What is the difference between Office 365 and Google Apps?

Google Apps or Office 365? Many IT managers and administrators come across this situation where they have to choose amongst these emailing platforms. Many factors are important while choosing the cloud-based productivity equipment for emailing, file-sharing, calendaring, and document creation. The section discussed below will provide some details on the comparison done on these emailing platforms and to show the differences on Office 365 and Google Apps. It will also help one to judge which platform is better and on which aspects or grounds one can choose the emailing platform.

Comparison Based on Following Parameters:

Storage: Overall storage provides by Office 365 irrespective of the plan is 1 TB whereas Google provides only 30 GB of storage for initial plans which varies according to plans. Office 365 provides users 50 GB of space in Outlook application and for SkyDrive 25 GB of space is allotted. On the other hand, Google Apps gives 30 GB space which is distributed amongst Gmail, Picasa and Drive. The free application users are also benefitted with major storage space. Google provides 15 GB where as Microsoft provides free space of 7 GB. Drive and SkyDrive are integrated with the associated products as per provided by vendors. Online document readers, internal sharing, and many more facilities are provided by both the applications. But when it comes to searching facilities, Google offers better search facility as compared to Microsoft.

Email Archiving: Archiving is another feature provided by both of these applications but differently. Archiving is needed by many users for creating backup of email data or for eDiscovery procedures. Google Apps for Vault and Office 365 Enterprise E3 are available for archiving procedures which is provided for Google Apps and office 365. Google Apps is an advanced plan which costs $10 per user/month and MS Office 365 Enterprise plan provides the same service for $20/month but along with this gets some added benefits of voicemail support and business intelligence facility.

Desktop Apps with Office 365: Office 365 plans also include some of the desktop apps like Word, Excel, etc. for more added benefits. Google Apps is completely web-based and hence there is no availability of any desktop programs. But, Docs, Sheets and Slides can be used Google Chrome but it needs some changes to be done in Admin console. Below I have mentioned about more facilities provided by Google and Microsoft for respective emailing applications;

Interface and Appearance: Office 365 has been remarked as non-native cloud application and it has been called a hybrid solution instead. This makes all Windows-based and Windows-lovers users and administrators a bit happy as they can find a familiar product in this Office 365 in terms of operations and look as well. Microsoft obviously seems superior to Google when it comes to appearance of the application. Even though Google lags the Office-related facilities, it still scores with document interoperability.

Google & Microsoft Pricing: Google Apps pricing plan is simple and not confusing which includes some Flexible and Fixed-annual plans. Independent of “number of users”(minimum 5) it charges same pricing i.e. $5 per user per month or $50 per user per year for initial plan i.e. Basic Package for 30 GB storage plan. For free storage, it charges $10 per user per month or $120 per user per year which is a Premium Package. Office 365 on the other hand provides multiple plans which scales from small business plans to mid-scale business plans. There are more plans available as per the features provided like; Office 365 business essentials, business, and business premium costing different amount with one year assurance.

Support: In order to get maximum benefits and assurance that the service will be executed perfectly, support service plays an important role. Especially in today’s era where users are so much aware of technology that they prominently respond if service lags somewhere. Office 365 and Google Apps both provides 24*7 supports but this varies in some plans of Office 365.

Bottom Line

Many other features are available which are at some extent similar amongst Office 365 and Google Apps application like; Mobile Apps, connectivity, IM, document sharing, etc. But the services provided by both of these emailing applications are different and differs in quality as well. It completely depends on the usage of enterprises how users want to utilize the service.Google Apps provides multiple benefits within strict range. It is small, light, unified and somewhat cheaper than Office 365. The recent changes made in Google Apps were done to the basic services and facilities sticking to the marginal needs and requirements of users.Office 365 delivers customized solutions through various types of plans. It is capable to reach every corner and smallest aspect of business requirements. Sure it is complex as compared to Google Apps but the complexity has been included to keep things simple. “Different organizations – different needs” this solo motto has been fulfilled by Microsoft for Office 365 application and its variant plans. Large-scale enterprises mostly have strict data controls, multiple types of operations, and for such needs Office 365 is matchless solution. But if any company has minimal requirements then Google Apps is secured, non-exorbitant