Outlook vs Gmail: Which Email Platform is the Best for Your Budget plan?
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are the dominant productivity suites worldwide of software as a service (SaaS), both offering a wide variety of applications that contemporary companies require.
While the functions of a number of these applications are similar, Microsoft and Google's exclusive offerings each have their own peculiarities, for much better or worse.
In this post, we will take a look at e-mail through Microsoft Outlook and Google's Gmail for Business. Individually, the pair are the leading e-mail applications in business by market share and are pillars of M365 and Workspace, respectively.
Email might appear basic on the surface area, however the distinctions between Outlook and Gmail reveal that things are more complicated than sending and receiving mail.
Pricing
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are priced each month, per user, and have various tiers of prices. As it pertains to the mail accounts themselves, the distinction in tiers typically just affects storage area.
Using Microsoft's Business Basic plan ($ 5/month/user when billed each year), each user gets 50 GB of email storage area, which is independent of the extra 1 TB of cloud storage in OneDrive.
Remember, the most basic level of M365 does not consist of any of Microsoft's desktop applications, including Outlook. Users purchasing this strategy will need to be happy with the Outlook web app.
Meanwhile, Google's Business Basic strategy ($ 6), offers simply 30 GB of storage in general, combining e-mail storage and drive storage together.
That's right, 60% of the mail box storage attended to Microsoft represent 100% of your overall storage on Google's cheapest strategy.
That discrepancy is likely an effort by Google to upsell users to their premium strategies, with their Standard plan ($ 12) leaping to 2 TB of drive storage, and the Plus strategy ($ 18) going to 5 TB.
Microsoft provides 2-5 TB of drive storage with their business offerings, however mail box storage can essentially be unlimited through unlimited archiving beginning with the E3 plan ($ 32).
A grid showing the costs and storage capabilities of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
Scoring round 1 here, let's call it a draw. At the cheapest level, the two platforms are comparable, and Gmail's web app might be worth the extra dollar monthly.
As you move up strategies, the Outlook desktop app might swing your decision, as we will go over later. Bear in mind, Microsoft's pricing is based upon a yearly dedication, while Google does not use yearly discount rates since this post.
This post is merely covering the 2 suites through the scope of their email applications, and these rates cover many other functions. If price is your main element, think about each suite in overall prior to making a decision.
Relieve of Use
The biggest difference in between the two suites total is Microsoft's desktop apps, which are far more feature-packed relative to Google's web apps.
While the functions are not as different between the email applications, the full Gmail experience is just available through a web internet browser.
With Outlook's desktop app, users get the complete Exchange server experience, with the included advantage of being able to read and draft emails while offline.
For example, if you are on an aircraft, responding to e-mails and dealing with files you plan to send later might be the very best usage of your time.
With Outlook, you do not require to wait on the web to continue working, just to deliver your work.
Gmail's interface can't be reached without web connectivity unless you first leap through some hoops.
At the time of this writing, you will require to use Google's Chrome web browser, have Gmail bookmarked, and sync your e-mail through their offline feature, the reliability of which has actually been debatable over the years.
Both have mobile applications, so that problem can be worked around, however responding to a bunch of work e-mails on a mobile phone can be a battle.
The full suite of Microsoft Office desktop applications will be a much larger advantage for Microsoft in comparing other apps, but we'll still provide Outlook a small, but considerable, benefit over Gmail due to ease of use.
Searchability
As you would expect, the business understood for its online search engine permits you to find e-mails you require more reliably.
Gmail's advantage begins with its categorization utilizing labels. Several labels can be applied to each e-mail or thread, and subcategories can be created within labels to produce more of a filing system.
If multiple labels have been used to a single e-mail or term, those messages will appear under each label. Moreover, labels permit you to auto-filter inbound emails based upon hand-chosen criteria.
In Outlook, sorting is restricted to folders, forcing users to categorize each email/thread into a particular location.
When it comes to the actual search function, both permit users to search using keywords, in addition to folders/labels, senders, and date received.
Gmail not just has much deeper advanced-search functions, by all accounts, but it is also flat-out more precise.
This is the first strong win for Gmail, as Outlook's searchability and classification are not as robust.
Security
Microsoft is the leader in this category, and it is not particularly close. Their remarkable standing is not simply large, however it appears on 2 various fronts.
Google has actually come under fire just recently concerning its handling of individual data, with reports that the business scans user e-mails. More significantly, Google apparently tracks your location, your activity, and even your voice for the function of targeted ads.
On the other hand, Microsoft is much more transparent about their personal privacy policy and the data they collect.
If your service transfers sensitive or personal data routinely, it probably goes without saying that you would feel more comfy using Microsoft and Outlook. Even if you aren't sending and receiving personal information, it would take a lot of other advantages to exceed such obvious privacy concerns.
For managers, Outlook offers a lot more internal security in the form of authorizations. While Outlook's folder organization does not present the exact same searchability as Gmail's labels, it does offer users the ability to permit and prohibit certain actions within folders.
Outlook offers users 10 varying functions to choose from, along with a customized role where the manager can hand-select particular actions one by one.
These actions include everything from reading, editing, deleting, and sending out messages to seeing your calendar's specific meetings or leisure time.
Functionally, this enables managers to hand over jobs to their subordinates without providing full-blown access to more important information. It also stops unhappy employees from possibly taking or erasing info deemed sensitive.
You can hand over account access to others in Gmail, which is basically like handing over the secrets to your vehicle. You can't designate levels of access, hide private messages, or even see messages sent out by your delegate in your place.
Among, if not the most essential category is a runaway win for Outlook. With detailed options and a privacy policy that is much more transparent, Microsoft 365's email platform stands alone.
Calendar
Technically, Google Calendar is not a part of Gmail, though all it takes to sync the 2 is a Workspace account and a few clicks through Gmail's menu.
For the sake of taking a more comprehensive take a look at Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, we'll compare Outlook's calendar to Google Calendar here.
Gmail users regreted the platform's combination with other businesses or customers who used Outlook.
Some complaints included that updates to standing meetings made from Outlook accounts would not upgrade in Google Calendar, and the inability to push updated info to individuals.
Furthermore, Google Calendar will immediately try to turn all of your video conferences into a Google Meet call. Its default setting will immediately publish a Google Meet link into your calendar entry, and that function needs to be disabled by an administrator.
Otherwise, both platforms have added integrations with the other, and by all accounts, they work flawlessly. For all intents and purposes, this function is a draw.
Verdict
Like a lot of things, this choice mostly managed it support comes down to personal choice. Much of the differences in between Outlook and Gmail have actually benefits based on how your company operates, as well as your budget.
Ultimately, the openness and security of Outlook make it the stronger offering. If you find yourself sorting through countless emails a day, nevertheless, Gmail might be the right alternative for you.