Office 365 or Google Apps? What’s the Best Cloud Productivity Suite?

Choosing between Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 for your productivity suite can be one of the most difficult decisions you make for your company.

After all, with the emotion that goes into the Google versus Microsoft debate, something as simple as choosing a cloud-based productivity suite can quickly cause rifts between co-workers the size of the Grand Canyon.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of these products to help uncover the answer to the question, "Office 365 or Google Apps?"

1. Pricing

Both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps have pretty straightforward pricing plans. However, the two products begin to differentiate themselves when you look closer at what you’ll get for your money.

Office 365 offers several different business and enterprise plans, but we’ll look at the 3 most standard options: Business Essentials for $5 per month, Business for $10 per month, and Business Premium at $15 per month.

The most basic plan, Business Essentials, offers web versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for up to 5 phones, tablets, and computers, Skype for Business, 1 TB of cloud storage and sharing, and 24/7 phone and web support.

However, with the Business Premium plan, you’ll get all the features included in Business Essentials, plus desktop and mobile versions of all the Office 2016 applications.

In comparison, Google Apps offers only two plans. The basic plan at $5 per month or the unlimited plan at $10 a month.

With the Google Apps basic plan, you’ll get access to online text documents, spreadsheets, slides, video and voice calls, 30 GB of storage, and 24/7 emails and phone support. The unlimited plan adds advanced admin controls for Google Drive, ability to export files to different formats, unlimited storage if you have 5 or more users, increased email capabilities, and additional security features.

Who wins?

When it comes to pricing, Google Apps may seem more affordable, but it falls short of the mark when it comes to getting the most for your dollar.

Office 365 offers more applications, is more generous with storage, and offers better baseline security for your data.

2. Scalability

Microsoft and Google take two very different approaches to the issue of scalability.

Google Apps takes more of a one size fits all stance on this issue. Google only offers the ability to increase the number of users you have available to use, but the features and applications remain the same.

Microsoft, on the other hand, offers Office 365 solutions that can be tailored to how quickly or slowly your business is growing.

Who wins?

Investing in a productivity suite won’t do you much good if your business outgrows it quickly. It’s important that the product you pick offers the levels of flexibility and scalability that you need to keep growing, without worrying about leaving your productivity suite behind. We feel that Office 365 has staying power that Google lacks.

While you can start out with just the essentials, your business can work its way all the way up to an Office Enterprise E5 package. Every Office 365 plan level includes more features tailored to larger businesses, ensuring you’ll have what you need for each part of your business journey.

3. Applications

How much a productivity suite costs and grows with you doesn’t do you much good if the applications it provides don’t help your business run at full capacity. Google Apps offers basic functionality for its applications that will get your projects done, but Office 365 builds off of the long legacy of desktop office applications that have been a Microsoft staple for decades.

Both Google Apps and Office 365 provide the essentials: email, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, but which does it better?

Who Wins?

When it comes to application features Office 365 wins the contest hands down.

Office 365 offers many advanced features that Google's suite lacks. Office 365 also offers a familiar format that almost every professional in the business world knows how to use, meaning there’s little to no learning curve when it comes to utilizing all its functionalities.

FMT Helps You Increase Productivity with Office 365

If you’re trying to decide what cloud productivity suite is best for your business and would like to know more about Office 365, FMT can help. Contact us using the form below and we’d be happy to answer any questions and discuss the benefits with you!