O365 vs G Suite for family use

Office 365 or G Suite — which do you think is best for families and why?

Things we’ll use: email, calendars, cloud storage for documents and photos, word processor, spreadsheets

Edit: We’ll probably also want to use a custom domain name at some point.

Conversation 17 comments

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    11 June, 2018 - 9:35 am

    <p>Office 365 Home is the better financial deal by far: Five users, each with 1 TB of OneDrive, and full access to Office on Mac, PC and web across five devices each for just $99 a year. G Suite is $60 per user at the cheapest, but that only gets you 30 GB of storage.</p>

    • RobotRaccoon

      Premium Member
      11 June, 2018 - 10:58 am

      <blockquote><a href="#283103"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>And what if we want to use a custom domain name at some point?</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        11 June, 2018 - 11:57 am

        <blockquote><a href="#283125"><em>In reply to RobotRaccoon:</em></a></blockquote><p>Right now, G Suite is it. Or you could go Office 365 commercial, which is much more expensive.</p>

    • dbtom

      22 January, 2019 - 12:41 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#283103">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>I use both for my family. I have a custom domain using Google because I know how to do this and it is pretty easy. I use Office 365 family because the storage is much cheaper, we use the desktop apps and you kind of need it to use Windows anyway. We don't use any of the groupware features offered by Microsoft. The downsides are 1. There is another password to remember, 2. You still probably need another Google account since not all Google consumer features are in G Suite 3. Microsoft really needs to do a better job in figuring out how they want to handle photos. Yeah, you can use both but you get this data sprawl thing which is tough.</p>

    • cayo

      22 January, 2019 - 2:14 pm

      <p>** across five devices each for just $99 a year. </p><p><br></p><p>Actually, Microsoft removed limits on the number of devices on which subscribers can install the apps. However, you can only stay signed in on five devices at once.</p>

  • jprestig

    11 June, 2018 - 11:37 am

    <p>It probably depends how much storage you would need. You wouldn't need to purchase G Suite for all of that. You can use that all for free with Google and each user would have 15GB of free cloud storage. Once you get into higher levels of storage Office 365 becomes the better deal.</p>

  • dcdevito

    11 June, 2018 - 2:51 pm

    <p>Why not use the free versions? Then offload the cost to Drive (which is getting the ability, like O365, to share it with 5 family members)?</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    11 June, 2018 - 3:09 pm

    <p>Not that I've tried it, but Zoho supposedly supports custom domains, so another option.</p>

    • halap3n0

      22 January, 2019 - 10:54 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#283162">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Zoho crippled their free offering, and the free account with custom domain now only lets you use Webmail, so is pretty useless. Used to be OK, would not recommend now.</p>

      • waethorn

        22 January, 2019 - 11:29 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#398673">In reply to halap3n0:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well, obviously he's looking at PAID offerings. Zoho provides that without the Big Data indexing. Neither Google nor Microsoft include custom domain support for free.</p>

  • Daekar

    22 January, 2019 - 9:31 am

    <p>Office 365 Home is a no-brainer for us. The apps are great, cross-platform, web-enabled, the storage space is generous for the price, and it's compatible with everything. There is no downside to modern Office unless you are very technology-challenged and aren't willing to learn the UI.</p>

  • GeekWithKids

    Premium Member
    22 January, 2019 - 9:35 am

    <p>I like Office 365 home for my family, but we haven't setup custom domain for email. </p><p><br></p><p>Though there is a way to configure outlook.com to use custom domains, without the premium domains they've discontinued. I think each account might have to have their email configured individually and it might have to be hosted on another server. I did it once, but then switch to Premium domain while it was available.</p><p><br></p><p>If you are interested I can see if I can figure out how I did it.</p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    22 January, 2019 - 11:17 am

    <p>Office 365 – Better software, better privacy.</p>

  • Bats

    22 January, 2019 - 12:03 pm

    <p>Without question…..G Suite.</p><p><br></p><p>It's easy to use and more importantly easy to maintain. Not just that, but the platform is very secure (despite what other people are telling you). LOL…c'mon, man….we are talking about Linux here! Everyone and mother (and grandmother) know that Linux is far superior, when it comes to security than Windows and that's what G Suite runs on.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>With G Suite, you'll have the complete arsenal of Google products at your disposal. From Gmail to Photos to Calendar etc… Plus there are a number of Microsoft Enterprises features available for use with G Suite (and free Google) that makes running a "family" network so easy to maintain. Such as distribution lists, calendar inviting, as well as document and folder sharing. One very underrated feature with G Suite (Google Drive Apps) is document collaboration, where two people can work on a single doc at the same time,….in real time. I have used both Google's and Microsoft. LOL….it's not even a contest, how Google Docs' is far superior and easier than Office 365.</p><p><br></p><p>With G Suite, it opens you up to buying Chromebooks without ever having to worry about malware.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>I would suggest you try G Suite. Play around with the Admin panel&nbsp;for a couple of weeks. Create a "family" logo and upload it, so you can custom brand your family G Suite. If you don't like it, then go to Office 365. No biggie!</p>

    • Bats

      22 January, 2019 - 12:07 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#398683">In reply to Bats:</a></em></blockquote><p>One more thing….&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>When you setup a custom domain, do it through Google Domains. It's much easier to do so, because Google Domains and G Suite are tied together very well. If you have a domain with another provider, I would recommend you transfer it to Google domains. If you don't have one, then order one for only $12/year at Google domains.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>I say all this, just to make the whole process super simple for you.&nbsp;</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    22 January, 2019 - 12:40 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">If one or more of you are already Google/Android users just be aware that G Suite is not just a paid add-on to your regular Google account. Each person will get a new G Suite account, and these account types are not fully interchangeable. Some features and services are limited to one or the other, and some features may be accessible to G Suite accounts only by permission from the admin. </span></p>

  • Minke

    22 January, 2019 - 11:27 pm

    <p>Use free Gmail and services, purchasing extra storage as needed for a family member. With native Google formats and photos taking up no space you might find like I do that 15 GB is plenty. Easier and much cheaper to just purchase a domain and set up regular Gmail to send emails using it. Google how to do it. O365 is huge overkill for most families and kids will surely be using Google stuff at school.</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC