What is Microsoft 365?
Office 365 is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that combines the traditional Microsoft Office desktop applications, Microsoft application services, and some new productivity services, all of which are enabled as consumable services from within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Features:
Explore and Integrate: Office 365 Integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office and other Microsoft programs. It takes just a few minutes to create a trial account that users can test and integrate with the cloud.
Collaborate Anywhere Anytime: With Office 365, users get web-enabled access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars regardless of whichever device or browser they use. This accessibility enables unified collaboration among employees.
Stay Up and Running ALWAYS: By running your applications in the cloud and storing your data there, too, you’ll ensure all your business documents and applications, such as email, will always be available – even if your company experiences a disaster such as a fire or a flood.
Flexibility: With multiple options in the Office 365 suite, enterprises buy only the office solutions they need and convert CAPEX into OPEX.
Single Sign-on (SSO) – Users can store their password in the system tray of their machine to avoid having to repeatedly sign in.
Support: Users receive business-class service including IT admin phone support, a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee, geo-redundant data centers, disaster recovery, robust security, privacy controls, and standards.
Security: Office 365 has built-in security and continuous compliance. You always know where your data is and who has access to it. You can also remotely wipe all data from your mobile device if it’s lost or stolen.
No Licensing Issues: Office 365 includes all licensing and it can be deployed company-wide. This means everyone has the same version of Microsoft Office, and all users receive upgrades at the same time.
Get Organized: When you use Office 365, email, calendar and contacts are all synchronized. Update a contact on your mobile phone and it will be automatically updated across all your devices. You can also access the same data from any device or save a document on your PC and continue working on it on your smartphone or tablet.
Real-time Collaboration: Teams can collaborate with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Users can see real-time edits or additions their colleagues are making to a document. It also saves each version automatically, so you can revert to older versions easily. This ensures a quicker and simpler collaboration between employees and departments, resulting in improved productivity.
Microsoft 365 plans and pricing
Microsoft 365 Business Basic: This basic plan is ideal for businesses that require simple remote solutions. This plan is available for $5 per user per month. It includes business email, 1TB of OneDrive for storage, and web and mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Desktop versions of Office apps are not included in this plan.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard: This plan is available for $12.50 per month per user and is best suited for organizations looking for complete remote and collaboration tools. It combines the Business Basic plan with all the premium office apps, including desktop versions.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium: This Microsoft 365 edition costs $20 per user per month. In addition to the premium apps and cloud services available in Business Standard, it also includes advanced security and management services. This plan is suitable for organizations that require advanced threat protection and remote work solutions.
Microsoft 365 Apps for business: This edition costs you $8.25 per month per user and is ideal for small businesses and startups that use Office apps and cloud file storage, but do not require Microsoft’s business email. This plan doesn’t include business email, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.
What is Google Workspace?
Google Workspace is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet and Chat for communication; Currents for employee engagement; Drive for storage; and the Google Docs suite for content creation. An Admin Panel is provided for managing users and services. Depending on edition Google Workspace may also include the digital interactive whiteboardJamboard and an option to purchase such add-ons as the telephony service Voice. The education edition adds a learning platform Google Classroom and today has the name Workspace for Education.
Features:
Access all Google apps at any time, anywhere from a computer, tablet or phone.
Use the Google Admin Console to manage all company data, mobile devices, email addresses, and security settings.
Organize meetings more efficiently by scheduling events in a shared calendar, sending reminders to Gmail, join video meetings with Hangouts and share presentations with Slides.
Create online documents, spreadsheets, surveys & forms, and presentations.
Share, collaborate and comment on text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets using Google Drive.
Build multiple project sites by choosing from hundreds of pre-built templates.
Use Google Vault for archiving emails and chats, e-discovery of information and export of emails and chats.
Google Workspace Plans and Pricing
Business Starter: If you have a small business or are just starting new, this plan is ideal for you. The cost of this basic plan is $6 per user per month and includes 30GB of cloud storage for each user. This plan doesn’t include shared drives for your team, AppSheet, Cloud Search and Vault (for retaining, archiving and searching data).
Business Standard: This is the most popular Google Workspace plan and is available for $12 per user per month. This plan offers 2TB of cloud storage per user. This plan supports video meetings for up to 150 participants and also allows recording of the meetings. Similar to Business Starter, this plan doesn’t include Vault for data retention and eDiscovery.
Business Plus: This plan is ideal for businesses seeking more storage capacity and enhanced security. It is available for $18 per user per month and includes several additional features like hosting online meetings for up to 250 participants, attendance tracking and Cloud Search. This plan provides enhanced security and management controls, including Vault and advanced endpoint management.
