Google Workspace Essentials vs. Microsoft Teams

Well-suited for: Fast-paced drafting ideas, docs, charts, sheets, etc. Love it for client calls as well. Google Meet runs in a web browser; you don't need to download any special software. Shared Drives are great for sharing information; the ability to add a Google Notebook to them is the icing on the cake. It is less appropriate when Wi-Fi or the internet is spotty, or when you need heavy-duty Excel macro data crunching.

Incentivized

It's amazing as a daily driver for team communication, and document search/store. Also, if you're doing a lot of LONG meetings and have trouble remembering details, the AI summarization is amazing and convenient. It just works. I'm not saying I always do this, of course, but if I need to 'skim' instead of really digging into every detail from a meeting, the AI-generated summary is generally good enough that I can get away with it.

• Google Docs & Google Slides are essential to our company as we are remote. Multiple people can work on the documents at one time.
• Easy to share and store files in Google Drive.
• Google Calendar is amazing, it integrates seamlessly with other Google products and it's our company's primary calendar tool.

Incentivized

• All in one communication for Teams.
• High quality and reliable both audio and video meetings.
• Well organized and clear instant chat.
• Excellent security features.
• Beautiful integration with 3rd party tools and systems.
• Perfect compatibility with windows ,android and iOS.
• Allow meetings recordings for later us or sharing with teams that missed the live.

Incentivized

• Record option to be there in Google meet
• ability to share documents outside google accounts need to be looked at
• Improvement in conversion to MS office based documents and converting those documents to googles format needs a little work.
• Will be good to have a pdf to word converter and vice versa

Incentivized

• The webinars feature has some missing functionally such as the ability for all users to use the Q&A feature (only those with a Microsoft Teams account can use it now), the ability to upload documents for attendees to easily access and download, and the ability for presenters and organizers to easily chat amongst themselves throughout the webinar.
• The "Channels" organization hierarchy could be more clear. If you have several channels set up, it can get clunky and hard to find the specific channel you are looking for.
• The MS Planner tool lacks functionality and organization. You cannot assign more than one person to a task and it's confusing when you try to share tasks with people - it would be nice if they were automatically added to someone's calendar.

Incentivized

Now that our department has used G Suite Essentials for close to 2 years, I can't imagine not using it. It has proven to be a very practical tool for sharing files / folders on a shared drive. It also makes it easy to modify and update content. It is user friendly and the interface is simple.

Incentivized

Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product

Incentivized

It is so easy to use, very intuitive and the site looks nice. There is no hint of the old DOS days in the look and functionality. Let's be real, Google Workspace Essentials is attractive and easy on the eyes and even offers a dark mode if you want to rest your eyes a bit or are in a mood for such

Incentivized

If you have the full Microsoft Office suite, it works really well because it's integrated well within its ecosystem, but if not, it can be annoying because it tries to open a shared file in the web versions of the file equivalents. The web version is also a bit slow, and the login is very difficult to handle if you have multiple Microsoft or Outlook accounts.

Incentivized

Rare, but outages do happen

Incentivized

Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.

Incentivized

The overall support provided by Microsoft for Microsoft Teams has been quite good but there is still some room for improvements. Microsoft needs to proactively work on fixing the open bugs in order to provide a seamless experience to the users. But over the service and experience provided by the Microsoft team have been quite satisfactory.

Incentivized

I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.

Incentivized

Google Workspace Essentials is more robust than Dropbox with the other features that are available. Google Workspace Essentials is very comparable to Microsoft 365, and we ultimately went with Google because at the time, it was free/priced better than MS, and now we have lots of legacy files already stored on Google servers, so a switch would be too time-consuming. We went with Google Workspace Essentials over OpenOffice because of the email features of using Google.

Incentivized

Microsoft Teams offers a much more integrated experience between their chat and video call function compared to Google Chat and Slack. Both other tools are much better for internal communications are they have simpler UI without other features. Whereas Microsoft Teams can be used for more critical conversations, particularly between external companies, and has been very useful in sales conversations which is what we chose it for when speaking to companies that work exclusively through Microsoft.

Incentivized

Honestly, this tool is worth every penny. Yes, it's not free and you pay for the quality of services and the license. But the ROI and the benefits are all there. Also, the renewal, negotiation, and contract terms are all very well explained by our Microsoft account manager, and she's a charm.

It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it

Incentivized

I used Skype for Business to take calls, hold conferences, and provide remote assistance to users. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is superior to Skype for Business in my opinion. My job entails a lot of screen sharing.

• Our fundraising and development efforts nearly doubled 2020-2022, largely in part to the organizational tools within Google Workspace Essentials.
• We've opened up the capacity to work more closely with contractors in a more collaborative nature because of GWE's capabilities.
• It was integral to our brand overhaul.

Incentivized

• Personally, I would say that by using Microsoft Teams, it upped my collaboration with my colleagues by around 50% or around more than half of what I usually did prior to using it.
• I had 100% show rate and attendance on all of my meetings in the past 6 months.
• If I may add, I also have been chattier & collaborative towards my colleagues in past 3 months particularly the month of December when we had huge traffic at work. I would estimate this behavior to have been increased by around 60% than what I usually incur during normal operating days.

Incentivized