Two productivity suites dominate the workplace. Microsoft and Google both offer powerful solutions for creating documents, scheduling the workday, and connecting colleagues through email, meetings and chats. When deciding whether to migrate from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, organizations need to consider several important questions.
For instance, business priorities may make one solution more attractive than another. Consider how teams collaborate and conduct meetings in the organization. Also determine the type of documents users need to edit and the level of sophistication involved. Additionally, decide whether a variety of needs necessitate flexible pricing and deployment options.
For organizations that prioritize feature-rich applications, highly integrated collaboration options and pricing flexibility, Microsoft presents a compelling choice. And when millions of businesses have spent decades creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with Microsoft Office products, it makes sense to build teams around an already familiar interface.
Seamless Collaboration
As cloud-based solutions, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both drive collaboration, bringing coworkers together across distance. But Microsoft offers a couple of significant advantages in this area.
To begin with, Word, Excel and PowerPoint dominate the office productivity landscape. While Google allows users to create and edit simple Microsoft documents, its editing options are limited. With Microsoft, however, users can easily create, edit, and share complex documents and powerful presentations.
Additionally, with Microsoft Teams, users move seamlessly from collaborating on a document to chat and video, all without switching apps. And Teams offers more generous participant limits than Google Meet for video conferencing. While Google plans include participant limits of between 100 and 500, Microsoft participant limits start at 300 and go up to 1000.
Feature-Rich Productivity Apps with Desktop Option
Microsoft truly shines when it comes to functionality, and organizations that depend on extensive formatting options will lean toward Microsoft because of its desktop apps. The desktop option also means users can work offline. Google, on the other hand, delivers simplicity, offering only web-based productivity apps with relatively basic features.
The web-based versions of familiar Office apps provide functionality comparable to their Google counterparts. However, the desktop versions offer a significantly greater feature set than anything available through Google. Additionally, the seamless integration among Office productivity apps, chat, email, and structured file storage opens even more possibilities.
Flexible Pricing
Microsoft and Google differ significantly in terms of pricing plans. Whereas Google offers just four business and enterprise plans, Microsoft offers six. More importantly, Microsoft allows organizations to mix and match plans. For example, consider if only a few employees require the additional storage and security options available in a higher plan.
With Microsoft, the organization could purchase business standard licenses for the bulk of the employees and enterprise-level licenses for those who need more extensive storage. However, with Google, the organization would have to upgrade the entire organization to a higher level, incurring unnecessary expense.
Ease the Transition from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365
In summary, Microsoft and Google both deliver tools to streamline communication and perform business tasks. The answer to the question of which platform to choose largely comes down to priorities and preference. If you value a universally familiar interface or stronger cyber security, for example, Microsoft 365 offers both.
Organizations that prioritize simplicity and straightforward pricing plans may choose Google. However, for organizations that demand a rich feature set, flexible pricing, deep integration and desktop access, with powerful cloud management tools, Microsoft represents the clear choice.
The migration experts at eMazzanti bring the tools and expertise necessary for a smooth transition from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. From choosing optimal settings to launching robust teams, we make it easy to get the most out of Microsoft 365.
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