Google Workspace: An Honest Review for 2025

Are you seeking a comprehensive software solution for your collaboration and communication needs? Google Workspace is a popular cloud productivity suite that businesses and teams can use for effective collaboration and real-time communication.

With many powerful apps for solopreneurs, businesses, schools, and nonprofits, the option of a branded email address makes your brand appear more professional and trustworthy.

This article takes you through everything about Google Workspace to help you decide whether it is the right solution.

Let’s get started.

What We Think of Google Workspace

Google Workspace is an all-in-one productivity suite that provides users with email, documents, file storage, calendars, chat, and messaging tools.

With access to applications in the Google ecosystem in one suite, you can easily access content, collaborate, and communicate from any location, device, and time. Instead of using tons of productivity tools, save time and effort with Google Workspace for better results.

What is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace is a comprehensive suite of productivity and collaboration tools, software, and products developed by Google and loved by more than 3 billion users.

Initially released in February 2006 as “Gmail for Your Domain,” Google Workspace has grown from a set of apps for organizations to a more comprehensive solution including AI capabilities.

This platform enjoys many positive reviews from reputable review sites like Gartner (4.6/5), G2 (4.6/5), Software Advice (4.7/5) and TrustRadius (9.1/10).

Google Workspace Features

Google Workspace offers a variety of productivity and collaboration tools that lead to improvement in team collaboration and communication.

Here is a detailed breakdown of Google Workspace’s features.

1. Collaboration

Collaboration is one of the greatest strengths of Google Workspace. The collaboration feature gives you access to remarkable document-sharing capabilities across Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a web-based word-processing tool for creating and editing documents. The software application works in your browser, making accessing and sharing documents from any location and device easy.

Although you require an internet connection to use Google Docs, if you use the Chrome browser, you can use the offline mode.

This productivity tool offers simple and real-time sharing and collaboration features. You can share your document with other people, track changes with detailed version history, undo edits, add comments, and use the built-in live chat.

Multiple people can collaborate on the same document simultaneously. With Google Docs' auto-saving feature, you don’t have to worry about losing valuable information typed in your document due to not manually saving your changes.

Google Slides

Google Slides is a web-based presentation tool that allows users to create and present online presentations with easy sharing and real-time editing features.

Users can create beautiful presentations and slideshows with animations and multimedia content like images, videos, charts, GIFs, diagrams, and stickers.

The real-time collaboration feature allows you to add comments, assign action items, and set unique permissions for your shared document.

Presenting your ideas and stories is easy with Google Slides thanks to the easy-to-use presenter view and live captions. You can invite participants to join your presentation directly from Slides with Google Meet video calls.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a cloud-based spreadsheet software that lets users create and collaborate on online spreadsheets in real time from any device.

Users can share, add comments and suggestions, see changes in real-time, and access revision history directly in the browser.

Assistive features like Smart Fill and formula suggestions help you analyze and get insights faster for your data sets. Over 400 formulas are available for use when adding data to spreadsheets.

Google Sheets supports editing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets online without converting them to a compatible version. This spreadsheet tool is compatible with Excel, CSV, and plain text documents.

2. Storage

Google stands out for its generous cloud storage space. Drive stands out as one of Google’s most widely-used products. Personal users get 15 GB worth of cloud storage space.

Now imagine the amount of space you will get on Google Workspace. The cheapest plan gives you access to 30GB while the highest plan offers 5 TB pooled storage space per user.

Google Drive is a secure cloud storage service for uploading and storing your files, documents, music, videos, and photos. You can store up to 100 different file types including your web backups.

Encrypt and secure your files with Drive’s built-in protections against malware, spam, and ransomware. This cloud storage tool scans your files and those shared with you, helping you detect and eliminate any malware, ransomware, or spam.

Users can set the file permission to private, or public, or restrict access to specific individuals or groups. You can control what people do with your shared documents including deciding if you want to grant permission to view, edit, comment, and download.

