Every year, thousands of businesses face the same question: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace? Both have matured a lot, and both have real strengths. The right choice depends on your industry, how your team works and what the rest of your IT looks like.
The core difference
Microsoft 365 is the better fit for businesses with complex compliance requirements, heavy use of Office documents, or existing Microsoft infrastructure (Active Directory, Azure, Teams). Google Workspace works best for lightweight, browser-first teams that care more about simplicity and real-time collaboration than feature depth.
Microsoft 365: strengths
- Advanced compliance tools: Purview, DLP, eDiscovery and retention policies make M365 the default for regulated industries like healthcare, legal and finance.
- Deeper Office integration: If your team lives in Excel, Word or PowerPoint, the desktop apps are still the best around.
- Microsoft Teams: Probably the most complete business communication platform available, especially for organizations with 50+ employees.
- Azure AD integration: If you're already on Azure, identity management in M365 just works.
Google Workspace: strengths
- Simplicity: Gmail and Google Drive have almost no learning curve, so onboarding is fast.
- Real-time collaboration: Live editing in Google Docs is still smoother than M365 co-authoring for casual shared writing.
- Cost at lower tiers: Google's Business Starter plan is cheaper for small teams with few compliance needs.
- Search: Searching inside Workspace is better than Microsoft's.
Our recommendation
For most of our clients (small to mid-sized businesses in professional services, healthcare or legal), Microsoft 365 Business Premium is the right choice. The security features alone (Defender, Intune MDM, Conditional Access) are worth the extra cost over Google's equivalent tier.
"The security gap between M365 Business Premium and Google Workspace is significant. For any regulated industry, M365 is the clear winner."
Mike T., Cloud Infrastructure Lead
That said, if you're a startup with a tech-savvy team and no compliance requirements, Google Workspace is a perfectly reasonable choice, and moving later isn't that painful.
Migration help
Sentiva handles both M365 and Google Workspace migrations and can help you figure out which one fits your environment. Contact us for a free consultation.