What is Google Workspace and is it better than Microsoft 365?
google workspace setup |
In the past, Google offered a separate service called G Suite, but with the development, Google changed the name of this service to Workspace in order to express its performance identity and become among Google's business services, which compete with both the famous Slack service and Microsoft 365 as well.
What is G Suite?
In order to be able to explain Google's Work Space service, let's go back in time a bit to learn more about the original service that Google provided via G Suite.
The service started in 2006 to allow businesses to run their business with monthly subscriptions, as businesses could turn off their network storage capacity, email servers and other tools.
G Suite provided a suite of collaboration and productivity tools for businesses, such as cloud services, Gmail email, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Sheets, Presentations and Google Docs.
While all of these tools are available for free on the web for all customers, there are some features that are available and not offered to the free user.
All customers who joined the G Suite service received customizable emails in addition to paid cloud storage services, 24/7 customer support, and more.
What is the Google Workspace service?
Well, now that we know about the previous service, G Suite, let's talk about the new Workspace, but before that too, you should know that the beginning of the appearance of the service in 2006 was not in the name of G Suite, but it was the name of Google Apps, and then after 10 years, it was transferred to the name of G Suite.
As for the Google Workspace service, it's the same as the G Suite service, with a number of changes that Google added to it throughout 2020.
The most important of these changes is that the separate tools are now integrated with each other in a deeper and simpler way for users. You don't have to switch between Gmail, Google Docs and Google Dead email, but all of these services are available centrally.
Is Google Workspace free?
Continuing the idea of the previous service, it is also not free, but rather paid, although it contains all the tools available in free versions for consumers, but there are a number of different pricing levels that meet the needs of the institution depending on the scope of work it performs and the price is broken down as follows:
- Business start-up service at $6 per month.
- Standard Business Service at $12 per month.
- Business Plus Service at $18 per month.
- Business Service, which is a financial value consistent with customer service.
The bare minimum in these services provides you with a dedicated and secure email address to use, video meetings, cloud storage and customer service.
You could say that Google Workspace is just an expansion of the G Suite service, as it offers a set of tools and features for a great price with new additions.
What features are available in Workspace?
Storage space
When you count on the first plan, Business Starter, you get 30GB of space, while joining the rest of the three other plans, the storage space starts from 2TB up to 5TB.
video calls
If you have an organization that contains many people you want to meet, you need to make group video calls, and that's what Workspace offers.
When you join the first Business Starter plan, you get a maximum of 100 people to join the group video call, then the second plan increases the number of people to 150 and the third plan increases to 250 users.
Also keep in mind that the Standard Business Starter plan does not allow you to record the video call, while the rest of the plans do.
Additional security features
In the Business Plus plan and the last plan, Enterprise, as you will get dedicated tools for storing, searching and managing user data in a professional way, giving control over how users access the tool's features and data.
search engines
One of the additions provided by Google in Workspace is a professional search service called Google Cloud Search, which we can call intelligent search.
This feature is available in all these plans, except for the Standard Business Starter 1 plan.
The ability to create applications
Workspace offers you the ability to create a mobile app or website without coding and you can only access this feature in the Enterprise plan.
The difference between Workspace and Microsoft 365
storage capacity
The price of storage in Microsoft 365 can go up to 1 TB, while the first plan of Google has an area of 30 GB, and if you want to get a huge space, you need to subscribe to the highest plan to provide 5 TB space. .
mail space
In the default $5 Microsoft 365 plan, you'll get a 50GB mailbox for email only, not including 1TB of base storage.
While in Google's default plan, you'll get 30GB, including email, for $6.
Email applications
With both programs, you will be able to add the email you want to use, whether it is Gmail or Outlook, but Gmail is the best, fastest and easiest in the search process, so it is better compatible with the Google tool.
However, Gmail does not offer mail sorting or grouping, which many users regularly seek.