Navigating through your Google Drive to find specific files is seamless thanks to Google’s powerful search and AI technology. Apart from getting search result predictions as you type, you get relevant results that best match your search term.

Google Drive integrates with the tools you use like Adobe, Slack, DocuSign, Atlassian, Salesforce, and Autodesk.

3. Meetings

Google Workspace provides users with powerful communication tools that foster collaboration and productivity like Google Chat, Google Meet, and Google Calendar.

Need a messaging, video conferencing, or scheduling tool? You will find your ideal pick on Google Workspace.

Google Chat

Google Chat is a business chat tool that sends and receives messages between different parties for real-time collaboration.

Use this tool to chat with a colleague, employee, client, friend, or family member. However, you can only chat with people with a Google Account or Gmail email address.

This communication tool lets you create spaces for different topics or projects, supporting up to 500 thousand members per space. You can create a space for making announcements.

The smart compose and reply feature helps you automatically generate responses to messages for faster communication.

Have lots of unread conversations in your spaces? Google Chat helps you automatically summarize your unread information, helping you save time from manually scrolling through the messages.

The best part about Google Chat is how easily you can start an audio or video call within the tool without switching applications.

Google Meet

Google Meet is a video conferencing tool that lets you stay connected and collaborate with anyone, irrespective of location. Businesses use this video conferencing tool to communicate and collaborate with teams and clients across different geographical locations.

This video conferencing service lets you schedule your video calls in advance and send notifications to participants.

Provide a professional video experience with Google Meet’s live captions, studio lighting, and noise cancellation features. Enjoy up to 4K video quality for a clear and productive online collaboration.

Google Meet supports group calls for up to 24 hours. Depending on your subscription, you can access more advanced features like recording, saving, transcribing meetings, and inviting up to 1,000 participants.

You can use interactive polls, breakout rooms, Q&A sessions, and built-in chats for stronger collaboration during an ongoing video call session.

With the live sharing feature, you can use Google Meet to share and present documents, slides, and sheets in real-time with other participants. Another standout feature is the YouTube sharing option which allows you to watch videos from the platform with others.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a planning and scheduling online application that helps you track and organize your activities. This calendar tool plans your activities and with the push notification feature, you avoid missing out on important meetings and events.

Easily add, track, organize, and manage your tasks with Google Calendar. You can set due dates and mark tasks as complete to help you keep track of your done and undone tasks.

The shared calendar feature helps you easily schedule meeting times that are perfect for your team. You get an overview of team members’ and clients’ scheduling to set workable meeting schedules for all parties.

There is the option to layer multiple calendars in a single view and create specific calendars accessible only to your workmates or employees. This calendar app lets you add your working hours and location so that clients and colleagues can find the best time to schedule a meeting.

Business owners and freelancers can share their availability via a booking page to stay on top of their scheduling. Take control over your appointments by choosing how many you can handle per day, available hours, and buffer time between them.

Google Calendar reduces how you manually add events to your calendar. When you get an email about an event, flight, or meeting, or accept bookings, the smart feature automatically adds it to your schedule.

The time insights feature analyzes how you spend your time like how long you spend on certain activities like meetings. This feature supports and suggests focus time that automatically mutes notifications and delines bookings and meetings during the period.

Google Calendar supports importing external calendars from popular scheduling platforms like Microsoft Outlook and iCal.

4. Business Email

Gmail is the crown prince of Google Workspace’s amazing array of apps, with millions of users daily. This smart, secure, and easy-to-use email service integrates with virtually every Google application, including Google Meet and Google Chat.

Unlike the free Gmail account, you have the option of using your own business address. Having your emails without the gmail.com tag makes it more professional and great for your personal brand.

You can add multiple users with their own professional emails (up to 30 email aliases per user), including creating group mailing lists such as contact@founderjar.com.

Control and manage your Google account easily through the Workspace Admin console. The tasks you can carry out directly from the console include adding new members, adjusting account settings, and increasing your mail’s storage space.

