Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 for Small Business

For most small businesses the choice between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 isn’t decided by a feature list. It’s decided by four things: which apps your staff already know, whether you need installed desktop Office applications, how much security and device management you want bundled into one licence, and what your accountant, lawyer and suppliers send you.

Price is close enough that it rarely breaks the tie. As of September 2026, on each vendor’s Canadian pricing page, Google Workspace Business Standard is CAD $18.40 per user per month on an annual plan and Microsoft 365 Business Standard is CAD $19.00 per user per month paid yearly. The broad answer: pick Google if your team lives in a browser and values simplicity, and Microsoft if you need real desktop Excel, want managed Windows devices, or exchange complex documents with other businesses all day.

What each suite costs in Canada

Both vendors publish Canadian dollar pricing. The figures below are list prices per user per month, before tax, taken from each vendor’s Canadian pricing page in September 2026. Microsoft’s figures are the annual-commitment prices from its Canadian “plans with Teams” page; Google’s are the annual-plan prices from its Canadian pricing page. Both vendors charge more for month-to-month flexibility.

Two notes on the table. Google says its annual plan saves 16% over the flexible monthly plan, and both vendors limit these tiers to 300 users — above that you move to enterprise plans, and Google’s Enterprise tier is quote-based. Microsoft also sells versions of each plan without Teams at a lower price (Business Standard without Teams is $14.60), which mostly matters if you already use a different chat and meetings tool.

Apps and file formats your staff already know

This is the single biggest practical difference. Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Business Premium include installed desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, on up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five mobile devices per person. Business Basic is web and mobile apps only.

Google Workspace has no installed desktop office suite. Docs, Sheets and Slides run in a browser. Google supports editing Microsoft Office files directly — you can open a .docx or .xlsx from Drive or a Gmail attachment, edit it and have it save back in its original format without converting. That handles routine documents well.

Where it stops handling them well is complex Excel work: large models, pivot-heavy reporting, add-ins, macros, and workbooks that came from an accountant or a supplier built around Excel-only features. If a meaningful part of your business runs on that kind of spreadsheet, Microsoft is the shorter path. If your spreadsheets are lists, budgets and trackers, Sheets is genuinely comfortable, and multi-person editing is smoother.

Email, calendar and mailbox limits

Both give you custom business email on your own domain with spam and malware filtering included at every tier. Gmail’s search and conversation threading are the reason a lot of people prefer Workspace; Outlook’s rules, folders, shared mailboxes and calendar delegation are the reason a lot of businesses stay with Microsoft.

On limits, Microsoft is explicit: every Business plan includes a 100 GB primary mailbox, with 50 GB of archive storage on Basic and Standard and 1.5 TB of archive on Premium. Google doesn’t split mail and files — Gmail, Drive and Photos draw on the same pooled storage, allocated at 30 GB per person on Business Starter and shared across the organization. For a business that keeps everything, 30 GB per person goes quickly, which pushes most Workspace buyers to Business Standard’s 2 TB anyway.

File storage and the two sharing models

Both vendors give each person a personal space and the business a shared space, but they arrive at it differently, and this affects how messy your files get over five years.

Microsoft: OneDrive and SharePoint

OneDrive is the individual’s 1 TB of storage. SharePoint holds the shared libraries that Teams channels sit on top of — when staff save a file “in Teams,” it lands in SharePoint. Microsoft allocates SharePoint storage to the organization as a pool: 1 TB plus 10 GB per licence purchased, with a 25 TB ceiling per site. You can buy more.

Google: My Drive and shared drives

My Drive is the individual’s space. Shared drives are owned by the organization rather than a person, and Google states files in them persist even if the person who created the file leaves, which avoids a common data-loss problem. Shared drives are available from Business Starter up. Google pools storage across the organization, allocated per user: 30 GB, 2 TB or 5 TB depending on tier.

The practical advice is the same on either platform: put business files in the shared space from day one, and treat personal drives as scratch space. The platform that makes that easy for your team is the better one for you. Our cloud services page covers how we set this up.

Meetings and chat

Google Meet supports 100 participants on Business Starter, 150 on Business Standard and 500 on Business Plus, with a 24-hour maximum meeting length on all tiers. Recording to Drive starts at Business Standard; Business Plus adds attendance tracking.

Microsoft Teams is included in every Business plan sold with Teams. Business Basic covers chat, calls and meetings; Business Standard and Premium add webinar hosting with attendee registration and reporting. Teams is more than a meeting tool — it’s also the front end for files, shared channels and a lot of third-party app integration, which is either an advantage or a source of clutter depending on how disciplined you are about channels.

If your staff join more external meetings than they host, neither choice constrains you much; both let guests join from a browser. If you host client-facing webinars, check the specific limits at the tier you plan to buy.

