Compare / Google and Microsoft
Rutba vs Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
The workspace incumbents, and the best in the world at what they do. The comparison is not about mail quality — it is about what the mail knows.
Checked 1 September 2026Google Workspace pricing (representative of the category) ↗
What Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 is
Business email, calendars, files, documents, chat and meetings at enormous scale, with mature administration, compliance tooling and device management.
Who it genuinely suits
- Essentially every business, which is why they have essentially every business
- Organisations with device management, eDiscovery or regulatory archiving requirements
- Anyone whose staff would revolt at losing Excel
Where they win
What Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 does better than us.
Every comparison page on this site has this section and none of them is empty. If it were, you would be right to discount the rest of the page.
They are better products, considered on their own
Deliverability, uptime, mobile clients, offline behaviour, spreadsheet depth, meeting quality at scale. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and Rutba Docs and Sheets is in early access on our own site.
Compliance and device management
Retention policies, legal hold, eDiscovery, mobile device management. Mature, audited and required by many organisations.
Everyone already knows how to use them
Training cost of zero is a real number.
Where we win
What Rutba does that this does not.
Argued from how the products are built rather than from a feature list, because feature lists are the part of a comparison that goes stale first.
The mail knows what the business knows
An email about an order sits on the order. A file about a customer is on the customer. In a separate workspace, that connection is a habit somebody maintains by filing things correctly, which means it is not maintained.
One vendor, one bill, one offboarding
Removing someone from the organization removes their access to the business software and the workspace in the same action, because it is the same directory.
It is included rather than added
The comparison for most businesses is not Rutba against Microsoft 365 — it is Rutba against an ERP plus Microsoft 365.
And the one that is not a feature
Google and Microsoft will not build what you ask for. We will.
That is not a criticism of them — a vendor at their scale has to weigh your request against every other customer it touches, and schedule it behind a roadmap set a year out. Your request is a rounding error in their planning, honestly so. We are small, and the people building the product are the people you talk to: what helps everyone goes into the product at no extra charge, what is specific to you is quoted as the work it is, and when the answer is no you get the reason.
Side by side
The same six questions the hub asks of everyone.
| Question | Rutba | Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 |
|---|---|---|
| Runs the businessCRM, stock, orders, production and the ledger, from one vendor | Included | Not covered |
| Runs the dayMail, files, documents, chat and meetings, included rather than licensed separately | Included | Included |
| One set of recordsDo the modules share the records, or integrate copies of them | Included | Not covered |
| Buy it yourselfCan you subscribe and start without a partner or a sales cycle | Included | Included |
| Parts sold separatelyCan you take one piece without committing to the platform | Included | Included |
| Run it yourselfIs there a path to your own hardware | Partly | Not covered |
On price: We do not reproduce Google and Microsoft’s prices here. A list price is published and fair to quote, and it is stale within a quarter — which would make this page quietly wrong in a way you could not see. Read today’s number from them, and ours is on our pricing page in full, tier by tier.
Moving
What leaving Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 actually involves.
The question that decides this is not whether you should move but whether you can. This is the honest version, including the parts that do not come across.
- 1
Mail migrates by IMAP transfer, which is slow and reliable. Calendars and contacts follow.
- 2
Files migrate; deeply nested shared-drive permission structures need rebuilding rather than importing.
- 3
Anything built in Apps Script or Power Automate does not port.
- 4
Most businesses should not move both halves at once. Take the business software first and evaluate the workspace with a pilot group.
No customer has done this yet. The steps above describe the mechanism — what exports, what imports, what has to be rebuilt — rather than a migration we have run. When one has been run, this section will say whose it was.
Our actual recommendation
We are not asking you to give up Microsoft 365, and we would tell you not to if your compliance requirements are real. The argument is for the businesses paying for a workspace and an ERP separately, and getting no connection between them for the money.
If you did move
The products this comparison is about.
With their real availability labels, which apply inside a comparison exactly as they do everywhere else on this site.
Note before you compare: Rutba Mail, Rutba Drive, Rutba Docs & Sheets, Rutba Chat, Rutba Meet are not generally available yet. Any row above that we win on them is a claim about what ships, not about what you can buy today.
Rutba Mail
Early accessBusiness email hosting
Real hosted mailboxes at your own domain — inbound delivery, storage, IMAP, and a web client — where every message can attach itself to the customer or order it concerns.
- Mailboxes at your own domain (@yourcompany.com)
- Web client, plus IMAP for Outlook, Apple Mail, or your phone
- Spam filtering and inbound delivery handled for you
Includes: Webmail · Mail Gateway
From $4 per mailbox / month
Rutba Drive
Coming soonCloud file storage & sharing
Folders, sharing, permissions, and version history for the whole organization — with attachments from your orders, tickets, and documents living in the same place as everything else.
- Folders and files with real version history
- Sharing governed by your organization roles, not stray links
- Org-wide storage quotas you control
Includes: Drive · Drive API
From $5 per user / month
Rutba Docs & Sheets
Early accessOnline documents & spreadsheet software
Collaborative documents and spreadsheets, stored on Drive and shared through your organization — with the difference that a sheet can pull live figures from your stock and your accounts.
- Word processor and spreadsheet, edited together in real time
- Opens and saves .docx and .xlsx on our own engine - no round-trip loss
- 126 spreadsheet functions with dependency-ordered recalculation
Includes: Docs & Sheets · Workspace service
From $6 per user / month
Rutba Chat
Early accessTeam chat & business messaging
Channels, direct messages, and threads for the team — plus discussions attached directly to the order, ticket, or customer being discussed.
- Channels, direct messages, and threaded replies
- Discussions attached to orders, tickets, and customers - with deep links both ways
- Searchable history, read state, presence, and mentions with directory autocomplete
From $4 per user / month
Rutba Meet
Coming soonVideo meetings & calendar
Scheduling, a shared calendar, and video rooms — with each meeting logged against the customer or deal it concerned.
- Shared team calendar, scheduling, invitees and RSVP
- Availability visible across the organization, exportable as ICS
- Meetings booked from - and logged to - customer records
From $6 per user / month
Head to head
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 against the others.
You are comparing Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to something, and it may well not be us. These are written to the same standard as this page — sourced, dated, and naming where each product wins.
Weighing this against Google Workspace and Microsoft 365?
Tell us what you run and how you use it. We will be specific about what would improve, what would get worse, and whether the move is worth it at all.