Choosing between G-Suite and Office 365
Discussion
Does anyone use G-Suite as a total replacement for office 365?
we're just starting a new venture and trying to work out whether or not G-suite really can do it all? we like th easy integrtation into the CRM (and various other software packages we're using), but can gmail really replace outlook and can we really do away with Office apps?
At the moment i can see us paying for G Suite AND office 365, which is a double expense we really don't want.......
So have you been through the same thought processes, what did you end up doing and why?
we're just starting a new venture and trying to work out whether or not G-suite really can do it all? we like th easy integrtation into the CRM (and various other software packages we're using), but can gmail really replace outlook and can we really do away with Office apps?
At the moment i can see us paying for G Suite AND office 365, which is a double expense we really don't want.......
So have you been through the same thought processes, what did you end up doing and why?
I can't help from the consumption side of the fence, but in my role I work closely with a lot of our customers and there is pretty much zero traction for G-Suite outside of the S side of the SME market. When the entire world uses MS products, it is a noticeable pain when people want to use Google formats or schedule Hangouts meetings.
Nothing is impossible, and the Google stuff does work very well (and I'm a huge Google fan in almost every other way) but there is no doubt that it is niche and will impact your ability to interoperate with other organisations. The walls may be small and easily stepped over - but there is a good argument to say that it's better not to have a wall at all.
Nothing is impossible, and the Google stuff does work very well (and I'm a huge Google fan in almost every other way) but there is no doubt that it is niche and will impact your ability to interoperate with other organisations. The walls may be small and easily stepped over - but there is a good argument to say that it's better not to have a wall at all.
Thanks Deckster- your post very much echoes my suspsitions. The only reason i'm swaying away from MS is that so much of their software just doesn't work- we won't use their CR, their project management tools, their video conferencing, we may use onenote and a couple of other minor apps, but we'd pretty much be paying for outlook (exchange 365), word, excel and possibly powerpoint.....
How many user do you have? Last time I looked in to it, O365 was buttons for the most basic version without the bells and whistles - something like £3 a month. I have to completely echo deckster's comments from the other side of the fence - as someone who works with a lot of different organisations, trying to set up Hangouts meets or share google drive links is often painful because they all seem to have Ms tools. So O365 is the painless option for me.
We have just moved from G-Suite to MS365.
For collaboration with multiple users in a spreadsheet and tools to see who changed or added to a cell, Google Sheets does it better as MS Excel's updates lag big style and dates default to US style dates; as some 2500+ users at my place had a lousy install that needs manual changes to the default. Having babysat 70+ users on my floor to make the changes to fix it, this issue isn't going to go away soon.
Sharing files is better with Gsuite, MS just doesnt have this very well implemented and rolling back to an older version is much more intuitive with GSuite.
Other than that Google Sheets just does not hack it against the desktop version of Excel, and is even not as good as the web version of Excel, which has reduced functionality and as a data analyst it is pretty much also unusable, if you want something done quickly.
For forms, surveys, data collection from customers and internal users I think that G-Suite is much more usable and something anyone can pickup. MS version of Forms is a hotch potch that is counter intuitive, it can be done, but someone cant easily pick it up.
Teams we use for video conferencing and repository and collaboration is evolving fast, but is about 2 versions behind where it should be, threading is poor for conversations and is very, very frustrating as it doesnt go back to where you were it you move between a call or chat, back to a Team document.
Teams Broadcasting and video meetings seem to be better than Hangouts Internally, but not sure for external clients, needs a bit of coaching. Bit has recently been upgraded to be more Zoom like with a heady 9 people showing faces rather than 4 previously.
Gmail vs Outlook - I could never find my files in Gmail and the search was appalling for the most part. The fact you cant just order by date, person, subject and scroll down looking for what you know is there in Gmail is more annoying than not being able to add extra labels to Outlook.
Google's Calendar to me seems better than Outlooks version as declined invites dont disappear, but others might disagree.
Word is leaps and bounds better than Gsuites version in desktop version it is closer for web app versions.
Essentially we can get everything done using MS365 if there are desktop versions available. If we have Gsuite we have to top up with MS products.
Gsuite has got more expensive than it was, still cheaper than MS365, but it now makes the economics of having it unsustainable as you still have to top up with expensive standalone versions of MS products.
Not sure if relevant but Our VPN implementation is seamless with our Surface Pros which saves a lot of faffing about and allows work from almost any network. Made a huge difference to our previous implementation of VPN which wasnt able to cope with snowdays or people forgetting their separate rarely used passwords which killed productivity. The implentation of Working From Home for lockdown was pretty much seamless.
For collaboration with multiple users in a spreadsheet and tools to see who changed or added to a cell, Google Sheets does it better as MS Excel's updates lag big style and dates default to US style dates; as some 2500+ users at my place had a lousy install that needs manual changes to the default. Having babysat 70+ users on my floor to make the changes to fix it, this issue isn't going to go away soon.
Sharing files is better with Gsuite, MS just doesnt have this very well implemented and rolling back to an older version is much more intuitive with GSuite.
Other than that Google Sheets just does not hack it against the desktop version of Excel, and is even not as good as the web version of Excel, which has reduced functionality and as a data analyst it is pretty much also unusable, if you want something done quickly.
