Google Workspace Edition Guide: Difference between Basic and Business
After the renaming of G Suite, there are six editions of Google Workspace, namely Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus. Unsure which edition to buy? Do not worry, in the following article you will find a list of considerations you should make before using Google Workspace.
Is it enough to just buy the Google Workspace Business Starter?
Google Workspace is mainly divided into two series, Business and Enterprise. Each series has three editions, for a total of six editions. (To improve readability, Google Workspace is omitted from the following description.)
Some of the Business Plus and Business Standard features are not available in Business Starter, while some of the Enterprise Series features (except Enterprise Essentials) are not available in Business Series. So you can weigh whether buying Business Starter is sufficient for your business. If there is a feature among the advanced features of these versions that is essential for your business, select the edition that has the required features. If you do not need these features, it’s recommended that you start with Business Starter. Over time, Google Workspace can be upgraded at any time. The three features that are not included in the Business Starter are explained below.
3 features that are not provided in Google Workspace Business Starter
Vault
Vault allows enterprises to archive and export data from mailboxes, Drive, Hangouts Chat (with history on) and videos files of Hangouts Meet for compliance or legal purpose.
What we think
The main purpose of Vault is not for data backup but for e-discovery. Vault can largely reduce the cost and risk of compliance for the business.
Shared Drive
Unlike the user Drive, files in a Shared Drive belongs to the organization instead of the user. If a member is removed from a Shared Drive, the ownership of the files remain the same. It is possible to give different permission according to different members.
What we think
In Google Workspace Basic, files in the Drive belong to the individual user while with Google Workspace Business and above, admin can set up Team Drive for departments or teams. Team Drive can also be used as a replacement of physical file server.
Cloud Search
Quickly find any content using the search function within Drive, Gmail and Calender. However, the search result will only show contents that the user has permission to view.
What we think
Although Cloud Search is not a must have function, it’s an extremely handy function for organizations that have accumulated a vast amount of files lacking of proper management.
There’s no need to think about storage space when choosing a Google Workspace edition
Many would fear that after choosing the Google Workspace Basic edition, the 30GB storage per user will soon become insufficient. In fact, it is very easy to upgrade to a higher edition regardless of what payment plan you have. Whether you are on an annual plan or a monthly plan, you can upgrade anytime. There’s really no need to go for the higher editions except for businesses in the creative field such as web design or any design companies that require very large storage space. General business can just start with Google Workspace Basic and upgrade anytime when the storage becomes insufficient.
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