Every few weeks someone asks us: "we're moving off desktop Office to the cloud — should we go Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?". In practice the answer rarely depends on a feature checklist. Much more often it depends on what's already happening inside the company — and what you don't want to break.
In 2026 both suites do more or less the same things. Email, calendar, cloud drive, document editing, video calls, team chat, forms, basic MFA, simple admin. The "feature gap" is marginal for 90% of SMEs today. The real difference lies somewhere else: in your team's habits, in the hardware you already own, and in how you want to work with documents two years from now.
This piece is practical. You won't find "57 reasons why X is better". You'll find four questions you need to answer honestly — and the consequences of each answer.
The four questions that actually decide it
Before you start comparing price lists, answer these four:
- Whose file formats are circulating in your industry? If clients, your accountant and government offices expect .docx, .xlsx, .pptx files — you live in a Microsoft world. Google can open and save them, but something will drift every time (especially in spreadsheets with macros).
- What do your salespeople / accountants / production team buy as "their" tool? Polish ERPs (Comarch Optima, enova365, Symfonia, Subiekt) and most vertical tools integrate with Microsoft (Outlook, Excel, AD/Entra ID). They integrate with Google Workspace weakly, or not at all.
- What hardware do your people use? A Windows fleet plus a few MacBooks in marketing is Microsoft's native turf. A mix of MacBooks, Chromebooks and personal laptops touching company email — Google Workspace is more flexible there and cheaper to administer.
- How does the team really work with documents? If people exchange attachments by email and edit locally in Excel — pick Microsoft. If they already live in shared spreadsheets in the cloud (several people editing at the same moment) — Google Workspace is home for them.
These four questions give a clear answer in 80% of cases. The remaining 20% are companies stuck in the middle — and there the decision usually falls on admin cost and what your IT provider already knows.
When Microsoft 365 is the natural choice
For a Polish SME, Microsoft 365 usually wins when:
- you run an ERP that integrates with Outlook (mail registration, invoice sending, reports to Excel),
- you use Excel as a work tool, not just for simple lists (pivots, Power Query, a few macros),
- the team is mostly on Windows laptops,
- you have or plan Teams as the main communication and video tool,
- you want to manage devices from one console (Intune) together with security policies.
A concrete example from our practice. A 28-person engineering design office (construction sector) from Warsaw, using AutoCAD + enova365 + lots of email attachments with the general contractor. They had been on Google Workspace earlier "because it was cheaper", but it ended in manually converting .xlsx → Sheets → .xlsx more than a dozen times a day. After moving to Microsoft 365 Business Standard (10.50 EUR net / user / month in 2026) they saved — by the team's own estimate — about 6 hours a week on file friction alone. The migration took us three weeks, including one weekend to move email.
The plan we usually pick for SMEs: Business Standard (mail, Teams, desktop Office, OneDrive 1 TB) or Business Premium (the same + Intune + Defender + Azure AD P1) if you want device control and stronger security. Business Basic (web only) almost never works in Polish reality — people want desktop Office anyway.
When Google Workspace is the natural choice
Google Workspace wins when:
- the company is young, cloud-native from day one — no long Office file legacy,
- the team really works in parallel on documents (several people in the same sheet at once),
- you have lots of mobile users, mixed hardware (Mac, ChromeOS, Android),
- you don't need deep integration with Polish ERPs and AD,
- you want a simple, "low-admin" console — no Active Directory, no GPO.
A concrete example. A 15-person marketing agency from Kraków, hardware: 12 MacBooks + 3 iMacs. They run Google Workspace Business Standard (12 USD net / user / month in 2026), practically all work happens in Google Docs and Sheets, clients get links rather than attachments. In 2024 they tried switching to Microsoft 365 — they held out four months and came back. Not because Microsoft was "bad". Because their process had been built from the start around links, comments and simultaneous editing.
The plan that usually fits: Business Starter (30 GB / user) for teams up to 10 people without heavy files, Business Standard (2 TB / user) for most companies, Business Plus (5 TB + Vault + stronger security) if you have legal retention requirements.
The traps we keep seeing in SMEs
Whichever you pick, a few things regularly catch companies out after rollout:
- "Backup is included" — false. Neither Microsoft nor Google is responsible for recovering data you deleted yourselves. The recycle bin keeps things 30 days (M365) or 30 days (Google), then they're gone. External backup (Veeam, Synology Active Backup, AvePoint, Spanning) is a separate cost — 3 to 5 EUR / user / month. It's not a luxury, it's mandatory.
- "We'll migrate mail one weekend" — false. Realistically plan 2–4 calendar weeks, with the MX switch over a weekend. Add time to tidy up distribution lists and aliases (there are always more than anyone remembers).
- "Licenses for everyone" — false. A warehouse picker with a barcode scanner, a driver, a receptionist — an F1/F3 plan (Microsoft) or a "frontline" license (Google) at 2–4 EUR / month is often enough. Paying 12 EUR for someone who logs in twice a week is wasted money.
- DNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC. Both suites need them configured correctly, otherwise your invoices start landing in spam at your customers'. It's not optional, it's basic hygiene.
- MFA for everyone, not just management. Attackers don't go for the CEO — they go for whoever has the weakest password. Turn MFA on for 100% of accounts at rollout, not "sometime later".
- Shadow IT after migration. Moving to a cloud suite creates the temptation of "let's also add Notion, also Slack, also Dropbox for clients". You'll end up with three drives, two messengers and four places where people keep "the important files". Pick one and stick with it for the first year.
The decision in one sentence
If you live in a world of .docx, .xlsx and Polish ERPs — take Microsoft 365. If you live in a world of links, cloud collaboration and Apple hardware — take Google Workspace. If you're in between — pick what your IT provider already knows, because the cost gap is much smaller than the cost of bad support.
What you really shouldn't do: keep both suites running in parallel "during the transition" for longer than 60 days. Every extra week of double licensing and double administration is wasted money — and a guarantee that some team will stay in the "old world" forever.
What next
The office suite is a 3–5 year decision. You make it once, and a bad one costs you every day after in small frustrations. Before you sign, it's worth talking to someone who has run this migration in a dozen companies and knows where the hidden costs are.
We can spend 30 minutes walking through your four questions and telling you which suite fits your context — no sales pitch, no commission from either side.
Choosing between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace isn't a decision about features. It's a decision about how your company wants to work with documents for the next five years.