The office manager wants Gmail because that's what she uses at home. The controller won't give up Excel. The new hire from a bigger company assumes everyone runs Teams. Somebody has to settle Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365, and usually it's whoever happens to be holding the renewal invoice.
We set up and migrate both, in both directions, so we don't have a side to argue for. What follows is how we actually work through the question with a client.
What doesn't decide it
Email, calendars, contacts, video calls and shared files work well on both. Spam filtering is good on both. Both run in a browser and on phones. If a vendor comparison chart spends most of its rows on these, it isn't helping you.
Price per seat isn't a great tiebreaker either. The plans are close enough at each tier that the bigger cost is usually licenses you're paying for and not using, or the one you picked turning out to be wrong and needing a migration two years later.
Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: what actually decides it
How much of your work lives in Excel
This is the first question we ask, and it settles more decisions than anything else. If your finance team runs models with macros, pivot tables linked to other workbooks, or add-ins from your accounting software, they need desktop Excel. Google Sheets doesn't run VBA macros, and complex workbooks don't always survive the round trip.
You can buy Microsoft 365 licenses for just those people while everyone else uses Google, and some companies do. It works, but you now have two systems to administer, and the Excel users will email attachments to colleagues who open them in Sheets. Plan for that friction if you go that way.
Who you exchange documents with
Law firms, accountants, lenders and government agencies tend to send Word files with tracked changes and expect them back the same way. Google Docs can open and edit Word files, and it handles suggestions well, but heavily formatted contracts can drift. If a large part of your week is redlining other people's Word documents, Microsoft is the easier life.
If most of your documents are internal and several people edit them at once, Google is better at that, and it's not close. Real-time co-editing in Docs and Sheets is the thing Google got right first and still does most smoothly.
What your computers are, and who manages them
A company of Windows laptops that needs them locked down, patched and wiped remotely fits naturally with Microsoft. Business Premium includes Intune for device management and Entra ID with Conditional Access, which lets you say things like: only company devices can open company email. Google can manage endpoints too, but if your fleet is Windows and your policies are strict, Microsoft's tooling is deeper.
If your team is on Macs and Chromebooks, works mostly in a browser, and nobody wants to think about device policy, Google is simpler to run day to day.
Who is going to administer it
Google's admin console is easier for a non-specialist to find their way around. Microsoft's admin experience is spread across several portals (Microsoft 365, Exchange, Entra, Intune, Purview) and has more settings, which is power if you have someone who knows it and confusion if you don't. A 15-person firm where the office manager handles IT will usually be happier on Google.
Software that expects one or the other
Check the tools you can't replace. Some practice management, CRM and accounting systems have deep Outlook integration and a weaker Gmail one, or the reverse. Phone systems, scanners that send to email, and e-signature tools usually work with both, but confirm before you commit rather than after.
Side by side
| If this describes you | Leans toward |
|---|---|
| Finance or operations live in complex Excel workbooks with macros | Microsoft 365 |
| You redline Word documents with outside firms every week | Microsoft 365 |
| Windows laptops that need strict, centrally managed policy | Microsoft 365 |
| Lots of people editing the same documents at the same time | Google Workspace |
| Macs, Chromebooks, mostly browser-based work | Google Workspace |
| No dedicated IT person; someone part-time runs the admin console | Google Workspace |
| Already on one and it mostly works | Stay where you are |
If you're already on one of them
The last row of that table is the one people skip. Switching platforms is a real project: mail history, calendars, shared drives, permissions, every phone in the company, and a week or two of people asking where things went. It's worth doing when the current platform is genuinely blocking work. It isn't worth doing because a new manager prefers the other one.
Very often the complaint isn't the platform, it's the setup. Files scattered across personal drives, no shared folder structure, MFA never turned on, a dozen licenses for people who left. That gets fixed in place, usually for far less than a migration costs.
If you do decide to move, the work before cutover matters more than the cutover itself. We wrote up what to settle first in our email migration checklist.
Security is about setup, not brand
Neither platform is secure out of the box in the way insurers and clients now expect. Both can enforce multi-factor authentication, both can restrict admin rights, both can keep mail for legal retention through Google Vault or Microsoft Purview. Whether any of that is switched on depends entirely on whoever set up your account.
If your cyber insurer has started asking questions, that's a setup problem you can solve on whichever platform you have. See what insurers actually want to see on MFA.
If you'd rather not do this yourself
We'll look at what you run now, how your team works, and which tools you can't give up, then tell you which platform fits. Sometimes that's the one you already have, set up properly. The first 30-minute call is free. More on how we handle Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.