Google Workspace for Education vs. Microsoft Teams

Google [Workspace for Education (formerly G Suite for Education)] is pretty darn good [at] meeting the needs for educators and students. It is not designed to run your business office, transportation group, or lunch services. It doesn't need to be good at those. Focus on teachers and students. They do that really, really well. The Google folks continue to add features that help serve teacher and students. For example, they have really done a good job of adding Google Meet features such as polling and breakout rooms. Those features required a paid subscription to Workspace, but it makes sense since those features compete with Zoom, which requires a subscription for those services.

Incentivized

I would say that Microsoft Teams is much more beginner friendly than other communication and collaboration tools. I find it so much easier to use and it has so much more options to customize it to your liking. I have been using Microsoft Teams for years now and every time that I have a meeting, I always default to it.

Incentivized

• Email: The best email experience, period. It's fast, has the best mobile apps and tons of addons that extend it.
• Office suite: The Google editors might not have all the features of their MS Office counterparts, but they have most of them and the apps are surprisingly performant.
• Domain management: The Google Admin Console, coupled with the GAM command line tool, is very powerful, easy to use and simplifies any admin's work.

Incentivized

• Online meetings with recording and transcripts.
• Translation for participates who don't speak the meeting's primary language.
• Ability to organize and search content
• Manage Outlook calendar within team
• robust chat and group chat
• quickly and seamlessly switch devices without loosing a word in an online meeting.
• Provide multiple background and privacy options.

Incentivized

• The admin console regularly feel sluggish
• Require third party tools to make changes to bulk devices
• Support could be a little better

Incentivized

• The calendar on Teams doesn't always "talk" to the calendar in Outlook. You'd think they'd be mapped to each other but I consistently run into issues where they don't sync.
• Teams video calls consistently have issues with host permissions. I've listed co-hosts ahead of time, and we still run into issues with other people downloading attendance or pulling Poll data or recordings.
• Teams had a good idea of pre-scheduling messages in the chat, but that feature is buggy and I'm often unable to check if the message was pre-scheduled -- the preview disappears and then will fire off anyways which makes it difficult to prepare for meetings or edit items.
• it's not possible to pre-schedule Polls. We use the poll feature to collect CSAT scores, and the facilitator currently has to remember to manually click the button --there's no way to schedule out the poll to automatically be sent out.
• Breakout functionality is incredibly clunky
• Their group/channel functionality is clunky and hard to use

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

Always up, never down. Compatible with so many different platforms, OSes, and tools. For instance, someone can be on a phone, tablet, laptop, and all of those tools are compatible with Google apps like Meet, Docs, Slides, and anything else Google based. It's flexiblity is fantastic and meets our changing hardware and software requirements

Incentivized

How I wish I had discovered Microsoft Teams before, and what it can do, especially in an organization that runs on Microsoft 365. The ability of Teams to seamlessly work with other tools like Power BI, OneDrive, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint is just amazing. My favorite part is copy-pasting the URL, and it is not the link that shows up, but the file name. It just makes whatever I share more accessible to the recipient.

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 has a simpler approach to its apps. With all applications being online, things like auto-save being a default have been helpful for many staff in our organisation. Compare this to Microsoft where much of the admin has to be managed by the ICT Team, Google allows for a portion of control to the user to manage permissions of areas. This type of user empowerment helps people see how important ICT is to a business.

Incentivized

They have similar features, but Microsoft Teams works relatively seamlessly with other MS products that we also use such as Office and MS To Do. Microsoft Teams is easy to set up an share meetings with both internally and externally. Microsoft Teams also gives us more options when collaborating within my team and outwardly with other teams.

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.

• There has been a steady evolution of new features coming out that reduced the need for third party tools
• We have been able to sign agreements to lock in annual renewal costs for up to 5 years
• It's a ubiquitous platform, finding support is generally pretty easy

Incentivized

• Microsoft Teams has helped an entire company become more efficient, which saves the company money and frees up time for workers to focus on other areas.
• By having a secure place to store information used by multiple departments, not only is time saved searching for information but also ensuring that an entire organization has access to the same and accurate information, which prevents errors and confusion.
• Using Microsoft Teams you can work remotely and still be able to effectively communicate with your coworkers and not miss any important notifications or information.

Incentivized