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G Suite review
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An elegant collection of products for online collaboration within your business.
G Suite includes everything that you can already get from Google for free, like Gmail, Docs, Drive and Slides — plus extra services designed specifically with businesses in mind. Before signing up, you’ll want to ensure these perks make the monthly rate worth it.
Quick take
- Choose this software if you prioritise collaborating seamlessly — and have a reliable Internet connection.
- Consider something else if you prefer the flexibility of working offline.
Details
| Features | Direct messaging, Video, Project management, Calendar |
|---|---|
| Price starts at | Free trial, and paid plans start at $6/month |
| App Integration | Yes |
| Tech Support | Phone, Email, Live chat |
| Monthly Plan | $6 |
G Suite’s response to coronavirus
G Suite announced on March 6th that it’s giving all G Suite and G Suite Education customers advanced access to Hangouts Meet video-conferencing until July 1, 2020. All customers get Enterprise-level capabilities, including:
- Up to 250 people a call
- Live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers at a time
- The ability to record and save meetings in Drive
What's in this review?
How does G Suite work?
G Suite is a collection of products developed to help businesses create, organise and share documents, presentations, spreadsheets and more. It’s based in the cloud, so there’s no software to download.
When your business joins G Suite, your email address uses your company name as the domain — for example, janedoe@finder.com. To access the products, log in using your email and a password.
How is G Suite different from Google’s free apps?
G Suite comes with extra business-specific services, including:
- Custom business email (@yourcompany)
- 24/7 phone and email support
- Twice as much storage in Gmail and Drive
- 99.9% guaranteed email uptime
- The ability to interoperate with Microsoft Outlook
- Additional security:
- Two-step authentication
- Single sign-on
- Administrative control over user accounts
G Suite’s features
All membership tiers of G Suite include 24/7 support and admin security, along with the following controls:
- Gmail
- Calendar
- Drive
- Hangouts Chat
- Hangouts Meet
- Docs
- Sheets
- Slides
- Forms
- Sites
- Keep
- Currents
- Apps Script
Here’s how the features differ depending on the membership you choose:
| Basic | Business | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost monthly | $8.40 a user | $16.80 a user | $34 a user |
| Applications |
|
| All features of Business, plus:
|
| Security and management |
| All features of Basic, plus:
| All features of Business, plus:
|
Good to know: If you purchase a domain for your business through Google while setting up your G Suite account, this costs an additional $18 a year.
Who is G Suite’s major competitor?
Microsoft 365 is probably G Suite’s largest competitor. Its features like documents, email and video chat are comparable, but Microsoft 365 costs a bit less.
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Microsoft 365 Apps | Microsoft 365 Business Standard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost monthly | $6.90 a user | $12.00 a user | $17.20 a user |
How do I sign up for G Suite?
Kick start your G Suite membership with a 14-day free trial to make sure that it suits your company’s needs. Here’s how to sign up:
- Click Get Started.
- Indicate your business name, number of employees and the country where your business is located and click Continue.
- Enter your contact info and click Continue.
- Indicate whether or not your business already has a domain. If not, you’ll be prompted to create one.
- Enter your business address and click Continue.
- Create a username and password, check a box to prove you’re not a robot and click Agree and Continue.
- Review your payment plan and click Next.
- Input a payment method and click Next to complete the process.
Cancel at any time within the first 14 days. After that, it’ll automatically charge you monthly.
Pros and cons
It’s certainly handy that you can test G Suite for 14 days without paying, thanks to the free trial. If you’re not familiar with Google’s apps, you could also create a free personal account to test for as long as you’d like, to get a feel for the user interface.
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides in particular are sleek, intuitive and user-friendly. That said, you’ll want to make sure the extra G Suite perks make the cost worth it.
Before purchasing a G Suite subscription, weight the pros and cons, including:
Pros
- Excellent for collaboration. Create and share documents, presentations and more for simultaneous editing and upkeep. Plus, specify exactly who has the right to view, edit and share your files.
- Cloud storage. Organise your files for all-company access. And you have the option to purchase extra storage if you need it.
Cons
- Offline editing. To utilise the offline editing feature, you have to have the forethought to download the files in advance. And you need a Chrome browser to do this.
- No desktop apps. The only way to access G Suite is through an Internet browser.
Customer reviews and complaints
Case study: Adrienne’s experience
Adrienne Fuller
Publisher
"G Suite is incredible for its Google Docs, helping our distributed team work together in a single document. Once writers pass articles to editorial, the team can work collaboratively, keep comments and questions on one page and respond quickly to solve problems.
One downside of G Suite is that the Google Docs folders are incredibly disorganised. Between My Drive and Shared With Me, it’s difficult to keep straight where important documents live, who has access and how to find them. It’s a pain to do this cleanup when we create hundreds of documents weekly.
Another downside is its cloud storage. I’ve found I’ve already run out of cloud storage — 30GB isn’t much when you’re storing videos or any other kind of high resolution imagery. Especially on a shared drive, this gets used up fast.
If G Suite offered more storage and better organised its shared folder, I could turn this love-hate relationship into pure love."
How do I contact G Suite support?
Get in touch with G Suite’s customer service team via phone, email or chat — though you’ll have to log in through an admin account, as the contact information isn’t available to the public.
Compare collaboration software
Bottom line
G Suite can be an excellent tool especially for small businesses that need a way to collaborate, organise files and get an official email domain. For larger companies, it could start getting pricey.
If G Suite isn’t quite what you’re looking for, browse other business software reviews to find a solution.
