Is Google Workspace cheaper than Microsoft 365 for ten people?

Not reliably. Both vendors sell three business tiers of similar shape, and the gap between vendors is usually smaller than the gap between the tier you need and the tier you were about to buy. Price the specific tier on each vendor page on the same day, comparing annual commitment against annual commitment, and count storage while you are there.

Does Microsoft 365 have worse email deliverability than Google Workspace?

No. Both platforms need SPF, DKIM and DMARC published correctly, and both fail the same way when a third-party sender such as your invoicing platform or CRM is not aligned with your domain. Deliverability follows your configuration and your sending behaviour, not the vendor logo.

Can we keep our domain and email addresses if we switch platforms?

Yes. The domain and the addresses are yours and stay the same. What changes is the MX record that decides where mail is delivered, plus the SPF and DKIM records for the new platform. Lower the DNS time to live first, inventory every system that sends as your domain, and cut over once the new mailboxes exist.

Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 for a 10-person company

A ten-person company does not have an IT department. It has whoever is least afraid of DNS. That person usually ends up choosing between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and most of the comparison articles they find were written by somebody selling one of the two.

We migrate companies in both directions, so this is the version without a preferred answer. Six questions decide it, and only one of them is about price.

What ten seats actually cost

Both vendors sell three business tiers, and both cap those tiers at 300 users. A ten-person company will never reach that ceiling, so the choice is about what a tier includes, not how far it scales.

Google publishes Workspace list prices on its own pricing page. On the Flexible Plan, billed monthly for the accounts you have that month, the United States rates are USD 8.40 per user per month for Business Starter, USD 16.80 for Business Standard and USD 26.40 for Business Plus, list prices checked 8 September 2026. The Annual/Fixed-Term Plan costs less per user in exchange for committing to a seat count for a year. For ten people that trade is usually worth taking, with one caveat: if you hire and release people often, the flexible plan lets the bill follow your headcount.

We are not going to print a Microsoft figure we could not read on Microsoft's own page today, and neither should any article you find. Open Microsoft's business pricing page and check two things before you multiply by ten: which tier you actually need, and whether the number on screen is the annual commitment rate or the month to month rate. The tiers themselves are stable. Business Basic gives you the web and mobile apps, Business Standard adds the desktop Office applications, and Business Premium adds the security stack.

Storage is where the two models differ most. Workspace pools storage across the organization: 30 GB per user on Business Starter, 2 TB per user on Business Standard and 5 TB per user on Business Plus, added together into one shared pool. Ten people on Business Standard share 20 TB, which is generous right up until one person with a video habit starts drawing on it. Microsoft splits the allowance per user between the mailbox and OneDrive, and its 2026 packaging update raises the primary mailbox entitlement for Business Basic, Standard and Premium from 50 GB to 100 GB, rolling out between June and September 2026. Archive mailboxes start at 50 GB and expand automatically up to 1.5 TB.

Whichever you pick, the licenses are the small number. The migration, the training and the week of confusion cost more, which is why we quote that work as a fixed scope up front. How we work explains the shape of it.

Deliverability out of the box

Neither platform authenticates your domain for you. That is the most common reason a migration ends with "our mail goes to spam now", and it is not really the platform's fault.

On Workspace, SPF is a DNS record and nothing in the Admin console. You publish one TXT record at the root of your domain:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

DKIM stays off until you generate a key. In the Admin console open Apps, then Google Workspace, then Gmail, then Authenticate email. Choose the 2048-bit key if your DNS provider supports it, keep the default selector prefix of google, publish the TXT record it gives you at google._domainkey, and only then turn on signing. Google notes that after you first turn on Gmail for your organization you may have to wait 24 to 72 hours before the key is available in the console, which surprises people on cutover day.

On Microsoft 365 the same job is spread across two portals. SPF is again a DNS record:

v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all

DKIM needs two CNAME records. Microsoft's selectors are always selector1 and selector2, each pointing at a host built from your tenant identifier and your initial onmicrosoft.com domain. Publish both even though only one selector may resolve at first, because the second is what lets Microsoft rotate the key later without breaking signing. Then enable DKIM for the domain in the Defender portal, under Email and collaboration, Policies and rules, Threat policies, Email authentication settings. Our Microsoft 365 authentication guide walks the whole sequence.

