TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Google Workspace

Score9 out of 10

1,445 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace enables teams of all sizes to connect, create and collaborate. It includes productivity and collaboration tools for work: Gmail for custom business email, Drive for cloud storage, Docs for word processing, Meet for video and voice conferencing, Chat for team messaging, Slides for presentation building, and shared Calendars.


Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Google Workspace.
View all reviews

Offers Great Value for an All-in-One Platform That Can Grow with Your Business

Incentivized
Micah KingView profile
Sr. IT Security Administrator in Information Technology at Spreedly (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Workspace is our primary platform for email communication (Gmail), cloud storage (Drive), and internal video conferencing (Meet). Additionally, we use Google Voice for certain roles or functions to help facilitate SMS 2FA, Sales team communications, and avoid tying business functions to personal contact info. Google Workspace also offers an excellent suite of general productivity tools that serve most of the use-cases for our users which saves us costs for comparable tools like Microsoft 365, and keeps the user experience seamless across the extended product suite (Drive, Meet, etc.). The Gemini offering included in our plan has also proven beneficial for incorporating AI into our daily use and extending automation capabilities through platforms like Atlassian, Intercom, and Zapier. I have found Gemini to be helpful for cutting down on time to research issues, quickly analyze data, and break down complex ideas. Overall, Google Workspace has allowed us to consolidate many tools into one platform with an effective set of granular controls available to satisfy compliance and security requirements. The pricing can feel a little convoluted depending on the size of your business, and especially with how AI or Google Cloud Platform seems to keep changing.

Pros

  • Google Workspace offers a very straightforward, yet decently customizable email platform for our workforce. It can be reasonably integrated with various third-party platforms to enhance productivity on many different fronts (i.e. calendar, video conferencing, sales data connector, etc.)
  • Having access to Google Drive within our Google Workspace plan is very helpful for centralized cloud storage and management capabilities to organize our company data. The permissions structure is also very flexible to allow for compliance with least privileged access.
  • We were able to significantly reduce costs on our portfolio of different video conferencing by consolidating primarily to Google Meet usage. While it may not offer as many bells and whistles as other tools, it covers the essential bases and effectively incorporates Gemini Notes to help capture post-meeting action items.

Cons

  • For administrative settings, it can sometimes be cumbersome to navigate or find the correct area, pane, setting, or what have you. While it isn't as bad as other big name competitors, they could certainly improve on the administrative settings descriptions and navigation to avoid falling into the same feeling of archaic tool that is oozing with tech debt from bygone years.
  • There have been a few occasions where one setting supposed supersedes another, but still works or causes a conflict despite what documentation states. I suppose that is to be expected to some degree considering what all Google Workspace endeavors to control.
  • It can be annoying to take time in hunting down a feature or product setting only to discover it isn't enabled for your plan/tier, even though documentation doesn't clearly or readily mention it. It would be nice to have documentation that clearly enumerates what is or is not available for each plan/tier, or simplify the feature offerings instead of making them more complicated.

Return on Investment

  • Allowed our company to significantly reduce spend on video conferencing by consolidating to Google Meet.
  • Helps avoid costs for other productivity tools for general use-cases.
  • Robust cloud storage offering to keep company data consolidated with more granular access controls.
  • A decent set of security, compliance, and auditing tools for IT administrative needs.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Dropbox Business and Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Other Software Used

Atlassian Confluence, monday.com

Why you should consider Google Workspace for your company

Incentivized
John DykstraView profile
Small Business Owner at JRD Apps (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The basics of course; Email, Calendar, and Contacts. We use The Drive feature for file sharing and backups of some computer files. Google Photos is a great tool for syncing and backing up photos from your mobile devices. Gemini AI has been a great resource for research and solving problems. It can save a lot of time when you're responding to emails and text questions.

Pros

  • Email spam filtering is the best thing going.
  • Gemini AI, along with its image and video tools is the best in class as well.
  • Sharing and collaborating with Drive works well and is efficient.

Cons

  • It seems like many people using Workspace aren't aware of all the features available to them with their subscription. Helping users learn to use the features would be a good idea.
  • Personally, I'm weary of all the naming changes. I wish Google would come up with a name and stick to it for a while.