Gmail offers access to Google’s most advanced phishing protections, blocking 99.9% of spam, malware, and dangerous links from reaching your inbox.

This reliable email provider is great for email marketing, boosting high deliverability rates, and ensuring prompt delivery into recipients’ inboxes and not the dreaded spam folder.

The confidential mode gives you more control over the emails you send. You can set expiration dates for your emails, and remove certain options from your email like copy, forward, print, and download.

Enjoy powerful features like Smart Compose that automatically generates suggestions as you type to help you write your emails faster. You can add your unique email signatures to your emails to boost your brand’s recognition.

Gmail lets you send email marketing campaigns directly from your dashboard through integrations with third-party tools like Gumbamail.

5. Gemini

Google is one of the top players in developing artificial intelligence. Users of Google Workspace get access to Google’s best AI models, Gemini Advanced, as an add-on package to help you boost your creativity and productivity.

Gemini is a powerful tool for experimenting with your daily tasks. You can write emails, generate content for our document, analyze data, plan your day, develop ideas for your business and marketing campaigns, and design presentations.

Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, you can chat with Gemini on anything and expect immediate answers within seconds. This AI tool is available for use in Google’s range of apps (Docs, Gmail, and Sheets) when you purchase it as an add-on to your Google Workspace package.

You can edit and run Python code directly in Gemini Advanced, upload spreadsheets for data cleaning and insights, and upload documents to generate summaries and feedback.

6. eSignature

Google Workspace comes with an eSignature feature that helps you accelerate your workflows. You can send signed documents and signature requests with eSignature across Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive apps.

Do you want to easily manage customer contracts, vendor agreements, stakeholder sign-off, and other signature-requiring documents? You can send, sign, reject, and store documents without leaving Google Workspace.

Streamline your contract management workflows by managing signers, signature requests, pending signatures, and completed contracts.

Google Workspace helps you create and manage contract templates for initiating multiple eSignature requests.

7. Security

Security and safety are two of users’ biggest concerns when deciding which software to use. Google, as one of the biggest tech companies globally, has a robust security infrastructure that keeps your information safe and secure around the clock.

Users enjoy cloud security and data protection services with Google Workspace that meet the industry’s security, compliance, safety, and privacy standards.

You enjoy a state-of-the-art security infrastructure undergoing constant improvement to combat modern threats. The cloud-only security architecture means you don’t have to download updates or patches, Google automatically handles them.

Every application available on Google Workspace uses industry-graded security solutions. For example, Gmail has cutting-edge AI security technology that eliminates 99.9% of spam, malware, and phishing attempts.

Google Workspace stores emails and files on its secure cloud servers for better protection and reduced risk of data loss compared to end-user devices.

Users can enhance the protection of their Google Workspace accounts by setting up 2-step verification, passkeys, and security keys.

Google Workspace Pricing

Google Workspace offers three main pricing plans, with the fourth plan being a custom plan for enterprises. The plans come with a custom and secure business email feature.

Here are Google Workspace’s four pricing plans:

• Business Starter Plan is ideal for sole entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners who want access to 100-participant video meetings and 30 GB pooled storage per user.
• Business Standard Plan is great for businesses of all sizes who want access to enhanced meeting features (150-participant video meetings + recording) and extra storage (2 TB pooled storage per user).
• Business Plus Plan is best for large businesses that handle sensitive or confidential information and offers more advanced archiving capabilities and advanced admin controls.
• Enterprise Plan is excellent for large enterprises that need access to advanced security management, 1,000-participant video meetings, and enhanced support.

Google Workspace offers Gemini as an add-on, sold separately from its plans. Gemini for Google Workspace has two pricing plans: Gemini Business ($24/month) and Gemini Enterprise ($36/month).

Google Voice is an easy-to-use business phone solution for organizations, available on Workspace as an add-on. Voice offers three pricing plans: Starter ($10/month), Standard ($20/month), and Premier ($30/month).

AppSheet is a Google application that helps users build powerful applications and automation without codes. This application is not available as part of your regular Google Workspace subscription. You have to purchase it as an add-on to your existing subscription plan.