Device management and security tiers

This is where the two diverge most, and it’s the part that decides the question for businesses with a cyber insurance application or a client security questionnaire in front of them.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium bundles a lot into one CAD $29.80 licence: Intune Plan 1 for endpoint management, Defender for Business for device protection, Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 for email and collaboration, advanced identity and access management with Microsoft Entra ID, Purview Information Protection, and a Windows 11 Pro upgrade. Business Standard gets the free tier of Entra ID and URL time-of-click protection, not the full set. Defender for Business can also be bought on its own for CAD $4.10 per user per month paid yearly.

Google puts its equivalents higher up. Business Starter and Standard get fundamental endpoint management; Business Plus adds advanced endpoint management, Secure LDAP and Vault for retention, archiving, search and eDiscovery. Data loss prevention, context-aware access, Cloud Identity Premium, enterprise endpoint management and enterprise data regions are Enterprise-tier features, and Enterprise is quote-based.

So if you want managed devices, endpoint protection and conditional access on one predictable per-user price, Microsoft Business Premium is the cheaper route to it. If you only need the productivity apps and will handle endpoints another way, Google Business Standard is a clean, inexpensive platform. Either way, the controls only help if they’re turned on — see our small business cybersecurity checklist.

Admin complexity and what it means for support

Google’s admin console is simpler to learn and harder to get badly wrong. Settings apply to organizational units, the vocabulary is plain, and a non-specialist can add a user and set sharing rules without help.

Microsoft’s administration is more capable and more sprawling. Depending on the task you may be in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, the Exchange admin centre, the SharePoint admin centre, the Entra admin centre, Intune or Purview. That flexibility is why Microsoft handles complicated requirements well; it’s also why misconfiguration is more common, and why small businesses on Microsoft more often need a provider on retainer.

Factor that into the comparison honestly. If nobody on staff wants to own this, the support cost is part of the platform cost — our managed IT services cost guide covers what that looks like in Greater Vancouver.

Choose Google if… choose Microsoft if…

Choose Google Workspace if

• your team already works in a browser and on phones more than in installed applications;
• your documents are simple, and real-time co-editing matters more than formatting fidelity;
• you want the smallest possible admin burden and the shortest learning curve;
• you’re a newer business with no Windows servers, domain or legacy software to accommodate; or
• Gmail is the tool your staff would choose for themselves.

Choose Microsoft 365 if

• anyone builds or receives serious Excel work, or uses Access, Visio or Project;
• you want managed Windows laptops, device compliance and endpoint protection in one licence;
• you exchange formatted documents with lawyers, accountants, insurers or government constantly;
• you have line-of-business software that expects Microsoft accounts or Exchange; or
• a client or insurer is asking for controls that Business Premium provides out of the box.

Switching cost and lock-in

Neither vendor holds your data hostage. Both provide export and migration tooling — Google includes its Workspace Migrate tool from Business Standard up, and Microsoft supports standard mailbox migrations into Exchange Online. Mail, contacts, calendars and files all move.

The cost is in everything attached to the platform rather than the data itself:

• Retraining. Every person loses some productive time. This is usually the largest real cost and the one nobody budgets for.
• Links and shortcuts. Document links inside old emails, intranet pages and signatures break.
• Integrations. Booking systems, CRMs, accounting packages and scan-to-email devices all need reconfiguring, and some will need vendor involvement.
• Shared structures. Distribution lists, shared mailboxes, shared calendars and permission structures don’t map one to one and have to be rebuilt deliberately.
• Overlap. You’ll usually pay for both platforms during the cutover month.

If you’re moving to Microsoft, our Microsoft 365 migration checklist covers the sequence and the things that commonly go wrong. The honest summary is that switching is worth doing when the platform is genuinely wrong for the work, and rarely worth doing to save a dollar a user.

What mixed environments cost in practice

Plenty of businesses end up running both: Google for email and Drive, plus Microsoft licences because someone needs real Excel. It works, but count the cost before you drift into it.

Microsoft 365 Apps for business — the desktop apps without business email or Teams — is CAD $14.20 per user per month paid yearly. Added to Google Workspace Business Standard at $18.40, that’s $32.60 per user per month for the people who need both, against $19.00 for Microsoft 365 Business Standard on its own, which includes the desktop apps and business email together.

There are non-licence costs too. Two identity systems means two places to create and disable accounts, which is exactly where offboarding mistakes happen. Two file stores means staff guessing where a document lives. And on Mac, the Outlook bridge isn’t available: Google states its Outlook sync tool isn’t supported on macOS, because Outlook for Mac doesn’t support the interface it needs.

A mixed setup is reasonable when a small group has a genuine, specific need — a bookkeeper who lives in Excel, a designer on a Mac. It stops being reasonable when it’s most of the company, at which point you’re paying twice for one platform’s worth of capability.

YVR Technology plans, migrates and supports both platforms for businesses across Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. See our cloud services and managed IT services, or get in touch to talk it through.