CentriWebGoogle Workspace vs Microsoft 365 is mostly a choice about how your team already works. Microsoft 365 suits businesses that live in Word, Excel and Outlook on the desktop, or swap those files with clients, accountants and suppliers every day. Google Workspace suits teams that work in a browser, share documents more than they send them, and want fewer apps to install.
Both give you business email on your own domain, calendars, file storage and video meetings, and both business ranges are built for up to 300 users. Plan details below come from each company’s own pages, opened in November 2026. Check their page for current prices in your country, because both set prices by country and currency.
Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 at a glance
| Google Workspace | Microsoft 365 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Meet and Gemini, used mainly in a browser | Exchange email, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, plus Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the web and, on most plans, the desktop |
| How it charges | Per user per month, with a discount for a one-year commitment | Per user, on plans set out on Microsoft’s own pricing pages |
| Who maintains it | An admin in your business, or an IT partner, using Google’s admin console | An admin in your business, or an IT partner, using Microsoft’s admin centre |
| Who it suits | Browser-first teams that edit the same documents together | Teams that depend on desktop Office files and Outlook, or whose clients do |
Start with what your team already knows
Switching office software costs more in habits than in subscription fees. Before comparing plans, answer four questions:
- Which files do you send and receive most? If your accountant, estimator or major clients send complex Excel workbooks and Word contracts with tracked changes, staying close to the desktop Office apps avoids daily friction.
- Where does your team work? Staff on phones and site tablets, or moving between shared computers, often find a browser-first set-up easier to keep consistent.
- Do people edit together or pass files around? Teams that build one shared quote sheet or job tracker together tend to like Google’s live editing. Teams that email attachments back and forth tend to stay with Microsoft.
- What do your other tools connect to? Your CRM, accounting software, phone system and booking tools may sync better with one calendar and mailbox than the other. Check each one’s integration page.
If the answers point both ways, the people who will use it hardest for the longest should decide. That is usually the office manager and whoever does the quoting or the books.
What each plan includes
Google Workspace
Google’s pricing page, as at November 2026, lists three Business plans and an Enterprise plan. The Business plans can be bought for a maximum of 300 users.
- Business Starter: 30 GB of pooled storage per person, video meetings for 100 participants, and the Gemini assistant in Gmail.
- Business Standard: 2 TB per person, meetings for 150 participants with recording and noise cancellation, and Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more.
- Business Plus: 5 TB per person, meetings for 500 participants with attendance tracking, plus eDiscovery and Vault for retaining and searching data.
- Enterprise: priced through Google’s sales team, with no user limit.
The page offers a 14-day trial at no cost, and says a one-year commitment saves 16%.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft’s plan options page says its Business plans are designed for organisations with up to 300 users, and sets out what each includes:
- Business Basic: Exchange email, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams and the web versions of the Office apps. No desktop apps.
- Business Standard: everything in Basic, plus the desktop Office apps.
- Business Premium: everything in Standard, plus Azure Information Protection, which Basic and Standard don’t include.
- Apps for business: the desktop apps and OneDrive, but no Exchange mailbox and no Teams, so it is not a business email plan.
Businesses with more than 300 users move to Microsoft’s Enterprise plans.
Prices, and where to check them
Both companies show prices in your own currency, so a figure quoted for one country can be wrong for another.
Google’s pricing page, opened from New Zealand in November 2026, showed standard prices in New Zealand dollars, excluding tax: Business Starter NZ$10.50, Business Standard NZ$21.00 and Business Plus NZ$33.00 per user per month, with an introductory discount for new customers. If you are in the United States, Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom, open the same page from there to see your price.
Microsoft’s business pricing pages did not load for us when we checked, so we have not quoted its prices. Check Microsoft’s plan comparison page and choose your country.
When you compare, use the plan you would actually need. A team that needs desktop Excel should compare Microsoft 365 Business Standard against Google, not Business Basic. A team that needs to record meetings should compare against Google’s Business Standard, not Starter.
Business email on your own domain
Both give every user an address at your business domain, such as jo@yourbusiness.com. Whichever you pick, three DNS records decide whether your quotes and invoices reach the inbox or the junk folder: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Our guide to DMARC, SPF and DKIM explains each one, and our article on business emails going to spam walks through fixing them in a safe order.
Remember that your CRM, website forms and invoicing software also send email as your domain. Moving mailbox provider is a good moment to list every one of them and check each is covered.
Switching from one to the other
- List what you hold: mailboxes, shared mailboxes, calendars, shared drives, and every login that uses “Sign in with Google” or “Sign in with Microsoft”.
- Pick a quiet week and tell staff and key clients what will change.
- Move email, calendars and files with the new provider’s migration tools, then check a sample of each.
- Change your DNS records for mail last, and keep the old account running until mail has settled.
- Reconnect your other tools: CRM, scanner-to-email, phone system and booking calendar.
If your website host also manages your domain, our guide to moving without downtime covers keeping email running during the change.
Settings to turn on in either one
Most problems with business email and files come from accounts, not from the software. Whichever you choose, do these in the first week:
- Multi-factor sign-in for everyone, including the owner and any shared accounts.
- Separate admin and everyday logins for whoever manages the account, so a phished inbox does not hand over the whole business.
- Shared mailboxes or groups for addresses like accounts@ and sales@, rather than one password passed around the office.
- A leaver checklist: when someone leaves, suspend their account, move their files and forward their mail, rather than deleting it on day one.
- Backups beyond the default if losing a deleted folder would hurt. Check what your plan keeps and for how long.
Australian businesses can measure these habits against the Australian Signals Directorate’s Essential Eight; our guide to the Essential Eight for small business explains it in plain terms.
Where each one is strong
Google Workspace is strong at live collaboration in the browser, simple administration, generous pooled storage from the Standard plan up, and Gemini built into Gmail on every Business plan.
Microsoft 365 is strong for desktop Office files, Excel-heavy finance and estimating work, Teams for chat and calls, and a step up to Business Premium for businesses that want information protection in the same subscription.
Neither choice is wrong. The wrong move is paying for a plan that doesn’t match how people work, or running half the team on each.
When it makes sense to have it set up and looked after for you
Signing up takes minutes. Getting it right takes longer: the domain records, multi-factor sign-in for every user, shared mailboxes for sales and accounts, connections to your CRM and phone system, and someone to add and remove staff properly.
Our managed hosting and email set-up covers that work and keeps it maintained. It is not needed if you have a handful of users, someone in the business who is comfortable in an admin console, or if the standard plan’s own setup guide has already got you working.