This comparison gets written a lot, usually by someone with a preference. Here is the version we give customers who ask, which starts from an unhelpful-sounding truth: for most small businesses, either one is a good decision, and the difference will matter less than you expect.
Both give you email at your own domain, a large mailbox, calendars, video calls, shared file storage, and mobile apps. Both are run by companies that are not going anywhere. Both are far better than a free consumer address on your business card.
So the useful question is not which is better. It is which fits the way your people already work.
The short answer
Choose Microsoft 365 if your team already uses Outlook, Word, and Excel, and would find being asked to stop annoying. This is most established businesses, and anyone whose work involves complex spreadsheets or documents that get sent to clients with formatting intact.
Choose Google Workspace if your team is comfortable working in a browser, collaborates on documents at the same time, or is new enough not to have habits yet. This is most newer and smaller teams.
If reading those two paragraphs made the choice obvious, it probably is. The rest of this page is for when it did not.
Where they genuinely differ
Desktop applications
The clearest practical difference. Microsoft 365’s higher tiers include the installed versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint on your computer. Google Workspace is browser-first throughout.
This matters more than it sounds if anyone works offline regularly, or if your spreadsheets are complicated — Excel’s desktop version remains genuinely more capable than anything in a browser, and the gap widens the more advanced the work gets. If your spreadsheets are lists and sums, it does not matter at all.
How collaboration feels
Google built its documents around several people editing at once, and it still shows. Microsoft has closed most of that gap, but Google’s version remains the smoother experience.
Weigh this by how you actually work. Teams that genuinely co-edit find it transformative. Teams that email a document back and forth, which is most teams, will not notice.
Outlook and Gmail are both excellent and profoundly different in philosophy. Outlook wants you to file mail into folders; Gmail wants you to search for it. People tend to feel strongly, and switching someone from one to the other is the change they will complain about.
Deliverability, uptime, and spam filtering are comparable, and both are meaningfully better than a mailbox on a shared hosting account.
Working with people outside your company
Whatever your clients and suppliers use, you will be sent their files. Both suites open the other’s formats, but Microsoft 365 handles complex Word and Excel files with fewer surprises, because they are its own formats. If you routinely receive heavily formatted documents from outside, that is a real, if unglamorous, point for Microsoft.
What does not differ enough to decide on
- Reliability. Both are more reliable than anything you would run yourself.
- Storage. Both give any small business more than it will use.
- Video calls. Teams and Meet both work fine. If your clients live in one of them, that is a stronger argument than any feature.
- Security. Both offer two-factor authentication and modern protections at every tier. Turn it on either way.
- Price at the entry tier. They are close enough that price should not decide it. Current figures for both are on our pricing page.
The question that actually decides it
Not “which has more features” — both have more than you will use. Ask instead:
What will my team open on Monday morning without being told to?
Answering that honestly is worth more than any feature table, because the cost of either choice is not the subscription. It is the fortnight of low-grade friction while everyone relearns where things are.
Two follow-ups worth asking:
- Does anyone here rely on a specific Office feature? Complicated Excel work, mail merges, or documents that must arrive perfectly formatted all point at Microsoft.
- What do the people we work with use? Being in the same suite as your main clients makes sharing simpler, though not enough to override the first question.
What if we choose wrong?
You are not stuck. Your domain and your email addresses belong to you and do not change; what changes is which service your MX records point at. Mail, contacts, and calendars move with standard migration tools.
It is a real project rather than a click, which is why it is worth a little thought now — but it is not a decision you are locked into, and the fear of being locked in should not paralyse the choice.
How to get started
Both are available through us, and either way the setup is the same shape: we handle the DNS, the MX records, and the domain verification, and you sign in and start sending. Setup usually takes under 30 minutes.
- Microsoft 365 can be ordered directly — see business email, and setting up Microsoft 365 email for the walkthrough.
- Google Workspace we set up on enquiry rather than through the cart, so tell us what you need and we will get it running.
Still not sure?
That is a perfectly reasonable place to be, and it usually means either would work. Tell us your team size and what your people use today, and we will give you a straight recommendation — including telling you when the cheaper option is the right one. Send us a message or open a ticket.