Google has changed a few main things with their plans. Features that were previously available in their Business tier licensing have been made Enterprise exclusive or as an added cost such as:
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Unlimited Storage
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Data Regions
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Host your data in specific regions for compliance reasons
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Google Vault
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Retention and Ediscovery
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If you were on the Business tier you would pay ($12) per user per month. With this change you are forced to get Business Plus ($18) or Enterprise ($20) for the same features
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Previously organizations with more than 300 users could purchase Business licensing and are now being forced to purchase Enterprise plan, essentially going from $12 to ($20) per user per month for the cheapest plan
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Enterprise licensing is being split into two different ones
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The current Enterprise plan at $25, is being replaced with Enterprise for $20, with less features than the previous one
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Enterprise Plus for $30 which is the same features as the previous Enterprise plan, for $5 more per month.
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Overall, Google is normalizing pricing to be more aligned with Microsoft’s pricing, but it’s harder to justify a $30 Enterprise license against an Office 365 E5 ($35) license or even an E3 ($20) or a Microsoft 365 E3 ($32) and since Microsoft provides so much more in their SKU’s.
In the small business plans it’s the same story. If organizations are going to be paying that much, you might as well go to Office 365, whereas before Google was consistently cheaper. Google may still have a few advantages (mostly in the calling space), but just about everything else, Microsoft 365 /Azure comes out ahead, especially if you are even remotely serious about security or compliance.
These changes do not affect the academic space for now though they mentioned they would be migrated into the Workspace branding sometime in 2021.
If these changes impacted your business and you're considering Microsoft 365, learn more about our migration services here.
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