With the recent price rises in 2026 for both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 business licenses, many SME businesses are reevaluating their decision, with both bundles offering very similar capability and the same price.

When evaluating Google Workspace Business Standard (£11.80) against Microsoft 365 Business Standard (£11.29 to £11.55)*, the decision usually comes down to how your team naturally operates. Both bundles target small and medium teams needing professional features, but they approach communication, data management, and operational logic from completely different angles.

 Five key areas where Google Workspace differs from Microsoft 365

The deep feature contrasts across five key areas illustrate these differences.

  1. Video Conferencing: Google Meet vs. Microsoft Teams

The platforms diverge sharply on participant limits and integration logic.

  • Google Meet (Business Standard): Allows up to 150 participants per call. It includes premium features like noise cancellation, breakout rooms, meeting recordings saved directly to Google Drive, and live polling. Its main advantage is speed: external clients can join instantly in a browser tab without installing software or dealing with guest account permissions.
  • Microsoft Teams (Business Standard): Supports up to 300 participants and allows you to host formal webinars with registration pages and attendee reporting. By comparison, Teams is a complete collaboration hub where chat, tasks, files, and channels live permanently in one application. It is incredibly powerful but can create a more complex experience for external guests joining your calls but does offer much more than just a meeting platform.
  1. Spreadsheet Power and Database Tools

If data processing is central to your operations, the software choice matters.

  • Google Sheets: Built entirely for fluid, multi-user, real-time collaboration. It handles modern web scripts and formulas brilliantly, but it struggles with massive datasets. If you run sheets with over 100,000 rows or highly complex data chains, browser performance can lag.
  • Microsoft Excel: The desktop version included in Business Standard remains the undisputed industry standard for financial modelling, deep data analysis, Power Query, and legacy VBA macros. Additionally, Windows users get Microsoft Access, a relational database tool that has no native equivalent anywhere in the Google Workspace suite.
  1. Email Architecture and Mailbox Limits

While both look similar on the surface, the underlying data separation is a major architectural difference.

  • Google Workspace (Gmail): Your email storage is not separate from your cloud storage. The 2 TB allocated to a Business Standard user is a shared pool used by Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. It uses an asynchronous labels system rather than traditional static folders, allowing one email to live in multiple categories simultaneously.
  • Microsoft 365 (Exchange): Microsoft draws a strict line between file storage and email. Every Business Standard user gets a dedicated 50 GB Exchange mailbox that does not touch their 1 TB OneDrive file storage allocation. It relies on a classic, hierarchical folder structure with advanced server-side sorting rules.
  1. App Ecosystems and Value-Adds

Both suites throw in hidden tools that can replace secondary software subscriptions which can be a deciding factor when considering business value.

  • Google’s Extras: Focuses heavily on rapid web deployment. You get Google Sites for building fast internal wikis, Appointment Scheduling built directly into Google Calendar to let clients book slots with you, and entry-level access to AppSheet for building simple internal mobile apps without code.
  • Microsoft’s Extras: Focuses on project management and content creation. You get Microsoft Planner and To Do for managing team tasks Kanban-style, Microsoft Loop for flexible, modular workspace collaboration, and Clipchamp, a surprisingly capable desktop video editing app for creating quick marketing or training videos. As well as Microsoft Access and Publisher offering key desktop capability.
  1. The Built-in AI Landscape

Artificial Intelligence has become a defining factor in platform selections.

  • Google Workspace: At the Business Standard tier, Google embeds its Gemini AI functionality directly into Gmail, Docs, and Sheets for basic prompt assistance, drafting, and summarising.
  • Microsoft 365: While Business Standard includes Microsoft’s secure web-grounded chat tool, the full, deep integration of Microsoft Copilot into desktop Word, Excel, and Teams requires an additional premium add-on license (roughly £23 to £26 per user per month).

 

Google Workspace treats the web browser as the operating system; everything is instant, lightweight, and tied to a single storage pool. Microsoft 365 treats the local PC or Mac as the powerhouse; it segments your storage cleanly and provides unmatched depth for deep, solo focus work before syncing those assets back to the cloud.  It is probably fair to argue that although very similar Microsoft 365 offers a more recognisable and powerful set of solutions for the price point, with AI and ease being the two main benefits for Google Workspace Business Standard.

As a Microsoft 365 deployment partner and Microsoft licensing provider, we help businesses identify the right route for them and deploy Microsoft 365 with discounted licenses.

*prices correct as of June 2026