For forms, surveys, data collection from customers and internal users I think that G-Suite is much more usable and something anyone can pickup. MS version of Forms is a hotch potch that is counter intuitive, it can be done, but someone cant easily pick it up.
Teams we use for video conferencing and repository and collaboration is evolving fast, but is about 2 versions behind where it should be, threading is poor for conversations and is very, very frustrating as it doesnt go back to where you were it you move between a call or chat, back to a Team document.
Teams Broadcasting and video meetings seem to be better than Hangouts Internally, but not sure for external clients, needs a bit of coaching. Bit has recently been upgraded to be more Zoom like with a heady 9 people showing faces rather than 4 previously.
Gmail vs Outlook - I could never find my files in Gmail and the search was appalling for the most part. The fact you cant just order by date, person, subject and scroll down looking for what you know is there in Gmail is more annoying than not being able to add extra labels to Outlook.
Google's Calendar to me seems better than Outlooks version as declined invites dont disappear, but others might disagree.
Word is leaps and bounds better than Gsuites version in desktop version it is closer for web app versions.
Essentially we can get everything done using MS365 if there are desktop versions available. If we have Gsuite we have to top up with MS products.
Gsuite has got more expensive than it was, still cheaper than MS365, but it now makes the economics of having it unsustainable as you still have to top up with expensive standalone versions of MS products.
Not sure if relevant but Our VPN implementation is seamless with our Surface Pros which saves a lot of faffing about and allows work from almost any network. Made a huge difference to our previous implementation of VPN which wasnt able to cope with snowdays or people forgetting their separate rarely used passwords which killed productivity. The implentation of Working From Home for lockdown was pretty much seamless.
We moved from G-Suite to MS365. It's a game changer for us. G-Suite is good and some swear by it but fundamentally our computers use MS as an operating system so with any non-MS products the integration will never be quite as good. GS also had a few very annoying limitations which MS doesn't. I did post this topic a while back and noticed that no-one had moved to GS but, of those who replied, all had gone from GS to MS.
From an end-user perspective, I have just been forced to move from G Suite to MS365 and I can categorically say that G Suite is simply better.
Better collaboration.
Easier to use.
Easier setup.
More intuitive.
For the last 5 years I've worked in large and small organisations who only use G Suite and have never, ever had a problem with someone externally opening a Google Drive link (you click the link, the file opens) or a Google Hangouts meet (you click the link, the meeting opens).
The mobile (Outlook / Gmail / GCal) are approximately on par.
Better collaboration.
Easier to use.
Easier setup.
More intuitive.
For the last 5 years I've worked in large and small organisations who only use G Suite and have never, ever had a problem with someone externally opening a Google Drive link (you click the link, the file opens) or a Google Hangouts meet (you click the link, the meeting opens).
The mobile (Outlook / Gmail / GCal) are approximately on par.
You haven't mentioned number of users, or type of work, but FWiW, in 2017 I helped review O365 against GSuite for c.30k users who had been using Office for decades.
In summary:
- most users would have been able to do most of what they did, most of the time equally well with GSuite.
- advanced users would not be able to cope without MS Office (Excel VBA couldn't be applied to Sheets etc).
- cost savings in licensing would have massively exceeded by transition costs associated with adapting existing documents, macros, models etc - not an issue for a new organisation, PugwasHDJ80
- younger users tended to have a preference for GSuite whilst older users tended to prefer O365
One practical point was that whilst 'collaborative working' can be useful, it can quickly descend into chaos when several users try to edit the same paragraph at the same time. The technology (in both packages) exceeded user limitations and required change of behaviour, training etc
My opinion at the time was that MS had developed Office over 30 years and Google had achieved a lot in c.3 years. In 2017 I expected that if Google continued at the same pace there will be a point when GSuite is better than O365, but it wasn't quite there at that time, so the recommendation was to stay with Office at that time.
In summary:
- most users would have been able to do most of what they did, most of the time equally well with GSuite.
- advanced users would not be able to cope without MS Office (Excel VBA couldn't be applied to Sheets etc).
- cost savings in licensing would have massively exceeded by transition costs associated with adapting existing documents, macros, models etc - not an issue for a new organisation, PugwasHDJ80
- younger users tended to have a preference for GSuite whilst older users tended to prefer O365
One practical point was that whilst 'collaborative working' can be useful, it can quickly descend into chaos when several users try to edit the same paragraph at the same time. The technology (in both packages) exceeded user limitations and required change of behaviour, training etc
My opinion at the time was that MS had developed Office over 30 years and Google had achieved a lot in c.3 years. In 2017 I expected that if Google continued at the same pace there will be a point when GSuite is better than O365, but it wasn't quite there at that time, so the recommendation was to stay with Office at that time.
22s said:
For the last 5 years I've worked in large and small organisations who only use G Suite and have never, ever had a problem with someone externally opening a Google Drive link (you click the link, the file opens) or a Google Hangouts meet (you click the link, the meeting opens).
By way of balance I've spent the last year working with a government department through a supplier who only uses G-Suite and we had to use Ms Teams for meetings because no one on the gov kit could access Hangouts, and had to work on Office docs because they couldn't access Google drive or use Google docs. So it does happen. Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff