By: Jaime McMahon, VP Sales & Marketing, ProServeIT Corporation
Google’s G Suite? Or Microsoft’s Office 365? Which one should I choose? Which one is the better one for my organization to utilize?
For most organizations, Microsoft Office 365 and G Suite are the two most prevalent Cloud-based productivity tools that they think about when deciding what to use. At ProServeIT, we’ve heard a lot of our customers who don’t know which suite of products to choose from and want to see a detailed G Suite vs. Office 365 comparison to help them make the decision. While we are a Microsoft Gold partner, we have helped many of our customers in deciding between Office 365 and G Suite, and thus, we do have a unique perspective on both platforms.
In this blog, we’ll be showing you a straightforward comparison of Office 365 and G Suite.
Questions to Consider when Deciding G Suite vs. Office 365
Before we get started, it’s important to note that you need to make a decision on where you think your organization is going. You need to look to the future before jumping on board the Google or Microsoft train, and think carefully about how you’re going to be using this as part of your overall IT system. There are two main questions you need to ask when you’re deciding between Office 365 and G Suite:
- What do you need?
What platform will provide you with the functional (productivity, collaboration, etc.) and non-functional (SLAs, strategic alliances - what do your customers/partners use) features and benefits that you need?
- What do you want?
What are your end users used to using? Are you willing to put the time and effort into switching your end users over to something they’re not familiar with?
In particular, you’ll want to consider your end users’ experiences before selecting the Office 365 or G Suite platform. If you deploy a system based on what you need, but your employees won’t use it because they don’t like it, you won’t have the buy-in needed to make it a success.
G Suite vs. Office 365 Comparison
This table below should help you to assess the functional/non-functional requirements of your system. Click here to download a pdf.
| Capability | Microsoft Office 365 | Google Suite | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Information Protection | Office 365 provides Rights Management and Data Loss Protection. Rights Management features are at an email/file level, so regardless of where they’re sent or stored, they’re covered. Data Loss Protection capabilities cover not only email, but sites and files as well. | G Suite provides Rights Management and Data Loss Protection. Rights Management features allow users to disable downloading, printing and copying of any specific Google Drive file, provided it stays within the Google ecosystem. Data Loss Protection covers Gmail only – to address sites or documents, Google customers would need a 3rd party service. | Office 365 |
| Reliability & Scalability | Microsoft guarantees a service level agreement of 99.9% with its users. On-Demand services are scalable, depending on your organization’s specific requirements. | Google guarantees a service level agreement of 99.9% with its users. On-Demand services are scalable, depending on your organization’s specific requirements. | On Par |
| Cloud Storage | 1 TB of online Cloud storage per user, regardless of the plan you choose. | 30 GB of online Cloud storage per user for Basic accounts OR Unlimited storage for Business, Team or Enterprise accounts that have at least 5 users. | On Par |
| Online Applications | Office 365 offers easy-to-use online versions of their popular apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. | G Suite offers online versions of their popular apps, like Gmail, Hangouts, Drive, and Docs. Many customers find G Suite’s web app responsiveness and performance slightly superior to Office 365. | G Suite |
| Offline Email Capabilities | Outlook and Outlook Web Access will allow you to access your email offline using a wide variety of browsers, including Google chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 10. | Gmail will allow you to access your email offline, but only if you’re using a Google Chrome browser. | Office 365 |
| Compliance | Office 365 provides auditing, document eDiscovery, archiving, and internal site search, as well as legal hold capabilities. | G Suite provides auditing, document eDiscovery, archiving, and internal site search, as well as legal hold capabilities. | On Par |
| Productivity | Document views and user experiences are consistent, regardless of the device being used. Documents can be accessed whether the user is online or offline. | Document views and user experiences are inconsistent, and offline capabilities are limited. G Suite does not allow you to share Office documents, unless they’re first converted to Google format (which can lead to formatting issues when converting) | Office 365 |
| Mobile Apps | Mobile applications are available on iOS and Android devices. | Mobile applications are available on iOS and Android devices. | On Par |
| Security | Microsoft has state-of-the-art data centres, premium anti-spam and anti-virus protection, encrypted access to data, and integration with multi-factor authentication solutions, which are all included with their security measures. In addition, Microsoft spends over $1 billion annually on security. | G Suite shares a privacy policy across both business and consumer applications, meaning that data protection might not meet certain industry regulations or business security requirements. | Office 365 |
| Data Centre Security | Microsoft provides world-class security at their data centres. | Google provides world-class security at their data centres. | On Par |
| Advanced Threat Protection | Office 365 provides Advanced Threat Protection, which guards your devices from malware and viruses. | G Suite has no comparison. | Office 365 |
| IT Support | Office 365 provides web and phone support for critical issues. | G Suite provides web and phone support for critical issues. | On Par |
G Suite vs. Office 365 - Don’t Take Our Word for It…
ProServeIT knows both Google and Microsoft very well, and we are well-equipped to assist companies in making the decision between using G Suite or Microsoft Office 365. Furthermore, we’ve assisted several companies with migrating from G Suite over to Office 365 – companies who initially chose G Suite, but then decided Office 365 was more suited to them. Here’s just one of many stories of the companies we’ve helped:
ProServeIT was engaged by a Canadian communications company to assist them in migrating their 1,200 users from G Suite to Office 365. This company had started out using G Suite, but as they grew, and their requirements changed (especially their security requirements), they realized that G Suite would not be able to support them into the future, and they needed to transition over to something that would support them. The company had a hard deadline of migrating all their users from Google to Microsoft within 60 days of engaging our services. Using the FastTrack Centre to help push the migration forward, we were able to completely migrate all 1,200 of our customers’ users from Google to Office 365, and we did so within the required 60 days.
Another Google Suite to Office 365 migration story: Goodlife Fitness
Still Debating G Suite vs. Office 365?
We understand the struggle. As we’ve mentioned, we’re very familiar with both Microsoft Office 365 and G Suite, and we know both sides of the debate. Rest assured, ProServeIT is committed to partnering with our customers to ensure that you use the technology that you purchase – we’re all about eliminating the “IT debt” that our customers might have.
If you’re still on the fence about G Suite vs. Office 365, talk to us! We can share with you more examples of our customers who have made a decision between G Suite and Office 365, and explain why they chose what they did. Also, stay tuned for our next blog, where we’ll give our recommendation on which suite of products is better.
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