an organization’s content material. That being mentioned, it’s typically simpler to browse OneDrive utilizing File Explorer than it’s to browse Google Drive on the internet.
Suites like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are super productiveness boosters; it’s nearly unimaginable for any enterprise to not use them or one thing like them. Many individuals imagine the identical factor will ultimately be mentioned of AI — each conventional AI and newer generative AI instruments like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Gemini for Google Workspace.
Each suites have included built-in AI options for years. Microsoft 365’s Energy Automate (beforehand known as Microsoft Move) makes use of AI to assist individuals construct workflows utilizing pure language prompts. Microsoft Energy BI is an information visualization app connects to Excel and different knowledge sources. And Microsoft Editor works in Phrase and Outlook for textual content prediction and spelling and grammar checking.
Constructed-in AI instruments in Google Workspace embrace Sensible Compose for creating paperwork and Sensible Reply for responding to feedback. Workspace additionally has Sensible Cleanup, which identifies errors in Sheet and corrects them, and Sensible Fill, which automates including knowledge to Sheets.
However a lot of the buzz is round extra lately launched genAI instruments, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Gemini for Google Workspace. GenAI might be notably efficient when mixed with the productiveness suites, and including new genAI options is clearly a high precedence for each firms. There are those that imagine that genAI instruments have already turn into essential addition to workplace suites.
The total variations of those instruments don’t come as a core a part of both Microsoft 365 or Google Office. M365 Copilot prices an additional $30 per person per thirty days for any dimension enterprise, whereas Gemini has two tiers, $20 per person per thirty days for Gemini Enterprise, and $30 per thirty days for the extra highly effective Gemini Enterprise. (Costs are barely larger for Gemini when you pay month by month fairly than on an annual foundation.)
Microsoft 365 Copilot has been out there longer and is healthier recognized than Gemini for Google Workspace. It integrates with Phrase, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Groups.
In Phrase, it could possibly create paperwork based mostly in your prompts, or by being given an present doc and requested to create a brand new one from that — for instance, creating a brand new gross sales pitch based mostly on an present advertising doc. In PowerPoint, it really works equally and may create shows based mostly on prompts or present paperwork. It has significantly much less energy in Excel, but it surely does a superb job of mining Excel paperwork for actional info.
Copilot in Phrase created this gross sales pitch based mostly on an present advertising doc.
IDG
In Outlook it could possibly write emails based mostly on prompts or paperwork, in addition to reply emails and summarize e mail threads. In Groups, it could possibly summarize major dialogue factors of conferences and recommend motion objects, amongst different capabilities.
It can also present a big-picture view of tasks after which allow you to drill all the way down to get extra granular info — for instance, discovering a particular spreadsheet with income projections for the following 5 years for brand spanking new strains of enterprise. (For extra details about Copilot within the core Microsoft 365 apps, see “Copilot for Microsoft 365 deep dive: Productiveness at a steep value.”)
Microsoft lately introduced much more Microsoft 365 Copilot options, together with a brand new app known as Copilot Pages that’s designed for ongoing AI collaboration. In contrast to the everyday ephemeral genAI output, this shared canvas offers a persistent atmosphere the place customers can work together with the AI and one another, with every little thing saved to be constructed on sooner or later.
Till lately, Gemini for Google Workspace supplied fewer options than M365 Copilot, however now its capabilities are fairly related. Gemini can write new paperwork and emails based mostly on prompts. In Docs, Sheets, and Slides it could possibly summarize, analyze, and generate new content material from scratch or based mostly in your present recordsdata and emails.
Refining textual content that Gemini generated in Google
Docs.
IDG
In Gmail, Gemini can summarize e mail threads, discover information from earlier emails, and recommend reply choices. In Slides it could possibly create photos, take away backgrounds from photos, and generate new slides. In Sheets it could possibly create tables and formulation, in addition to create templates for mission schedules, budgets, charts, and different functions. And in Docs, Gemini can be utilized to collaboratively create paperwork with co-workers — a number of individuals, for instance, can work on the identical doc, and every individual can use prompts to generate concepts that everybody can work on collectively.
Simply as Meet is much less highly effective than Groups normally, Gemini’s capabilities in Meet are usually not fairly as highly effective as Copilot’s in Groups; Google cites its potential to take assembly notes, generate assembly summaries, and create customized backgrounds and improve video and audio high quality. Alternatively, Gemini does one thing that Microsoft 365 Copilot doesn’t: construct functions with out writing code with AppSheet. (There’s a related Copilot characteristic, but it surely requires a separate Copilot Studio license.)
It’s price noting that with generative AI a high precedence for each firms, each Copilot and Gemini will quickly achieve extra options and extra integrations with their respective app suites and with third-party software program. As this text was being ready, each firms launched a number of new options of their genAI instruments, and we’ve little doubt that they’ll proceed to take action for the foreseeable future.
