Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: which environment to choose?

The fratricidal battle between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 reminds us a bit of the 1990s, when Apple's Mac was waging war on Microsoft's PC, with ads in between. 😃 

The Mac was presented as the cool solution to the PC, which seemed old and out of fashion.

Today, the tool that holds the role of the Mac is Google Workspace (formerly Google Suite): the cool, intuitive and well-designed tool... And opposite, the behemoth would be Microsoft!

But Microsoft's collaborative environment actually has many advantages and is even more attractive to large companies.

So what to choose? To help you make a choice based on solid and performance-oriented criteria, here is our comparison!

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Google Workspace appeals to small businesses and startups

We are accompanied in this exercise by Timothée Jaumel, IT manager at Rzilient, who previously worked for the scaleup Swile, among others.

For Timothée, things are clear: "90% of start-ups and scale-ups use the Google environment. Simply because it's easier to configure when setting up. In a previous company where I worked, until we reached a hundred employees, we were on Google and it went very well."

In fact, we often see Rzilient customers grow to a certain level with Google Workspace and then ask us for Microsoft licenses to continue their growth.

This seems to be a difficult pattern to avoid, almost deterministic! 😯

Then, the switch from Google Workspace to Microsoft 360 happens normally, or not. Some companies stay in a mix of genres for a while, which is not ideal.

Let's go through the advantages and disadvantages of each of these solutions!

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Microsoft 365 wins overall in terms of functionality

There are times when some of our enterprise customers' departments really need Microsoft 365.

Two examples are:

• accounting and finance,
• the sales department, in the case of complex tenders.

These teams rely on the advanced features of Excel, and cannot afford to lose formulas or data. Google Sheets is simply not as powerful or advanced as Excel!

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Data and file management

Sharepoint is also easier to use than Google Drive, especially in terms of security rights.

In Google Drive, some features simply do not exist, at the time of writing, such as sharing folders to external people, which complicates things a lot. 😔

In Sharepoint, you can easily set access rights on the entire tree of files and directories, in a fine-tuned way: such and such a person has access to such and such a directory, and such and such a person does not have access.

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The management of messaging systems

As far as messaging is concerned, Microsoft goes further on some features, like email reminders in Outlook, which are more powerful.

Microsoft also makes it possible to transmit the history of email boxes to managers easily, via the administration interface. On the Google side, you have to change the password of the mailbox, by entering directly into the account to make the change, which for Timothée is "very tedious and wastes a lot of time!

On the other hand, it seems important to choose either one of these tools or the other, because for messaging, mixing the genres is not manageable. For mailing lists, for example, it is imperative to choose a single tool. 

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As much as users can be given a choice between using Google Sheets and Excel, this is not an option for email. Note: the Slack application has narrowed the gap between Google and Microsoft for startups.

But in the end, things are not so simple. Let's be clear: email today, for many people, is Gmail (and therefore Google Workspace)! And by combining Gmail and the independent application Slack, we get a very high level of collaboration. 

You should therefore consider the profile of the employees you plan to hire for your team, as well as the long-term goals of your company. Do your teams have professional backgrounds mainly in large companies (they will be used to Microsoft!), or rather in startups (in which case they will be familiar with Google)? This criterion can help you make an effective decision.

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Some versions of Office 365 include Skype, but this is not enough to achieve the level of collaboration enabled by the Google suite of tools, and Skype is also hardly used in the enterprise anymore.

However, overall, Google is less efficient on messaging, has clearly understood its limitations and is developing a strategy of rapid evolution, to try to widen the gap with Microsoft.

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Microsoft Teams or Google Meet?

Teams is the most successful tool. It allows you to do more things, but it also costs more.

And managing everything with Google Meet is complicated. So our choice, if budget is not a constraint, would be Teams.

However, Slack allows you to continue using Google Meet, to complement its features (with communication channels in particular) and thus allows you to emancipate yourself from Teams. Potential problem: this represents bursting costs.

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The creation of documents

For teams that are not necessarily looking for the most advanced features in their text editor (Google Docs or Microsoft Word), spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Excel) or presentation solution (Google Slides or Powerpoint), Google is clearly the winner.

With its real-time collaboration capability, Google Workspace scores points over Microsoft. This is really where Google stands out!

However, for companies that have larger data to process, or need to work with Excel formulas or advanced macros, Microsoft Excel is the winner. Indeed, Excel is much more powerful than Google Sheets and offers a huge depth of features.

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Other criteria to consider when choosing between Workspace and Microsoft 365

Now let's look at some other important criteria to consider when deciding between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

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The technical development environment

With the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), we can do a number of things. The problem is that, in the long run, we may have to switch to Microsoft to be more efficient.

The risk is then to let the migration drag on... making it more difficult with each passing day. This migration to the Microsoft environment requires time and specialized skills, and therefore financial investment. It becomes complicated to finance and to realize.

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Ergonomics: Google's prerogative!

In terms of ergonomics, it is obvious to our expert Timothée that people generally prefer Google.

The tools in Google Workspace are mostly used in personal life as well (think Gmail!), which makes it easy to adopt this environment.

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No difference for Macs and PCs management! 

For our expert, it doesn't matter if your company prefers Mac or PC, it won't have an impact on the choice between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 environments.

For example, the Microsoft Office package works very well on the Mac.

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Cloud or offline?

Google Workspace does not work (or not well) if your computer is not connected to the Internet. It is possible to work offline and synchronize your data once you are reconnected, but this is not ideal.

On the other hand, Microsoft's applications run smoothly on an unconnected PC, allowing you to work for hours on the high-speed train or in a poorly served country house while telecommuting.

It all depends on the working habits of your teams.

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Pricing

Both Google and Microsoft use a pricing system based on the number of users. 

Google offers 3 levels: 

• Basic, 
• Business,
• and Company.

Things are readable and simple to understand.

On the Microsoft side, pricing is much more complex and makes comparisons difficult. 

Be aware that - in most cases - for VSEs, SMEs and startups, Google is cheaper than Microsoft. 

On the other hand, the situation is rather favorable to Microsoft in terms of pricing for large accounts.

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For our IT manager Timothée: "It depends on the features, but Google is globally more affordable, because, for example, the Office package is expensive. It is also because Microsoft is a "hard" software, while Google is 100% Web. This pricing criterion explains why SMEs and startups most often launch with Google."

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Talk to one of our experts to make your decision easier!

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To conclude: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

If you have to decide on a single criterion, here is Rzilient's advice: if your company does not yet have a dedicated IT department, choose the Google Workspace environment.

But as soon as you reach 50 to 100 employees and recruit a competent IT team, the Microsoft 365 environment is still the best solution today.

Also consider whether you want to be certified with advanced standards, or even to go public. Having your information system on Microsoft represents an important source of credibility for your IT. Google is still too far behind on some points, especially security.

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Google or Microsoft, the Rzilient platform handles both! Request a demo now.

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