Find out why Office 365 is better than Google Apps and what factors are making Office 365 take the lead over Google Apps. Everything you need to know about MS Office and G Suite is right here.
One of the hottest topics trending presently is what is better among the two techno productivity suites, Office 365 or Google Apps. Well, for some, it is Google Apps while for others, it is Office 365. The thing to understand here is what are the features and functionalities of these two techno giants that is making them fight so hard.
Somehow, talking about G Suite vs O365, one of the two has a lead over the other. As much as I analyzed, from an overall perspective, Office 365 seems to have outranked Google Apps, also Office 365 is better than Google Apps according to the majority. Now, that doesn’t make G Suite any less on any of the platforms that it functions, it’s just an overall analysis and of course, G Suite is also having its own ruling areas where it has an edge over Exchange Online.
Let us take a look at what are the features and factors available on both the productivity suites and analyze what may have the best to offer! Although I find Office 365 more prominent and vast :)
What Makes Office 365 Better Than Google Apps?
What makes Office 365 have a lead over Google Apps needs to be highlighted. In the next section, we are discussing the features of both Google Apps and Office 365. Ultimately it is going to depend on the user’s observation and requirement to decide what is best for them.
G Suite vs O365 – Features of Both Suites
- Applications
G Suite has Google Drive, Slides, Gmail, Spreadsheets, Docs, and Google Hangouts in its suite. While Office 365 has MS Outlook, PowerPoint, OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive), MS Excel, MS Word, Skype, Onenote, Access etc. Most of the applications of Microsoft come up with “offline access”, which is lacking in G Suite Apps.
- File Storage
- The storage factor is the most important feature that most of the users give priority. Google Apps has 3 plans: Basic, Business, and Enterprise respectively. The basic plan offers 30 GB memory. While Office 365 provides 1 TB storage space which is comparatively more than that of G Suite.
- Pricing
The pricing features for both G Suite and Office 365 is discussed below:
- G Suite
Basic - $5 per user for a month, Storage space - 30 GB (cloud storage)
Business - $10 per user for a month, Storage Space – unlimited (cloud storage)
Enterprise - $29 per user for a month, Storage space - unlimited (cloud storage)
Important Note
The important thing to remember here is that the unlimited space in the above Business and Enterprise plans is only provided if there are more than 5 users in it, otherwise the storage space is 1 TB.
- Office 365
On the other hand, the pricing plan for Office 365 is as follows,
The monthly plans per user,
- Business Essentials Plan – $6
- Business Plan – $10
- Business Premium Plan – $15
The annual commitment per user per month is,
Note
Space of all the Plans below: 50 GB of Emails and 1TB of Cloud storage.
- Business Essentials – $5
- Business – $8.25
- Business Premium – $12.50
- Enterprise E1 – $8
- Enterprise ProPlus – $12
- Enterprise E3 – $20
- Enterprise E5 – $35
For small businesses I think, users need G Suite more, as it provides free local calls with its two apps, Google Voice and Google Hangouts. While Office 365 has Skype and that too is unavailable for small businesses. Skype is provided for Business premium and plans above that. For local calls, users need to buy Skype credits, so here I would say G Suite beats Office 365 (only for small business purposes).
- Collaboration Tools
Another factor “Collaboration” favors Google Apps, as it has a better and simpler interface for users, providing easy communication and sharing of files or data between users. G Suites has Google hangouts integrated with Google Voice providing users the benefit of free local calls and text SMS.
For Office 365 it's a little complicated to work with the collaboration tools. It has Skype for the purpose of video calls and text messaging which is not free. Also, that is available for just the Business Premium and Enterprise level plans.
- Security Services
- Office 365
As we all know, MS Office has always been emphasizing strictly on its security services. They have their own tools with Artificial Intelligence to analyze the activities that are suspicious and refer to any kind of virus, threats or hacking.
Also, MS Office provides security against data theft with its data loss prevention utilities. The scanning facilities of Microsoft to scan all the data including docs, emails and attached files, makes it more secure.
- Google Apps
G Suite, being a part of Google, provides a high-security level with auto-detection of suspicious activities. It provides you with the power to set the access control of users to both admin and user accounts. The data leak protection feature provided by G Suite gives you the authority to block the outgoing communication by setting keywords. Also, Google Apps has the inbuilt capability to detect viruses, bugs, and spams by scanning all the G Suite user data.
- Accessibility
Office 365 has better accessibility with its desktop Apps like MS Outlook, MS Word, Excel Powerpoint etc. which are offline accessible, while Google Apps provides users with purely online access to its applications.
Google Apps vs Office 365 - Time to Choose the Better One
Now, I know, it is still difficult to say which one is better and which one is not, however, let us analyze it in more depth.
Is G Suite as Compatible as Office 365?
I’m sure as hell, each and every user has at one point or another, worked with Word and Excel sheets to maintain their data or share it with their colleagues. G Suite, making the file sharing with Excel formats difficult, is clearly not compatible with Excel or Word tools.
Therefore G Suite lacks in terms of compatibility with documents.
Other Advantages of Office 365 over G Suite
- Office 365 provides better security and scalability with its transparent services.
- Office 365 has a more familiar experience for users. It maintains its consistency across both online and offline platforms.
- Office 365 is faster, providing instant access to users and making them more productive, regardless of the time and place.
- Although small businesses and companies prefer to choose G Suite for the sake of cost saving, Office 365 is undoubtedly the more comprehensive and vast platform than G Suite.
Bottom Line
The debate on “Google Apps vs Office 365” or Why Office 365 is better than Google Apps, can go on and on endlessly. We just displayed and overview pointing out the major facts of both the productivity suites. Now, there might occur contradictions among users, as they have different requirements and needs and they will definitely choose the one that best fits their needs.
Finally, if comparing all the factors and giving an overall analysis, I would go with Office 365 for sure! In my opinion, G Suite, doing really well and growing, still has a long way to go to be as comprehensive and vast as Microsoft. And if a user needs to migrate to Office 365 from G Suite, they can use SysTools G Suite to Office 365 Migrator for migrating data securely.