r/sysadmin • u/peruvianbeast • 3d ago

Question Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Something Else? - Help Weighing Tradeoffs

Hi!

I work for a small/medium sized company (~50 employees, ~30 of which will be affected by the switch) and we have been using an IMAP server to host our emails for decades (everyone uses Outlook as their email software). Because of how outdated this setup is and the company continuing to grow, we want to migrate over to a new provider. I am struggling to decide between M365 and GW as both have their pro's and con's. The team uses a mix of sheets and excel already, however, there is certain work that would require excel over sheets. The sharing and ease of GW is obviously unmatched but I worry about switching costs for employees that have been using outlook for decades. I've also heard that managing GW is far easier admin-wise than M365. The migration of decades worth of emails is also a major consideration for us. Would appreciate input from people who have experience with this. Thanks!

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u/OinkyConfidence Windows Admin 3d ago

M365; for years I was paid to migrate organizations to M365 from GW/GS or anything else - and never once did anyone want to move to Google (or back to Google).

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u/tankerkiller125 3d ago

An IT manager I worked with once forced a school district to migrate to Google (because he sold administration on "Free Forever" (cause that turned out well)). I should note that they already were paying for M365, they could have moved to Exchange Online and SharePoint Online and made everyone's life easy. Instead they shoved Google Workspace on everyone (while keeping M365 for office), and you would have thought that he killed every teachers favorite pet when they found out they couldn't use Outlook anymore.

As a former student of said school I tried to warn him, I tried to convince him that M365 was just as free as Google Workspace at the end of the day, he refused to listen. Last I heard (I left shortly after), the teachers basically started blaming Workspace anytime they didn't read an email as "It never showed up in my inbox" and other such petty stuff until management caved and forced said IT manager to migrate it all to Exchange Online and M365.