You save up to 30% on subscription fees on any plan when you opt for an annual payment instead of a monthly one. Google Workspace offers a 14-day free trial on all its plans except the Enterprise plan.

Ease of Use

Thanks to its clean and intuitive user interface, Google Workspace is easy to use, making it user-friendly for beginners with no coding or design experience.

Reputable online review sites like Software Advice give Google Workspace a score of 4.5/5 stars for its ease of use.

Opening a Google Workspace account is easy. Except you want to start with the Enterprise plan, each Google Workspace plan comes with a 14-day free trial to help you get started.

Simply type in your business name, select your number of employees, and region, and contact info. You can choose whether you want to use a gmail.com or your-company.com address to set up Google Workspace.

Google Workspace offers collaboration features that allow you to access your favorite Google apps from your dashboard without having to leave the application. You can send messages, share documents, and start meetings from your Google Workspace account.

Customer Support

Google Workspace’s customer support provides you access to helpful online resources you can access around the clock. You have access to Google Workspace’s online learning center, blog, and tips library where you will find answers to your inquiries.

Live and on-demand webinars are another helpful support tool that Google provides to help users make the most of its Workspace product.

All Google Workspace plans come with professional one-on-one support that varies depending on the subscription plan. Users can create and submit a ticket and wait a few hours for a response.

However, the Enterprise plan comes with enhanced support and a response time of under an hour.

Google Workspace Pros and Cons

Below is a list of Google Workspace’s pros and cons that help you decide whether you want to use this software application or not.

Pros

• Easy to Use: Google Workspace’s products are incredibly user-friendly and easy to adapt to and use. The Admin Console, your account’s dashboard, is straightforward to navigate and intuitive to use. Users can easily switch between emails, documents, chat, and calendars, saving time and effort.
• Generous Cloud Storage: Compared to other productivity suites, Google Workspace offers better cloud storage. The least plan comes with 30 GB while the most expensive plan comes with a customized storage package.
• Real-Time Document Collaboration: The strongest thing about Google’s office productivity tool is how it facilitates real-time collaboration among teams. Multiple people can work on a document without any confusion or errors.
• Extensive Third-Party Integrations: Google Workspace integrates with popular tools like Zoom, Salesforce Connector, Miro, Zapier, Lucidspark, Mailmeteor, Cisco Webex, LumApps, and Dailpad,
• Great Range of Apps: This office productivity suite offers you access to Google’s applications like Gmail, Meet, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Keep, and Apps Script.
• Reduced Spams: Gmail has a cutting-edge and inbuilt spam filter technology that eliminates 99.9% of spam, malware, and phishing attempts.
• Fantastic Value for Money: Google Workspace offers generous cloud storage and a wide range of applications at a cheaper price compared to other productivity office suites.

Cons

• Lacks Desktop App Version: Google Workspace is a cloud-based online application that works exclusively on your browser. There is no app version for Google Workspace.
• Requires Internet Connection: Since all the apps are online-only with the exception of a few offline capabilities like editing documents and syncing changes, you need a stable internet connection to access its collaboration features.

FAQ

Bottomline: Is Google Workspace Worth It?

Google Workspace is worth it for any business that wants to balance cost, functionality, and usability. The price is competitive when you consider the great range of apps and generous storage space you get.

Consider this platform if your team prefers to work on the cloud instead of using local storage and desktop solutions.

Different user grades like small-to-medium businesses, solopreneurs or freelancers, schools and educational institutions, and nonprofits will find Google Workspace suitable for their collaboration and productivity needs.

Google Workspace is a great solution for professional or business users who want an email address on their own domain and greater control over user access, sharing settings, and security configurations.

Explore Further

• Best Productivity Tools
• Best Team Collaboration Software
• Best Team Communication Tools
• How to Use Pomodoro Technique
• Crucial Strategies to Boost Cross-Team Collaboration
• Best Productivity Quotes

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