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Google Workspace Essentials

Score9.4 out of 10

51 Reviews and Ratings

What is Google Workspace Essentials?

Google now offers Google Workspace Essentials (formerly G Suite Essentials), providing a solution for users of Outlook or Office whose teams want to use Google Meet and Google Apps without needing to involve a personal gmail account. Google Workspace Essentails includes Google Slides, Sheets, and Docs, as well as Google Meet, Google Drive, Forms, Sites, and Keep, in a bundle minus a gmail account. Basic Essentials supports (via Meet) meetings with up to 150 participants, and Google Drive with 100GB per user and 2TB pooled. The Enterprise edition supports 250 participants in a meeting, as well as up to 100k viewers of a Live Streamed event, and 1TB per user of Drive space (25TB pooled).

Categories & Use Cases

Google Workspace Essentials - Gotta Have It

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Workspace Essentials keeps me in the same relative space. I hate clicking here and logging in there to have various functions and programs keep track of my day to day operations. Google Workspace Essentials allows me to stay in one login, one space so to speak, and to simply navigate seamlessly. I have saved so much time and become so very productive. Not tracking down passwords and logins and trying to remember them and then verifying with time consuming clicks on all the spaces with "ladders" or "crosswalks" in them. I lost so much time that way, now I am in one login, one space for so many programs and functions. Freaking epic!

Pros

  • Layout of Programs/Apps
  • Accessibility of Programs/Apps
  • Programs/Apps functionality is awesome
  • Everything is Intuitive

Cons

  • I have racked my brain and I really cant think of anything

Return on Investment

  • Better accountability
  • Better tracking of information sharing
  • Better processes

Usability

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft 365

A tool that transforms

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This platform has allowed all the team members to be seamlessly connected in an easy and friendly way, sharing files and collaboration made very easy.

Pros

  • sharing
  • collab
  • manage

Cons

  • ia integration

Return on Investment

  • ROI in software
  • storage
  • meetings

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365

Other Software Used

Dropbox, Safari

Great collaboration tool for distributed teams.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it for real-time collab to create documentation, charts, planning sheets, and communication. I use it for secure file sharing, propagating, and publicizing project and personal documentation to drive alignment across different business units and departments. Google Workspace makes it really easy by enabling real-time collaboration and auto-saving data.

Pros

  • Single Source of Truth" Collaboration - Multiple people can edit the same doc simultaneously, we don't have to maintain email chains with different versions of docs, and the ability to add @ and mention colleagues is really useful.
  • Works amazingly well on both mobile and web.
  • Seamless integration with MS Office: we can upload MS Office documents to Google and vice versa. Migration from MS Office to Google Workspace has proven to be very easy.

Cons

  • The formatting capabilities in Excel and Word are a bit better and better suited to legal use cases. But this is just a personal opinion.
  • The permissions system is a bit strange; it would be good to have a middle ground between a "viewer" permission and an "Editor" permission. Something like, Edit but not delete.
  • Not the best for offline collaboration.

Return on Investment

  • I have seen a Drastic Reduction in Project "Cycle Time"; projects are implemented faster.
  • Collaboration between offshore teams is easier across time zones, reducing time spent in meetings outside working hours.
  • Approvals process is faster because of the ability to add approvers to a Google docs.

Usability

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Slack, Miro

Google Workspace Does it all very well

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Workspace Essentials for all our daily corporate needs, including email, calendars, documentation, financial processing, virtual meetings, storage, website domain registration and billing, organizational/team groups and structures, contacts and directories, device and end point management, networks management, apps management, security management, data management and compliance, usage reporting, cost reporting, and account management. Google Workspace is the only organizational software that we use.

Pros

  • Emailing
  • Domain registrations
  • Google Meet
  • Documentation and Storage
  • User management
  • Endpoint Security

Cons

  • Google Voice
  • Apps management

Return on Investment

  • Vast amount of time saved sharing files internally and externally
  • Efficient scheduling of video meetings
  • Effective use of Generative AI
  • Top notch security
  • Ease of bill payments

Usability

Other Software Used

Slack, Google Cloud Platform

Great feature set for the price

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Workspace Essentials to monitor and administer Google Chrome browser. It allows us to configure the add-ins and extensions our users are installing, to better protect them from malicious extensions. We also are able to create a bookmark folder and have all of the relevant work related sites already saved in there when an employee starts. Every machine that goes out the door for our users is preconfigured with Google Chrome all set up the same way, and provisioned for efficient use.

Pros

  • Chrome browser configuration
  • Browser updates
  • Usage reporting

Cons

  • There are a LOT of configurable settings, I'd like to see them sorted and grouped better

Return on Investment

  • We've blocked malicious extensions and add-ins from 4 users' brosers.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Entra ID

Other Software Used

Automox, CrowdStrike Falcon, Egress Intelligent Email Security