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This question comes up in almost every first call. The answer that surprises people: both are good enough. No company has failed because it picked the wrong office suite.
So the choice is rarely about feature lists. It is about how your people already work and what a switch would cost.
The short answer
- Choose Google Workspace if your team lives in the browser, collaborates in real time on shared documents, uses Android or Chromebooks, and your accounting does not depend on old Excel files full of macros.
- Choose Microsoft 365 if you already run a Windows domain with Active Directory, heavy Excel models, industry software that integrates with Outlook, or clients who demand a specific compliance stack.
Where the difference is real
Live co-editing
Google Docs and Sheets were built for simultaneous editing from day one. Microsoft has caught up, but the web versions remain simplified next to desktop Office. Teams that co-write proposals usually prefer Google.
Excel
Microsoft wins without discussion. If you have complex financial models, Power Query or VBA macros, do not try to migrate them. Keep a few Microsoft licences for the finance team. That is not defeat, it is sense.
Email and spam
Gmail’s spam filter is still the best on the market and it is one of the most common reasons companies switch. The flip side: long-time Outlook users often dislike the Gmail web interface, and that is a real cost, not an imagined one.
Price, where the numbers mislead
Licences cost about the same. The real costs sit elsewhere: one-off migration work, training and the slower first weeks, and storage limits if you carry a large archive. Current list prices are on our licensing and pricing page.
The honest warning
The worst setup is both at once: half the team on Outlook, half on Gmail, files in two places, two licences per person. It happens more often than you would think, usually because a migration was started and never finished. If a switch is worth it for you, do it completely: migration without downtime is a solved problem.
Write to us and we will tell you honestly, including when the right answer for you is not Google.
