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Comparing Productivity Tools for Business

If you’re like most of us you work with a team to get your job done. We’re here to tell you that teamwork and collaboration is the future of business productivity.

In an article from Entrepreneur a former CTO of Facebook named Bret Taylor said that companies must ensure a connected and communicating workforce in order to create the right environment to spark this kind of cooperation.

Certainly, you may face a challenge finding the tools that balance your business needs, compliance and security concerns with the requirements of an increasingly mobile and remote workforce. Also, you may think of email as the basic platform for business communication. However, Taylor pointed out that the right productivity solutions should also have other communication and collaboration tools integrated in to provide a seamless experience.

These days, this probably includes features for chat, document management, presentations, design, storage, meetings, and even VOIP phone calls. Comparing all of these tools in light of a company’s unique needs makes the job of selecting the best solution tough, and the right answer will vary by organization.

Compare G Suite Vs. Office 365 Vs. In-House Exchange

Server as Productivity Solutions for Business

With both the difficulty and importance of picking the right productivity and communication tools in mind, we can help you compare G Suite vs. Office 365 Vs. On-Premises Exchange as three of the most popular solutions.

Office 365

Like G Suite, Office 365 offers businesses a collection of productivity and communication tools that are mostly hosted in the cloud. Popular tools include:

  • A cloud version of Exchange with email and scheduling
  • Document management, collaboration, messaging, and conference software through Office, Skype for Business, and Sharepoint
  • OneDrive cloud storage that’s accessible from any device
  • New and innovative tools to support teamwork, workflow, automation, form and digital design, and more

Office 365 Pricing

Microsoft offers a number of pricing schemes to suit the needs of different organizations. For example:

  • Small and medium businesses can choose between the Essential Suite, Business Suite, and Premium Suite. Prices may range from $125 to $925 a month with up to 300 users included. Smaller companies may also be able to lease these plans on a per-user basis. The Essential Suite includes email and communication tools but not typical Office apps. The Businesses Suite adds in Office apps, cloud storage, and sharing. The Premium Suite includes workflow, design, and productivity tools.
  • Enterprise versions of Office 365 range from $769 to $2990 a month. All plans include Office apps and amounts of cloud storage that range from 1 TB to unlimited. The cheapest plan, ProPlus, doesn’t include email hosting and many productivity tools. At the hightest end, Enterprise E5 subscribers get the entire suite of tools plus advanced security, data governance, analytics, and even a phone system. These plans support unlimited users.

What to Know About Office 365

Office 365 offers small-, medium-, and even enterprise-sized organizations the digital tools they need to improve productivity through communication, collaboration, and better business processes. They’ve also kept up well with trends to allow employees to work from anywhere and on any device. Their packages also allow software installation on up to five devices but feature cloud-hosted versions for ease of accessibility and freedom from location or hardware constraints.

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G Suite

G Suite and Office 365 both offer cloud-hosted communication, collaboration, and productivity tools. With G Suite, businesses use such well-known Google apps as Gmail for email. They also provide users with solutions for chat, presentations, calendars, cloud storage, and of course, document management and sharing.

G Suite Pricing

G Suite pricing is a little simpler to understand than Microsoft’s. They group their plans as Basic for $6 per user a month, Business for $12, and Enterprise for $25. This overview explains the highlights:

  • Basic users get custom email addresses for their organization, voice and video calls, secure messaging, shared calendars and a variety of document applications, a site-building tool, storage, security controls, and 24/7 support.
  • Business users get everything included in the Basic plan, with higher limits and more storage. They also receive low-code app-building tools, advanced search, and several other features.
  • Enterprise users includes everything in the Business plan, often with higher limits. Google also includes more third-party integration abilities, business intelligence solutions, and more advanced encryption and security.

What to Know About G Suite

G Suite delivers everything in the cloud. At the same time, it’s possible to do some work offline in a Chrome browser. Since Google offers free versions of many of their business tools, lots of users will already be familiar with and accepting of G Suite software. It’s also possible to download Microsoft- compatible versions of many documents, so working with Office users should not present a major problem.

On-Premises Exchange

On-Premises Exchange still leads the market for enterprise email and productivity software; however, with the rapid growth of cloud-based solutions, they face increased competition from such big players as G Suite and Office 365. With On-Premises Exchange, Microsoft provides a business with software to install on their own hardware and devices. This includes email, plus a variety of other communication, document management, collaboration, and security tools.

On-Premises Exchange Pricing

It’s difficult to directly compare the cost of on-premises exchange with G Suite and Office 365 because the latter two are mostly hosted solutions. The license doesn’t necessarily include all the apps an organization might require, so these may be purchased separately from Microsoft.

In other words, many large organizations that run Exchange servers also purchase licenses to Office 365. Most of all, calculating the true price of running Exchange would have to include hardware and maintenance costs.

What to Know About Onsite Exchange

These days, many companies have decided to pursue cloud-based solutions in order to reduce their infrastructure concerns. On the other hand, Exchange gives businesses control over their software,hardware, governance, and security. They can integrate any other applications they choose.

Also, the organization has responsibility for backup and recovery, which may be an advantage or disadvantage, depending upon the situation.

How Can Businesses Choose Between On-Premises Exchange, G Suite, and Office 365?

Organizations with their own IT infrastructure, and in particular, those that need complete control over their environment, might find that an on-premises solution like Exchange will serve their needs the best.

On the other hand, you can scale all of G Suite’s plans at will because you don’t have a hard limit on the number of users. By the time you get to Google’s Business plan with at least five users, G Suite starts to look like a better storage value.

One of the main reasons you might choose Office 365 is if you have a strong need to ensure compatibility with Microsoft products. Also, at the lower levels, Microsoft is more generous with storage than Google. Schedule a demo with us and see which one is right for you!

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