Enterprise: Google’s most premium plan, the Enterprise edition offers unlimited cloud storage (as much storage as you need). This plan includes all the key features of Business Plus as well as other advanced capabilities and security solutions, such as in-domain live streaming, Connected Sheets, AppSheet, S/MIME encryption, DLP, data regions and enterprise endpoint management. You can avail custom pricing for this plan by contacting Google’s sales team.
Microsoft 365 vs. Google Workspace feature
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are feature-rich suites that integrate several efficiency-enhancing products into powerful, complete packages. Microsoft and Google aim to be your one-stop solution for efficiency and productivity with these web-based solutions. Let’s look at the features of both the productivity suites.
1. Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 - Email Suite
Microsoft 365 as well as Google Workspace provide custom business email, which means you can use your organization’s domain name as your email address.
Outlook vs. Gmail
Outlook is Microsoft’s email program that allows you to send and receive email messages. It also allows you to manage and organize emails, schedule meetings and keep track of your tasks. You can access Outlook on your PC, MAC or mobile device. Outlook allows you to sort, group or add labels to your emails, which makes it easier to manage emails.
Gmail, also known as Google Mail, is a web-based email service from Google. Gmail’s AI-driven feature is a handy tool that suggests words and phrases while you type. With Gmail, you can access several third-party apps that enhance its functionality. However, since these are separate apps, navigating and using them can be a bit time-consuming and cumbersome. Although Gmail doesn’t include a desktop app, you can connect your Gmail accounts to third-party apps like Outlook or Thunderbird.
2. Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 - Productivity and Collaboration
As productivity and collaboration platforms, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are designed to boost productivity while enabling you to work from anywhere. Let’s take a closer look at the productivity apps of each suite.
Microsoft 365 apps vs. Google Workspace apps
Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace include applications for word processing, spreadsheet calculations and presentations. Microsoft 365 offers Word, Excel and PowerPoint, while Google has Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides respectively.
You can access Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools via PC, mobile and web applications. They include powerful collaborative capabilities, like real-time co-authoring, that allow your team to work on the same document concurrently.
Unlike Microsoft’s productivity tools that include both desktop and web versions, Google’s apps are exclusively web-based. That said, Google’s productivity applications have a cleaner interface and are simple and easy to access and use. Real-time co-authoring capabilities in these apps allow your team to suggest, comment, make notes and review changes on the document.
3. Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 - Communication
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace offer a myriad of tools to communicate and collaborate with teams across your organization, clients and stakeholders.
Microsoft Teams vs. Google Meet
While both Microsoft Teams and Google Meet offer top-notch business functionality, Microsoft Teams is specifically built for business use. For instance, Microsoft Teams integrates more than 250 apps that you can use to collaborate effectively. Teams allows you to host video calls for up 300 participants at a time as well as chat with colleagues from the same app.
Google offers Meet and Chat for video calls and chat. Google Meet supports up to 250-participant video and voice conferencing, depending on your plan. It is integrated with other apps like Google Calendar and Gmail that allow you to schedule and host meetings seamlessly.
Both platforms include some common features, such as file and screen sharing, background customization, search functionality, recording meetings, in-transit encryption, etc. Google’s cloud-based video conferencing application has simpler layouts and an intuitive UI, which makes it relatively easy to use. Microsoft Teams’ advanced features make for a great overall collaboration and communication experience.
4. Microsoft 365 vs. Google Workspace security
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are designed to meet stringent data privacy and security standards. The suites are regularly updated, which keeps them secure. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace allow platform administrators to customize security protocols to control user access and permissions.
Microsoft 365 offers email protection from spam, malware and other threats with Exchange Online Protection. The robust solution provides more than 1,000 security and privacy controls that help you meet industry standards and regulations. Its security groups and custom permissions allow you to protect your business information from unauthorized access.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise editions give you access to advanced threat protection features like identity and access management that establishes secure connections between users, devices, applications and data, Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics, Data Loss Prevention for email and files, Windows Information Protection and BitLocker, Microsoft Security and Compliance Center, eDiscovery and advanced audit, and Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Device Guard, that secure your Windows devices against viruses, spyware and other malware.
Google Workspace offers phishing and spam protection for your email. It provides two-factor verification, group-based policy controls, Advanced Protection Program and endpoint management. With the Business Plus edition, you get access to Vault to retain, archive and search data and Secure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that allows you to connect your LDAP-based apps and services to Cloud Identity or Google Workspace. Google Workspace Enterprise edition gives you access to premium features like data loss prevention (DLP), security center and Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) encryption.