G suite vs Microsoft Office 365: Which is best productivity suite?

Microsoft's Office 365 and Google's G Suite both provide cloud-based features and collaboration tools that streamline work and enhances your team's productivity. But which service should you choose for your business? Here's a breakdown of both the products that will help you make your decision.

G Suite vs Office 365- Comparing the prominent business offerings of both productivity suits.

1. Business Email: G Suite vs Microsoft Office 365

The G Suite service by Google and Office 365 by Microsoft, both offer the much-needed service of professional business email accounts using your own domain name.

G Suite – Gmail for Business

When it comes to email apps, Gmail is one of the fastest and most robust email services out there. You can use email accounts with your own @domainname as well.

If you and your team are already using Gmail for personal use then you will find the familiar interface of Gmail for business very easy to use. You can also access your email on your smart-phone with Gmail apps for mobile devices. Additionally, you can use your Gmail ID with other popular desktop mail clients like Thunderbird or even Microsoft Outlook.

Office 365 – Outlook for Business

Just like the G Suite, Office 365 also allows you to generate professional email addresses with your own domain name. You can avail the Outlook mailing service on the web app, the full features desktop app and the mobile app. Even though the mobile and web app has received negative reactions in terms of the user experience, the desktop email client is top notch. You can use your Office 365 email address with other mail clients like Thunderbird and Gmail inbox.

2. Cloud File Storage and Sharing - G Suite vs Office 365

Cloud file storage is one of the key reasons for choosing or switching to an online productivity suite. Instant file saving, sharing, and accessibility all offered in a cloud productivity suite. Both G Suite and Office 365 makes file storage and sharing easy.

G Suite – Google Drive Cloud Storage

With the basic plan on G Suite, you can store up to 30GB of data per user in Google Drive. While the business and the enterprise plan have unlimited storage, that amounts to 1 TB of storage per user for less than 5 users.

Google Drive for business is used to store and manage files that can be easily shared with other members of the teams. They can view or edit the files, as per the access you grant them.

All Google Drive apps can be accessed from any device, be it desktop, tablets or mobile. Easily available files can even be used offline. Just like most Google apps, Google Drive also offers a minimalistic design and excellent user experience. You can use the search feature to locate files, shared folders and more.

Office 365 – OneDrive Cloud Storage

Google Drive's cousin brother, Office 365 uses OneDrive to store and manage files. It offers a whopping 1 TB per user of cloud storage with all their plans. Moreover, it also offers an additional 50 GB of email storage per user. You can share and sync files on OneDrive and is also available on desktop, mobile, and web apps.

One of the winning features of OneDrive is that it comes integrated with Windows 8 and Windows 10 PC. This makes the process of saving offline files on the cloud and sharing them, even more, hassle-free.

3. Business Apps in Office 365 and G Suite

Both Office 365 and G Suite are brimmed with productivity apps to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

G Suite Productivity apps

G Suite contains popular Google apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Calendar, Keep, Hangouts, and Photos. Offering easy access, Android and iOS Mobile apps are available for all Google Apps. Even though there are no full-fledged desktop apps available the feature-rich online web applications are customer favourites.

The web and cloud only layout along with easy access and robust AI make G Suite apps the perfect option for upcoming organizations work remotely and store their data online.

Office 365 Productivity apps

Office 365 gives you access to the legendary Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Although the market is flooded with several office suites, none have matched the ease of use and features offered with Microsoft's complete office application.

On the other hand, the web and mobile versions of these apps have not able to reach the high standards set out desktop apps. Thus, these apps are a great option for businesses only working on the Microsoft ecosystem with a Windows PC.

4. Collaborative Tools: G suite vs Microsoft Office 365

Seamless connectivity tools leading quick and easy collaboration is the key attraction online office suite.

G Suite Collaboration tools

G Suite's online collaboration apps like Hangouts, Meet and more are the focal point for communication between team members. You can text, call (audio and video) using these collaborative apps.

G Suite also allows multiple team members to edit documents and leave comments on documents, You can even go back to the previous version of the document of the edits are not required. Other collaborative tools like Google Keep and Calendar enable you to create to-events and organize your schedule effectively while sharing it with your entire team as well.

Office 365 Collaboration tools

Collaboration tools are where Office 365 has not been able to catch up with the cloud giant G Suite. The productivity tools offered with OneDrive can be accessed and edited and commented on by multiple users in real-time. It offers Skype for business for text messaging, video conferencing and communication within the office. However, it's only available for Business Premium and Enterprise plans.

5. Pricing Plans: G Suite vs Microsoft Office 365

G Suite Pricing Plans

The G Suite pricing plans are pretty simple and range $5 per month to $10 per month for additional storage for Business plan. Google also offers a customized Enterprise plan for companies with larger needs.

Check out G Suite Pricing plans****

Microsoft office 365 Pricing Plans

The pricing plans for Office 365 ranges from $5 per month to $35 per month. The price of different plans depends on the applications that you need to use. With the mid and high tier plans, you get access to communication tools like Yammer or HD video conferencing through Skype. Additionally, as the company recently announced, you will get access to the free version of Microsoft Teams with all plans.

Check out Microsoft Office 365 Pricing plans

6. User Interface - G Suite vs Office 365

G Suite UI and UX

Masters of simplistic designs, the G Suite offers a great User Interface and ease of use as compared to Office 365. The rise of Android phones also contributes to the fact that people are quite accustomed to using Google apps for personal use and can adapt to G Suite business apps easily.

Office 365 UI and UX

The online Office 365 apps have almost all the functionalities that G Suite offers but not the same user experience. Even though a novelty, MS Office apps are considered to be cluttered, fussy and also have been reported to take longer to load.

7. Technical Support

Users of both Office 365 and G Suite enjoy 24/7 email and phone support by both service providers, in addition to a lengthy library of FAQs and support forums available for both products too.

To Conclude

As we mentioned earlier, in terms of features both are great cloud productivity suites and offer excellent tools that ease team collaboration, the process of file sharing, storage and more.

However, we at ContactBook are devoted to Google and thus, prefer using G Suite over Office 365. It not only is a better choice in respect of pricing but also is more user-friendly. It has an uncomplicated admin control panel and simple UI that even the most technophobic people can use and understand.

In comparison, the features offered with Office 365 are more fitted or large enterprises that require employees to work only in offices using a Windows PC. The Office 365 desktop offer excellent user experience when used in a Windows environment.

At the end of the day, the choice really comes down to which system fits best with your team's workflow. If you are using Microsoft for your daily use then you will prefer using Office 365 and if you use Google for personal use, you are more likely to love G Suite.

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