Microsoft 365 or
Google Workspace?

First, the thing nobody says: both do the job

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace cover the same ground, and cover it well. Both give you business email on your own domain, a shared calendar, document storage, video meetings, simultaneous editing of the same document, user account management, two-factor sign-in and mobile access.

Your company will not fail or succeed because of this choice. That is why we do not recommend comparing feature lists — on that list both win. Something else decides it.

When Microsoft 365 has a real advantage

• Your work lives in Excel and Word. For complex spreadsheets, macros, mail merge and documents where the print layout matters, desktop Office is still ahead. If somebody in the company keeps a spreadsheet that is really an application, this decides it.
• You have a Windows environment. Windows servers, domain sign-in, or a wish to manage laptops centrally — policies, disk encryption, wiping a lost device remotely. Microsoft's tooling for that belongs to the same world.
• A business program requires Outlook or Exchange. Some ERP, accounting and CRM systems integrate primarily with Microsoft. Check this with your supplier before deciding anything else.
• You need to work offline. Desktop applications work without a connection and sync afterwards.

When Google Workspace has a real advantage

• Your work happens in the browser. If documents are mostly written together and rarely printed, Google's way of working is more direct, and simultaneous editing there is older and more mature.
• You are a small team and want less administration. The admin console is simpler and offers fewer choices, which is an advantage when there is nobody to weigh those choices.
• Devices are mixed. Mac, Android, Chromebook and the odd Windows machine — Google assumes nothing about the device.
• You search old mail and documents a lot. Google Workspace offers strong search across Gmail and Drive, which can be useful for teams that frequently need to find older mail and documents.

What actually decides it

Reduced to checkable questions, four remain.

1. What is in your existing documents. A thousand ordinary documents move easily. Fifty complex Excel workbooks with macros move easily in neither direction — they alone can settle the choice.
2. What your business software requires. One phone call to your accounting or ERP supplier is worth more than any comparison table online.
3. Who will administer it. If an outside partner does, both are workable. If someone internal will, choose the one they already know.
4. Which licences you actually need. This is where money is most often wasted. Both have tiers, and rarely does everyone need the same one. People who only use mail and calendar do not need what the daily desktop users need.

What gets overlooked

Alongside that, three things to settle before a migration rather than after:

• What happens when someone leaves. Who takes over the mail, what becomes of the documents, how access is closed in a single step. This is a common organisational gap in smaller companies.
• Shared mailboxes versus groups. Addresses like info@ or accounts@ are handled differently in each system, and the difference shows every day.
• How long you keep mail and who may reach it. Set once, it holds for years.

What the move looks like

A migration is planned so work does not stop. Mail history is transferred before the switch, and the change to the records that route mail is made at an agreed time, with a way back prepared in case something does not go as it should. Calendars, shared drives and multi-recipient addresses are moved separately, because that is usually where something goes missing.

The number of users alone does not determine the migration timeline. It also depends on data volume and type, shared mailboxes and drives, permissions, devices, business applications, DNS and the condition of the existing environment. The timeline should therefore be set after an inventory and migration plan, not from user count alone.

If you still cannot decide

If there is no clear business or technical reason to change, staying with the platform your users already know is often the simpler and less disruptive option. Moving to the other system costs time and habits, and the difference in capability is not large enough to justify that on its own. Change when there is a reason you can state in one sentence.