Return on Investment

  • Google Workspace has been an affordable and valuable solution for us to communicate with our customers in various ways and on their level.
  • The security of Workspace helps give us peace of mind when sharing or storing files in the cloud.
  • Google keeps adding more choices and features that help us grow in our work and personal lives.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365 and Thunderbird

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365, Adobe PhotoShop, RemotePC, Instagram for Business, Amazon Lightsail

Google Workspace Review

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Sales (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Workspace across a number of facets. We use gmail as our primary email meaning that all internal and external communications are sent through Gmail. I oversee the sales function which involves taking multiple sales and demo calls per day. These are all ran using Google Meet, and I transcribe all calls using Gemini's note taker, and sometimes record calls using the internal call recording function. Utilising Google Workspace means I can utilise all the features of one platform without needing to use other platforms for meets, transcriptions etc. I manage all meetings both internal and external through google calendar, saving me needing an external call calendar. Beyond this, we utilise Google Docs for any documentation that is required, I use Google Sheets for data imports and exports, and all of this is managed with Google Drive.Utilising Google Workspace is incredibly helpful for being able to house everything under one roof, especially as leading a sales function involves the use of different tools for calls, documentations, transcriptions, email etc, so everything being in one place gives me a single source of truth.

Pros

  • Gemini transcription is excellent for every meeting
  • Google Meet is reliable and stable for all sales calls
  • Gmail is consistent and reliable
  • Sheets / docs / slides has all the necessary features to build purpose driven documents
  • Drive is easy to use and organise

Cons

  • Gmail could have easier settings to enable auto filtering on emails
  • The ability to share your calendar availability through a link (similar to calendly)
  • Sheets lacks some functionalities that other providers like Excel have
  • Could be considered a more expensive option on the market

Return on Investment

  • Number of sales meetings has increased from 2 to 8, meet is consistently reliable in this regard
  • Gemini's transcription has allowed for me to easily keep track of multiple deals, whilst saving money by not needing to pay for an external meeting transcription tool.
  • Reliable functionality whilst on meets has allowed for consistent screen sharing on large calls, meaning that first call conversion has increased by 200%
  • Being able to share Gemini transcriptions has increased client trust and helped progressed 80% of all sales meetings held

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365

Other Software Used

Slack, Aircall, HubSpot CRM, Apollo.io, ZoomInfo Sales, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Orum

Good product a few nuisances that are not a dealbreaker

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrator in Human Resources (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Workspace to collab on docs, create new staff emails, and create departments. We do NOT use the Gemini feature. Our scope is likely fairly limited compared to others because our organization is small and we dont have an HR Department.

Pros

  • Collaboration on drive documents
  • Onboarding new email users
  • Calendar compatibility with those in your Google Workspace

Cons

  • Ugh please dont turn Gemini on automatically, it's underhanded and sneaky
  • Please improve your functionality with outlook calendars, we collab with staunch outlook users and it's annoying that you won't accommodate them for the improvement of your users' experience. Just seems petty

Return on Investment

  • We're able to operate without a full ops dept
  • We're able to operate without a full HR dept

Usability

Its very good but needs to improve to leave Microsoft services behind.

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google services for all company activities, from document management with Docs, Sheets, and others, to the ability to share files between employees and external users with G-Drive, as well as Gmail, Google Calendar, Gemini, and many more options, all managed from the Google Admin Console. This has made it easier for us to manage users in each G-Suite.

Pros

  • File management with G-Drive is secure, file loss-free, and easy to use.
  • Google Admin Console is very good for file recovery, group management and many more utilities.
  • G-Suite management allows the use of many reliable tools

Cons

  • They should improve the visuals of the admin console because it is very basic.
  • Docs, Sheets, and Slides services are light years behind Ms. Office 365.
  • Permissions cannot be delegated to third parties from the admin console; everything must involve external tools (Okta or BetterCloud) or the user themselves, again years behind Microsoft.

Return on Investment

  • I highlight is the management of Gmail and G-Drive.
  • emails or files are not lost, since they will always be in a trash can and user can recover them
  • Microsoft that files get corrupted and I delete them from OneDrive and they never reappear.
  • Improve the delegation of permissions to third parties
  • Better Admin Console and something like O365

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365

Other Software Used

ScreenConnect, Slack, Jira Work Management

Related Products

Products similar to Google Workspace that may also meet your needs.
All comparisons
Zoom Workplace
CompareLearn more
Microsoft 365
CompareLearn more