Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace: which one for your business?

The short answer

Choose Microsoft 365 if your team lives in Excel and Word, your clients or auditors send you Office files with complex formatting, you use accounting or industry software that expects Windows and Outlook, or you need fine-grained device and data-protection controls.

Choose Google Workspace if your team works mostly in the browser, collaborates live on documents, uses Chromebooks or a mix of devices, and values simplicity over deep configuration.

Email and calendar

Both give you professional email on your own domain (you@yourcompany.com), shared calendars, and strong spam filtering. Outlook is the more powerful desktop client and handles shared mailboxes — like sales@ or accounts@ — very cleanly. Gmail is faster to learn and its search is excellent. Either is a huge step up from running a business on free Gmail or Yahoo addresses, which look less trustworthy to clients and give you no control when an employee leaves.

Documents, spreadsheets, and files

This is usually the deciding factor. Microsoft's desktop apps are still the standard for heavy spreadsheets, financial models, macros, and documents that get passed between law firms, banks, and government offices. Google Docs and Sheets are better at real-time collaboration and work identically on any device, but complex Excel files don't always convert perfectly.

For storage, Microsoft uses OneDrive (personal) and SharePoint (shared team files). Google uses Drive and Shared Drives. Both let the company — not the individual employee — own the files, which matters the day someone resigns.

Meetings and chat

Microsoft Teams combines chat, channels, file sharing, and meetings in one app and is common among larger companies and BPO clients. Google Meet and Chat are lighter and simpler. If your biggest customers run on Teams, that's a practical reason to lean Microsoft.

Security and control

Both platforms are secure when configured properly — the risk almost always comes from settings nobody turned on. Whichever you choose, make sure you have:

• Multi-factor authentication enforced for every user, not just encouraged
• Admin accounts separate from everyday accounts
• Outside sharing of files restricted to what your business actually needs
• A process to suspend accounts and transfer files the same day someone leaves
• A separate backup of email and files — neither platform's recycle bin is a real backup

Microsoft's business plans that include device management and advanced threat protection give you more control over laptops and phones, which helps when handling client or patient data under the Data Privacy Act. Google offers comparable controls on its higher tiers.

Cost

Both charge per user, per month, with several tiers. Pricing changes often, so compare current local rates — but the bigger cost driver is usually waste: licenses still assigned to people who left, premium plans for staff who only need email, or paying for both platforms at once. In most license reviews we do, cleaning this up pays for a meaningful part of the managed IT fee.

Switching from one to the other

Migrations are very doable without downtime if they're planned. A typical move looks like this: audit users and mailboxes, set up the new tenant and security policies, copy mail and files in the background, switch your domain's email records over a weekend, then help staff with the first week of questions.

We handle migrations and ongoing administration for both platforms as part of our managed IT services. If you're not sure which fits, we'll look at how your team actually works during a free IT assessment and give you a straight recommendation.