It's the question we get asked at almost every initial scoping call: should our business be on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace? After 50+ migrations in both directions over the last three years, here's our genuinely vendor-neutral take for Australian businesses in 2026.
The Short Answer
For roughly 85% of SE QLD businesses we work with, Microsoft 365 is the right answer. For the other 15%, Google Workspace is. The decision usually comes down to four factors: industry, line-of-business software, team culture, and price tier.
Where Microsoft 365 Wins Decisively
**Professional services that exchange documents externally.** Accounting firms, law firms, engineering consultancies, architecture practices — anywhere you're sending Word docs and Excel spreadsheets to clients who themselves use Office. Google's compatibility has improved but still loses fidelity on complex Word docs and pivot tables. If your output is documents, M365 wins.
**Industries with M365-native software.** Best Practice and MedicalDirector hook into M365 cleanly. Xero Practice Manager and BGL CAS 360 assume M365. Most ERP and CRM tools have M365-first integrations. Google support is usually a year or two behind.
**Businesses needing serious security and compliance.** Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($30/user/mo as of 2026) includes Intune device management, conditional access, sensitivity labels, DLP and the rest. Google Workspace's equivalents (Enterprise Plus, BeyondCorp) cost roughly twice as much per user.
**Australian SMBs of 10–250 staff.** This is M365's home turf. The ecosystem of Microsoft Partners (us included) is denser, the local talent pool that knows your tools is larger, and the partner-only pricing programs make M365 significantly cheaper than list price.
Where Google Workspace Wins
**Real-time collaborative document workflows.** Google Docs is still the best in the world for "5 of us editing this proposal at once." Microsoft has closed most of the gap with co-authoring in Word and Excel, but Google still feels frictionless.
**Education-adjacent businesses.** Schools, tutoring businesses, training organisations, edtech startups — Google Classroom is the centre of gravity, and Workspace integrates naturally.
**Marketing agencies and digital-native creative businesses.** A lot of younger creative talent grew up in Gmail and Docs. Cultural fit matters.
**Budget-constrained startups.** Google's Business Starter tier is cheaper than M365 Business Basic, and adequate if you don't need desktop Office apps.
The Hidden Costs (That Get Glossed Over)
**Microsoft 365**: requires more configuration to be safe by default. Out-of-the-box M365 has SharePoint sharing wide open, MFA optional, audit logging not turned on. A proper "secure baseline" project is part of the cost of an M365 environment.
**Google Workspace**: superficially simpler to set up, but power features (DLP, advanced audit, vault, eDiscovery) are gated behind enterprise tiers that are pricey per user. And third-party Australian software ecosystem support is patchier.
Migration Reality Check
We've done both Google → M365 and M365 → Google migrations. They're not symmetric in difficulty.
- **Google → M365**: Generally smoother, well-documented, lots of tooling, calendars and contacts migrate cleanly. Estimate ~$85–145 per user for a mailbox-heavy migration including data and groupware. - **M365 → Google**: Trickier. SharePoint structure doesn't map cleanly to Drive. Permissions get complicated. Plan for more communication and training time. Similar per-mailbox cost but with more change-management work.
Either way: don't try to DIY a 20+ user migration. The "saved" few thousand dollars routinely turns into a multi-month productivity drag and a couple of lost mailboxes.
What We Recommend
If you're a typical Greater Ipswich business with 5–60 staff, you're in professional services, healthcare, trades, retail or construction, and you don't already have a strong reason to be on Google — pick **Microsoft 365 Business Premium**, get it properly configured, and budget for a quarterly review.
If you're a creative agency, an education business, or a remote-first startup of digital natives — Google Workspace is the default.
We're certified in both ecosystems and we'll give you our honest opinion based on your actual environment, not whichever vendor is paying us more this quarter (neither is). [Book a free IT review](/book-review) and we'll walk you through it.