One last word: Google lately introduced that its Workspace Enterprise, Enterprise, and Frontline plans will quickly embrace entry to its standalone Gemini app at no further cost. The app presents a few of Gemini’s capabilities — corresponding to the power to extract info and generate summaries from paperwork and emails — with enterprise safety protections in place. Utilizing Gemini inside the Workspace apps nonetheless requires a separate Gemini for Google Workspace subscription, however even offering enterprise subscribers free entry to the Gemini app in a safe atmosphere might give Google a leg up within the genAI wars.
Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: Different apps and extras
Microsoft 365 goes properly past suite fundamentals, with loads of further functions and smaller apps. Amongst them is Entry, which can be utilized to construct enterprise functions, both based mostly on templates or utterly from scratch. It’s designed for non-developers, though it does require some coding smarts. Entry is on the market for Home windows solely, and it’s solely included with sure subscriptions: Enterprise Customary and Premium, M365 Apps for Enterprise, Workplace 365 E3 and E5, and M365 Apps for Enterprise.
Entry for Home windows is among the many instruments included with a handful of M365 subscriptions.
Preston Gralla / IDG
The OneNote note-taking app, out there with most M365 subscriptions, is a really helpful but underutilized a part of the Workplace suite. Enterprise-level plans additionally include Microsoft Kinds, an app that allows you to create surveys, quizzes and polls, and Microsoft Planner, which, as its title implies, helps groups create plans, and assign duties, share recordsdata, chat about what you’re engaged on, and preserve monitor of updates. It will possibly work by itself or combine with Microsoft Groups.
One other utility included with some Microsoft 365 enterprise plans is Energy Automate (beforehand known as Microsoft Move), which permits companies to automate repetitive duties and combine them into workflows — for instance, routinely sending an alert when a brand new merchandise is added to SharePoint. Microsoft Clipchamp presents video modifying and design instruments, and Microsoft Loop is a collaborative software that allows you to construct workspaces that combine all of the components of a mission.
Different apps and companies included with some plans embrace PowerApps, a low-code app improvement software; Viva Insights, a productiveness evaluation software; Delve, a software that lets customers discover and arrange content material in Microsoft 365; Sway, a software for creating web-based shows; To Do, a to-do record app that integrates with different M365 apps; Visio, a diagramming app; and Bookings, an appointment scheduling app.
Google Workspace has extras as properly. Google Kinds, which works hand-in-hand with Sheets, is especially helpful. Because the title implies, it enables you to create kinds for all kinds of functions, corresponding to an order type, a piece request, a time-off request, or getting suggestions about an occasion.
Google Kinds enables you to shortly and simply create personalized kinds to get suggestions.
Preston Gralla / IDG
Google Websites is one other helpful one. It enables you to create workforce and firm web sites for particular person tasks, occasions, and different related functions. There’s additionally the Google Preserve note-taking app, which is easy, bare-bones, and never practically as refined as Microsoft’s OneNote. AppSheets offers a low-code app improvement atmosphere.
And if you wish to create drawings, notably diagrams, you’ll respect Google Drawings, which isn’t included with Google Workspace however works in live performance with it (and is free). If you happen to create a drawing with Drawings and embed it right into a Google Doc, after which make a change within the drawing file itself, the drawing in Google Docs will get up to date as properly.
None of those extras presents knock-your-socks-off capabilities, other than Microsoft’s Entry and Clipchamp and Google’s AppSheets, which might permit these with restricted programming expertise to create actually helpful functions. So they could not have an effect on your resolution on which suite is finest for your corporation. For a lot of firms, they’re nice-to-have instruments, not must-have ones.
Selecting the productiveness suite with the most effective options for your corporation is one factor, however typically missed is how simple or troublesome it’s to handle the suite and defend your knowledge. Even the most effective user-facing options can’t make up for poor or inadequate safety and administration instruments.
Each suites are managed from an internet interface, and in each cases, the interface leaves one thing to be desired, with considerably complicated choices and layouts. Nevertheless, the simplified view within the Microsoft 365 admin middle beats something in Google Workspace due to how simply it enables you to accomplish the commonest duties, together with and modifying new and present customers, altering licenses, paying payments, and putting in Workplace on units.
Interfaces apart, Microsoft 365 presents higher admin account safety, superior cellular administration, and extra administration controls. Each suites defend your knowledge with enterprise-grade safety and provide a central safety middle for managing person permissions and protections.
For an in-depth comparability, take a look at “Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: Which has higher administration instruments?”
Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: Service and help
In a perfect world, nothing goes incorrect with an workplace suite, and nobody ever wants technical help. However we don’t reside in that preferrred world. So that you’ll wish to know the type of help and updates Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 provide.
