Is Google Workspace Worth It? 5 Benefits

Modern businesses communicate and collaborate at a rapid pace, using online tools to help manage their relationships and boost productivity. To that end, the digital platforms you use can have a huge impact on your business’s success, whether you’re sending email blasts to potential customers or video conferencing with a supplier.

One digital platform designed for businesses in particular is Google Workspace. It offers a curated set of tools that work together to provide you with a convenient digital hub for all your online operations. While you may already use Google tools, Google Workspace elevates these tools to the enterprise level, creating a centralized digital office. 

But is Google Workspace worth it? 

Incorporating Google Workspace into your existing workflows can give you the opportunity to streamline your company infrastructure, become more efficient, and strengthen your business relationships. Find out more below. 

What is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace is a suite of applications designed to facilitate collaboration for businesses. It includes a full toolkit of features within a single dashboard, allowing business owners to oversee every facet of their online operations in one convenient place. 

To that end, Google Workspace can act as an online office space for fully remote companies or provide a digitized center of operations for in-person teams. Each Google Workspace can connect to multiple user accounts, making it easy for key players in your organization to access your most important digital assets.

The Workspace suite includes tools for storing and tracking business information, meeting with stakeholders, and managing projects. Key offerings include:

• Gmail – Professional email accounts featuring your company’s unique domain name
• Google Drive – Cloud storage that allows you to share and access files from anywhere
• Google Meet – Video conferencing that offers dial-in and cross-platform connections
• Google Calendar – Scheduling software that integrates with other collaboration tools
• Google Chat – A streamlined, secure messaging platform
• Google Forms – Software for creating surveys, quizzes, and other types of forms
• AppSheet – An app-building solution and automation tool
• Google Voice – Digital phone services

Google Workspace also has several collaborative tools that allow multiple users to make updates in real-time. Administrators can control the permissions for their files, allowing for both independent and group work. These include: 

• Jamboard – A digital whiteboard for group brainstorming
• Google Docs –  A streamlined word processor
• Google Sheets – A spreadsheet software
• Google Slides – A presentation software 
• Google Keep – A note taking software
• Google Sites – A basic website maker 

Google Doc, Google Sheet, and Google Form allow multiple users to work simultaneously and view updates instantly. Some of these collaboration tool features, like Gmail, offer premium versions of free Google products, while others are exclusively available through paid plans. You have the flexibility to choose from a variety of plans, including the Google Workspace Business Starter Plan, Business Standard Plan, Business Plus Plan, and the Google Workspace Enterprise Plan that comes with Google Vault for secure data archiving, and Work Insights to monitor user engagement and workflow patterns. This ensures you can find the perfect fit for your business, whether you’re a small business or a larger company.

Google Workspace at Name.com

One of the most convenient aspects of Google Workspace is its ability to seamlessly integrate with other platforms, like your domain name provider. 

Name.com makes it easy to set up a Google Workspace account that’s directly connected to your domain name. You can get started with a Business or Business Standard Google Workspace plan straight from your Name.com dashboard. Once you choose your plan, you can register on a monthly or yearly basis. 

Having a professional Google email that uses your unique Name.com domain name is one of the main benefits of integrating these two platforms. After you establish your Workspace, Name.com makes it easy to set up your DNS records and get started with your branded business email. 

Benefits of Google Workspace

Dive deeper into how Google Workspace can support your business by exploring its key features and functionalities:

Custom and secure business email

Gmail is the world’s biggest email platform, known for providing an intuitive, streamlined customer experience for its digital and mobile apps. Boasting generous storage, fast mail delivery, and useful filters, Gmail has built a reputation as a top email provider for both individuals and businesses. 

Google Workspace offers the same user-friendly features that you enjoy with your free account, with the added benefit of additional services. The most striking upgrade is the ability to connect your professional email to your domain name.

After claiming a branded, custom domain name for your company, you can link it directly to your professional Gmail. This creates a direct connection between your website and your email, legitimizing your communications with customers and stakeholders alike. 

Other benefits of linking your email to your domain name include:

• Professionalism – Having an official business email creates unity across your digital assets, resulting in a more professional appearance.

• Organization – By connecting multiple email accounts to your professional domain name, you can organize various channels of communication under the same brand name. For example, you may have one email for customer support and another for sales. This can help further streamline your operations.

• Centralized access – Using domain-linked company emails ensures that you can always access key accounts, even if the employee overseeing that email leaves your company.

Ultimately, creating a professional email through Google Workspace allows you to oversee a secure email platform without the hassle of managing your own email server. Google even provides a convenient data migration tool to help you import emails from your previous email client. 

Enhanced video conferencing with Google Meet

Video conferencing is one of the main ways that you can connect face-to-face with your collaborators without having to share a physical space. With both one-on-one and group video calling, Google Meet offers a secure way to host important business conversations from anywhere in the world. 

The basic business plan for Google Workspace allows you to have up to 100 participants in each conference, and upgraded tiers offer even higher participant limits of 500 or more.

