Google’s Gmail service is one of the most widely-used email services. It holds the second-highest market share, behind the iPhone. Many of those iPhone users use Gmail as their service anyway.
Gmail is a great service but having a generic email address isn’t ideal for a lot of businesses. Google’s G Suite service solves that problem by providing more professional email service along with many other features built for business use.
How much is G Suite and what does it offer? Let’s take a look.
What is G Suite for Business?
You’re probably familiar with Microsoft’s Office suite with apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. That combination was the standard office suite in most businesses for years but Google has started to chip away at Microsoft’s market share with its G Suite package.
G Suite includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software but that’s only the beginning. One of the most powerful G Suite benefits is its email system.
G Suite lets you create email addresses like [email protected] for all your employees using the same interface they’re likely already familiar with from Gmail.
On top of the email and office applications in G Suite, it also includes Google Drive, Google’s cloud storage service for managing your files. Each of your employees gets their own storage but it’s all owned by your company. If an employee leaves the company, you can turn off access to their files and transfer them to someone else.
Some of the other features in G Suite include:
- Google Hangouts Chat and Meet instant messaging and meeting apps
- Google Keep (an online notebook like Evernote)
- Google Forms (create forms to collect information online)
- Google Sites (a website builder)
The Product Formerly Known as Google Apps
The core apps in G Suite include Google Docs (word processing), Google Sheets (spreadsheet), and Google Slides (presentations). These were originally known as Google Apps but were rebranded as G Suite several years ago.
These apps give you similar features to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. And while G Suite is getting more popular all the time, MS Office is still the most widely used. Fortunately, G Suite can open and save files in the MS Office formats so you can collaborate with anyone using those apps.
If you need to work with files from another office package like Apple’s iWork suite, you may need to convert those files into a compatible format to use them in G Suite.
For example, if you have a word processing document created in the Pages word processor on a Mac, you can convert from Pages to Word then open the Word document in Google Docs.
Storage Limits in Google Drive
G Suite offers several editions:
- Basic
- Business
- Enterprise
With the Basic plan, each user gets 30GB of cloud storage in Google Drive. The Business and Enterprise plans include 1TB of storage if you have 5 or fewer users and unlimited storage if you have more than 5 users in your company.
There’s an advantage to using Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides from your G Suite account though. Any files you create from within G Suite don’t count toward your storage limit. This can save you a lot of space compared to using files from an external app like MS Word or Excel.
G Suite’s Security Features
One of the biggest concerns about moving their documents to the cloud for most companies is whether it’s less secure than storing them locally. Google offers some of the strongest security of any cloud services company so you can rest assured that your data is safe.
G Suite is built on the Google Cloud Platform, which has a security-first mindset. Given that Google’s own business is completely online, they have a big stake in keeping their servers secure.
G Suite supports the latest encryption protocols, two-factor authentication (2FA), and you own all the data stored in your company’s account. The Business and Enterprise editions of G Suite include Google Vault, a backup system that archives everything in your account – files, email, chats, etc.
You can run audit reports on the data in Vault to track user activity and you can search the archives for your entire company. Vault also lets you set the data retention policies to determine how long your data will be stored. This is critical if you work in an industry that regulates how long data is kept such as healthcare or finance.
If you have employees using G Suite on mobile devices like Android smartphones or iPhones, its mobile management features are critical to the security of your data. Mobile devices are prone to theft or loss and if your business’ data is on them, that poses a serious risk.
G Suite lets you deactivate a device that’s connected to your account, wiping any sensitive information. If someone loses their phone or it gets stolen, your data will be safe from prying eyes.
Google’s Security and Compliance Whitepaper outlines G Suite’s security features in detail.
What Kind of Support Do You Get with G Suite?
Google’s service level guarantee (SLA) for G Suite offers 99.9% uptime. It’s typically higher than that but every online service will deal with downtime, even Google. Unlike some services, G Suite doesn’t have any regularly-scheduled downtime so you can get to your data anytime.
Google offers 24/7 support by phone, email, or online with all editions of G Suite. This is another big difference between G Suite and Google’s free consumer-grade services like Gmail. Those services don’t include any kind of official support through Google.
How Much Is G Suite?
After seeing all the great features and benefits of G Suite, you’re probably wondering “How much is G Suite?” That depends on the edition.
G Suite Basic is $6 per user per month. Business edition is $12 per user per month. And Enterprise edition is $25 per user per month.
All three editions get billed monthly and you can add or remove users as often as necessary. This is an easy process through your company’s Admin dashboard, where you can make changes to any of the users in your company.
If you’re looking for a powerful and secure way to manage your company’s email, file storage, and document creation, G Suite is one of the best options available.
And if you have existing documents that you need to move into G Suite, OffDrive.com can help. Check out our free online file conversion tools to convert between the most common file formats.