Google Workspace presents 24/7 tech help through telephone, e mail, and chat, however for Workspace directors solely. There’s additionally a searchable assist middle for directors and a weblog protecting launch info for Google Workspace updates. Additionally helpful is the Google Workspace Group, which incorporates boards in addition to YouTube movies to assist directors accomplish widespread duties. Non-administrators should go to Google’s common assist space, which covers many Google merchandise corresponding to YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Images along with the person parts of Google Workspace. There’s additionally a Google Workspace Studying Heart for person coaching.
Microsoft additionally has 24/7 tech help through telephone, e mail, and chat for Microsoft 365 directors. The Microsoft 365 admin middle assist website contains assist focused at small companies in addition to enterprises, and the Microsoft 365 Coaching website presents complete video coaching for admins, IT execs and Microsoft 365 customers. There’s a large variety of boards dedicated to Microsoft 365. And the Microsoft Workplace Assist & Coaching space has all kinds of assist, all the way down to the applying stage and together with troubleshooting for each shoppers and admins. As for updates, Microsoft typically releases Microsoft 365 updates a number of instances a month and publishes info on-line about each replace.
Can Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace work collectively?
As you’ve seen all through this piece, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have their very own strengths and weaknesses, so that you is perhaps tempted to make use of each of them — for instance, Microsoft 365 for doc creation and Google Workspace for collaboration.
Theoretically, it’s doable. In observe, it’s a nasty concept. Partially that’s as a result of Google Workspace’s paperwork aren’t saved as native paperwork with their very own file codecs. As an alternative, they reside on Google’s servers. It can save you them in numerous file codecs, together with Microsoft 365’s .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, and you may import recordsdata from these and different codecs as properly. There’s even a solution to natively edit Phrase, Excel, and PowerPoint recordsdata of their unique codecs on Google’s servers. However I’ve discovered that formatting and layouts are sometimes misplaced in translation between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, embedded movies don’t work, not all feedback are proven, resolved feedback don’t seem, feedback you make in Google aren’t introduced again into Workplace, and so forth.
As well as, the workflow is a nightmare when you’re transferring recordsdata forwards and backwards between the 2 suites. The thought behind modifying on-line is to have a single location the place everybody can collaborate on the newest model of every file, however when you use each Workspace and Microsoft 365, numerous variations of the file could also be saved in Google Drive, OneDrive for Enterprise, or each.
However what about utilizing one suite for content material creation, collaboration, and storage and the opposite for communications like e mail, shared calendars, group chat, and videoconferencing? Once more, it’s theoretically doable, however I don’t see the purpose. It makes every little thing rather more troublesome due to convoluted workflows, and also you’d lose the integrations constructed into every suite. And there’s additionally the problem of companies having to pay for, handle, and preserve two workplace suites, not one, when there aren’t any apparent advantages to be gained by it.
As for integrating with different enterprise software program corresponding to Salesforce, Shopify, HubSpot, and others, there are many instruments for doing that with each suites. If any specific piece of enterprise software program is especially essential to your corporation, you’d do properly to check out the integrations with each Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 earlier than deciding on a collection.
Who ought to use Google Workspace
Based mostly on all this, what sort of firm ought to use Google Workspace? It’s fairly simple: If collaborating on paperwork is baked into your organization’s DNA — otherwise you wish to bake it in — Google Workspace is for you. Its reside collaboration options far outstrip something Microsoft 365 has to supply. They’re such an integral a part of the suite’s design and so easy to make use of, it requires virtually no time in any respect to rise up and working with them.
Google Workspace can be a superb wager if your organization doesn’t want all the delicate options of Microsoft 365’s particular person apps. Every particular person utility in Google Workspace is easier to make use of than Microsoft 365’s, with Gmail particularly extra simple than Outlook. And in case your customers do plenty of looking for paperwork, Google’s search capabilities for Google Drive simply outstrip what Microsoft 365 has to supply.
Who ought to use Microsoft 365
If highly effective and complicated options are extra essential to you than the most effective in collaboration, then Microsoft 365 is for you. Each one in every of its functions beats out its Google Workspace equal. And it’s not as when you can’t do reside collaboration in Microsoft 365. It’s only a bit extra of a chore and never as simple as in Google Workspace. And Microsoft 365’s markup options are exemplary, so it’s a superb wager when individuals must evaluation one another’s work.
There are different causes for a enterprise to make use of Microsoft 365 as properly. Though Google Workspace’s shared drives are helpful for sharing paperwork and supplies, they’re no match for the totally collaborative environments that SharePoint presents. If you wish to handle your mail server, fairly than use hosted e mail, you’ll additionally need Microsoft 365. And Microsoft Groups offers a good way for groups to share work with each other — although it now requires a separate subscription on the enterprise stage.
This story was initially revealed in February 2020 and up to date in October 2024.