Neither platform is hard to authenticate. The difference is about twenty minutes of setup and how many places you have to look when something breaks later. What matters far more is everything else that sends as your domain: the invoicing system, the store, the CRM, the newsletter tool. Those break alignment identically on both platforms, and they are what fills an SPF record until it crosses the ten lookup limit.

Check where your domain stands right now, before you commit to either platform:

One set of rules applies to you whichever vendor you choose. Since 1 February 2024, Google requires senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts to publish SPF and DKIM and a DMARC record, to align the From domain with either the SPF domain or the DKIM domain, to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.30 percent, and to support one-click unsubscribe as described in RFC 8058 for marketing and subscribed messages. A policy of p=none satisfies the DMARC requirement, though it is a starting point rather than a destination. Getting to enforcement is the same work on both platforms.

Admin and security with no IT staff

Compare the top tiers, because that is where the two products stop looking alike.

Workspace Business Plus includes Vault for retention, holds, search and export, eDiscovery, advanced endpoint management, Secure LDAP, and meetings for up to 500 participants with attendance tracking. Vault comes with the Business and Enterprise editions at no extra cost.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, Intune Plan 1 for device and app management, and Entra ID P1, which is where Conditional Access lives.

The honest read: if your ten people work on company-owned Windows laptops and somebody is willing to run a device management project, Business Premium is a lot of security for the money. If your team is a mix of personal Macs, Chromebooks and phones and nobody is going to own that project, Workspace gets you further on defaults you can actually keep configured.

The Excel test

One question predicts migration pain better than any feature grid. Does anybody in the company maintain a workbook that other people's work depends on, with macros, Power Query, pivot tables against an external source, or a paid add-in?

If the answer is yes, stay on Microsoft, and note that Business Basic will not do, because the desktop applications start at Business Standard. Sheets will open that workbook and it will look almost right, and "almost right" in a file that drives your billing is worse than a license you did not need.

If the answer is no, and the spreadsheets are lists, budgets and trackers that several people edit at once, Sheets is the better daily tool. Test that rather than assume it. Take your two most complicated workbooks, open them in Sheets, and do one normal month of work in them before you decide.

Meetings, and whether Teams decides it

Guests can join both Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings from a browser, so the client who uses the other platform is rarely the blocker people expect. The real question is different. Teams is chat, files and meetings in one application, and companies that adopt it properly get a single place where work happens. Companies that adopt it halfway get a fourth inbox. If your team already lives in WhatsApp or Slack for chat, the argument for Teams gets thinner, and Meet in the browser is enough.

Migration effort in each direction

Moving into Workspace is the better tooled direction. In the Admin console, under Data, then Data import and export, then Data Migration, you connect an Exchange Online source by signing in as a Global Administrator on the Microsoft side. The service copies mail for users who already exist on both sides and does not create accounts, so provision your Workspace users first. IMAP sources work too, from most RFC 3501 compliant servers, up to 100 users per import job.

Moving the other way is more manual. Mail comes across over IMAP, Drive to OneDrive is a file copy rather than a migration service, and calendars and contacts go through export and import.

In both directions mail migrates well and files migrate acceptably. The expensive part is what nobody inventories: shared calendars, groups and aliases, forwarding rules, the scanner in the hallway, the invoicing platform, the store, the CRM, and every form on the website. Write that list before you touch the MX record, not after.

How to decide this afternoon

Run the Excel test. If one critical workbook needs the desktop application, the decision is already made.
Look at the devices your team actually uses, and be honest about who will manage them.
Add up the storage you hold today, then double it.
Price only the tier you need, at both vendors, on their own pages, on the same day, annual against annual.
Whichever you choose, authenticate the domain in the first week and inventory every third party that sends as you.

Step five decides whether your mail arrives. The other four decide whether your team enjoys the tools.

How Guanacos Tech helps

We are an independent consultancy with Google-certified engineers. Since 2018 we have run this decision, and the migration behind it, for small and mid-sized companies across North America and Latin America, in English and Spanish, and we have moved companies in both directions. If your workbooks say Microsoft, we will tell you so, and help you authenticate that tenant properly instead.

If you want a second opinion before committing ten people to a platform for the next five years, book a call or read what our Workspace work covers.

Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 for a 10-person company: the honest comparison