With in-meeting chat features, live closed captions, and a range of virtual backgrounds, you can customize your conference experience to your preferences. Additionally, you can keep your team on track with attendance-checking features, or use the recording function to save a copy of your meeting for future reference. 

Google Meet even conveniently links with your Google Calendar, making it easy to keep track of all upcoming meetings. 

Generous cloud storage with Google Drive

Along with providing applications to help run your business, Google Workspace also offers all the cloud storage space you’ll need to support those applications. The Google Cloud Platform has a scalable cloud server infrastructure for large projects and storage needs. Between emails, spreadsheets, websites, and other files, your business operations are bound to take up space. Plus, with Google AI for features like Cloud Search, a Google Workspace user can locate files and emails more swiftly.

While free Google accounts offer 15 GB of pooled storage, Google Workspace allows you to drastically increase your storage space. Get double the storage with the Google Workspace Business Starter plan, which offers 30 GB of storage per user. 

Or, explore other premium tiers, which can provide each user with up to 5 TB of storage. Enterprise brands may even be able to request more storage on an as-needed basis, so you can trust that your Google Workspace can scale alongside your business. 

Extensive third-party integrations

Google Workspace apps don’t just seamlessly integrate with one another. They’re also designed to effortlessly integrate with third-party tools like Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams, so you can keep all of your favorite productivity tools fully connected.

This includes the thousands of third-party apps on the Google Workspace Marketplace which are designed to expand the functionality of your favorite Workspace tools. These add-ons offer interface enhancements, additional features, and simple ways to connect your Workspace to other websites and platforms. 

You can use third-party integrations to leverage your Google Workspace for sales, customer relationship management, content creation, and more.

Comprehensive Admin Console

Conveniently, you can manage all of your Google Workspace apps from the centralized Admin Console. This portal gives you the ability to add users, create user roles, and adjust permissions for each participant in your Google Workspace. This allows you to maintain a secure environment for your organization as you work with different partners, employees, and collaborators. 

The Admin Console also offers additional security features, such as verification for logins from new devices. From the Admin Console, you can build a list of approved apps, block certain third-party apps, set file-sharing limitations, and even limit interactions with individuals outside of your Workspace.

Google Workspace vs. free Google apps

Many Google Workspace apps have free counterparts, but they typically come with limitations. You can gain access to the full power of the Google Workspace suite by upgrading to a paid plan. 

Some of the key differences between the free and premium apps include:

• Higher limits – Paid plans allow you to send more emails, store more data, host calls with more participants, and generally enjoy higher limits on most features. 

• Streamlined account management – With a Google Workspace plan, you can link and manage multiple people within the same organization. 

• Advanced security – Google Workspace includes a range of premium security tools to help protect your organization’s most sensitive data.

• Custom domain and branded email – Upgrading to Google Workspace enables you to use a custom domain for your business, which means you can create email accounts with addresses that end in @yourdomain.com, enhancing your brand’s professionalism and credibility.

Free Google accounts are also limited to their native functions—they don’t offer the same third-party enhancements that you can find with Google Workspace. Plus, with the introduction of Google’s Duet AI, Google Workspace seems to only get better and better.

So, even if a free Google account meets your needs right now, it’ll be much harder to grow and expand within its limitations. This is where understanding Google Workspace pricing becomes a crucial factor in determining the right solution for your organization.

Why choose Google Workspace at Name.com

Name.com is a trusted Google Workspace partner in customizing and scaling solutions for diverse industries. By setting up a Google Workspace with Name.com, you’ll gain access to a wide range of integrated real-time collaboration tools to help grow your business. Investing in a solid digital infrastructure such as top-quality cloud web hosting allows you to unlock your business’s growth potential and keep up with the fast pace of modern business communications. For additional tailored needs for your website, explore Name.com’s specialized options including the SiteLock WordPress and the best WordPress hosting services. Integrated flawlessly with Google Workspace as well, our hosting ensures peak optimization for your WordPress site.

Use Name.com’s domain name search to find the perfect custom domain for your business, then link it directly to your Google Workspace to start creating your digital command center. If you already own the domain you want, we offer domain transfer services that make the process hassle-free when you partner with us.

Sources:

TechRepublic. Google Workspace cheat sheet: What is it, and how does it work? https://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-workspace-a-cheat-sheet/

Google Meet Help. Use Google Meet features in the new Meet app.  https://support.google.com/meet/answer/12387657?hl=en 

Google Workspace. Business Streamlining & Collaboration. https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/ 

Google Workspace Admin Help. Google Workspace storage FAQ for admins. https://support.google.com/a/answer/9214707?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwhat-are-google-workspace-storage-and-upload-limits 

Google Workspace Admin Help. Overview: Integrate 3rd-party apps with Google Workspace.  https://support.google.com/a/answer/10010706?hl=en 

Google Workspace Admin Help. Security checklist for medium and large businesses (100+ users). https://support.google.com/a/answer/7587183