365 is not cool. It’s hard to use, has horrible UI, and it’s needlessly complex and replete with legacy garbage. It also happens to work better than all the alternatives.
Why Microsoft 365
- One platform. One security and compliance fabric, one login, one bill, unified search and storage, one support provider. Google is simpler, and customers wind up buying marketplace apps for things that come built into 365.
- Desktop Office. Firms that move to Google often end up paying for both, because some departments still need their Excel workbooks and macros. Office skills also travel from job to job.
- Resilience. Outlook, the Office apps and OneDrive keep local copies, credentials included. When the connection drops, most people keep working for a few hours: mail arrives late, or you get the odd sync conflict. Teams calls and chat stop, as Google Meet and Chat do. Drive for desktop syncs ordinary files, but Gmail, Docs and Sheets run in the browser, and offline Docs and Sheets need Chrome or Edge, an extension and set-up on each device. Without that, an outage turns everyone into desk potatoes.
- Set it up properly. 365 needs more initial set-up. Turn on security defaults, check your Secure Score and tune the spam policies. Gmail’s spam filtering is pretty great out of the box; with sensible settings 365 gets close.
When Google, or a NAS, is the better call
A new or very small business that wants simple set-and-forget tools can drown in 365. There are too many tools, everyone uses different ones, and nobody’s quite sure the email sent or the document saved. For those firms I’ve recommended Google, or a Synology NAS, and they’ve been much happier. You don’t grow a business by focusing on infrastructure.
Prices
Per user per month in US dollars, list price on an annual commitment.
| Tier | Microsoft 365 | Google Workspace |
|---|---|---|
| Email and web apps | Business Basic: US$7 | Business Starter: US$7 |
| Adds desktop Office (Microsoft) or 2 TB storage (Google) | Business Standard: US$14 | Business Standard: US$14 |
| Adds device management and advanced security | Business Premium: US$22 | Business Plus: US$22 |
The list prices are now identical.
- Microsoft raised Basic and Standard on 1 July 2026, from US$6 and US$12.50. Premium didn’t change. Every plan also comes without Teams for less, which suits firms on Zoom or Slack. An annual plan paid monthly costs 5% more than paying upfront.
- Google raised prices in January 2025, when it bundled Gemini into every business plan: Business Standard went from US$12 to US$14. Its flexible plan, with no annual commitment, costs 20% more.
Microsoft’s Business Standard includes desktop Office, which no Google plan has. Business Premium adds Intune device management and Defender for Business antivirus.
Copilot or Gemini
In the base plan, Google gives you more. Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Meet, the Gemini app and NotebookLM are included in every business plan. Starter gets less. Workspace Studio lets people build agents that automate work across Gmail, Drive and Sheets.
Microsoft’s base plans get Copilot Chat: chat grounded on the web, with inbox and calendar awareness and Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents rolling out from June. Agents that use your organisation’s data are billed pay-as-you-go. Copilot inside the apps, grounded on your files and mail, needs Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: US$21 per user per month.
For agents, Microsoft is ahead. A Copilot licence includes Researcher and Analyst: Researcher works through multi-step research across your work data and the web, Analyst runs Python over your data. In Copilot Studio, one agent can hand work to child agents, to other agents with their own tools and knowledge, to Microsoft Foundry agents in preview, and to anything that speaks Agent2Agent. That’s the open protocol Google started. Google’s own agents for company-wide systems sit in Gemini Enterprise, formerly Agentspace, sold separately from Workspace.