How seemingly simple choices have long-term consequences
Laurene Hamilton
Co-founder & Managing Director at Seeto - helping small businesses with top-tier business tech to boost success, productivity, employee experience and strong security.
Are you an avid Google Workspace user who loves collaborating in Docs and Slides? Or are you an Excel and Outlook user who can’t understand how people live without the features? Do you love the build quality of Macs or the ubiquity of Windows?
When startup founders choose Google Sheets instead of Excel or buy their first company MacBook, they often make a seemingly easy decision that can be surprisingly complex and expensive to change later.
At Seeto, we often ask our customers two key questions: “Mac or Windows? Google or Microsoft?”. Those simple questions usually begin with a long series of choices and consequences.?
Surprisingly, one of those consequences is how much money you will spend. I’ve written this article to show you how the costs start racking up, especially when you add the new generation of AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini (previously Duet). I’ll break down how much the foundations of a secure, enjoyable, productive tech stack will cost you and give you an insight into some of the long-term implications of your decision.
The comparison - levelling the playing field
Let’s make a point now that I’ll repeat often in this article: between Macs and PCs, Google and Microsoft, there are no bad choices. Whichever you choose can be the foundation of a great business.
Everyone at Seeto has strong opinions on how to deliver fantastic, secure employee experiences through business technology. Sometimes, we work with customers who are 100% committed to Windows and Microsoft, some who choose Macs and Google, and all shades of the spectrum.
It’s common these days that our customers will be strongly committed to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 but very flexible regarding their teams using Mac or Windows. Most support ‘Bring Your Own Device’ for employee phones and, therefore, must support Android and iOS. This can add some complexity, but delivering your team a delightful experience is still possible.
For the sake of this article, I’ll show you two comparative stacks: a very pure Microsoft 365-based approach and a pragmatic Google Workspace-based alternative, ignoring the choice of laptops and phones right now to keep things simple.
Some notes on the choices
We often talk to tech and business leaders who don’t know how rich the Microsoft environment is when it’s embraced. In the stack used for the comparison, costs are kept very low by leaning into Microsoft’s tools; by choosing Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you don’t just get Excel and Outlook and the other obvious tools; you get very competent anti-virus, device management and collaboration tools. Microsoft Loop is one of these lesser-known tools, a new addition to the Microsoft suite, becoming a credible alternative to Notion.
On the other hand, while Google Workspace has by far the best real-time collaboration, some real weak points need to be addressed by adding different tools to the stack. Where Microsoft Teams is pretty capable as a chat tool, Google Chat and Groups aren’t great. Microsoft has Loop and SharePoint in their portfolio, but Google Sites is weak in comparison. This means that most Google customers we work with (and Seeto itself) use Slack by choice, and many choose Notion, Coda or Confluence as a knowledge management tool.
You won’t see Zoom in the list either. Many companies use it, but we generally suggest it’s not worth the additional expense. These days, calling in Teams and Google Meet is so capable that it’s not worth adding another video meeting tool.
Okta has been added to both stacks for Identity Management because we love it and recommend it to all our customers. Modern identity management (and single sign-on) is very important to secure your business users. While there are tools in both Microsoft Entra ID and Google’s SSO, we don’t think either compares to the power and features available in Okta.
Additional tools have also been added to the Google stack to support running your hybrid Mac and Windows PC fleet. If it was a pure Mac fleet, we might use Kandji or Jamf, but JumpCloud and Microsoft Intune do a great job managing a hybrid fleet of devices.
So, those are the two competitors. Let’s get ready to rumble!
Show me the money!
OK, this is the bit I know you’ve been waiting for. How much is it going to cost me?
Let’s cut to the chase:
That’s right - the Google stack (with the additional software) carries a 48% premium compared to the pure Microsoft stack, which will surprise many people who were used to Google being the ‘cost-effective’ option. Appearances can be deceptive, and although on the face of it, Google Workspace is nearly half the price of Microsoft 365, the reality is that Google and the commonly added additional tools are the more expensive choice, and by quite some margin.
Now, I know there’ll be many opinions about those numbers, so let me say for the record that this is just one scenario. At Seeto, we choose to use Google, Slack, and Okta because we love the tools. Ultimately, there’s a lot more to this than just numbers.
Let's see the breakdown in detail:
Let's compare those as charts:
What about GenAI?
I’m glad you asked! Both of our contestants have recently added GenAI capabilities to their workplace collaboration tools, and we know that many of our customers are curious about rolling them out.?
While we believe that they are going to offer some extremely useful capabilities that strongly improve individual and team productivity, they’re not cheap. And by ‘not cheap’, I mean that they increase the price of the stack substantially - a 92% increase for Copilot over M365 Business Standard and a 64% increase to add Google’s Gemini to the Google/Slack/Notion stack.
For simplicity, we’re also not counting that Notion AI adds another ￡6.33/$8 pupm onto that cost if you buy that too, which may be unfair as Microsoft extends Copilot into Loop.
Let’s see the new costs broken down:
*Although Google claims $30pupm for an annual subscription, which equates to c. ￡23.71, they charge ￡25.20 in the Google Admin panel for Google Workspace subscribers. We are using the higher, more official figure.
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And let’s see these as charts as well:
Look at how much the AI tools increase the cost of the stacks. Microsoft and Google have found a new way almost to double their monthly subscription revenue. We use those ‘per user per month’ costs a lot at Seeto to understand the financial impact of tech subscriptions, but for a team of 50 people, the increase in annual costs for just these core business tech tools increases from ￡16,080 per year to ￡30,900 per year (for Microsoft) and from ￡23,742 to ￡38,862 per year (for Google). That’s a conversation the CFO will want to get involved in.
The takeaways
At Seeto, we do a lot of research, not just on the business tech tools in the market (and how much they cost!) but also on how our customers use them and what the current best practices are in the industry.
You can’t go wrong with the Microsoft or the Google stack - they’re safe, great to use and incredibly reliable. But as you may now get a sense, a seemingly simple decision can unravel into a lot more complexity as you grow.
In particular, it’s worth noting that Google Workspace is no longer the ‘cheap’ option. It’s a great product that carries a premium price, just as Microsoft does. If you choose the Google option, be aware that you will likely augment it with other collaboration tools, increasing the cost.
The other important takeaway if you have chosen Microsoft is that you may need to spend less on additional tools that you already have access to in the Microsoft stack. Just like Zoom, there are a lot of great tools available in some Microsoft subscriptions (like Microsoft 365 Business Premium and E3) that you really should be using if you’re an existing subscriber.
Finally, it’s worth sitting up and paying attention to the cost that the AI tools, Copilot and Gemini, will add to your operating costs. For a 50-person team, a company using Microsoft would see their costs increase by ￡14k per year, and a company using Google would see their costs increase by ￡15k yearly. It’s probably worth it - but are you sure?
This was a lot to cover! If I had to sum it up, let’s just say that if you need help choosing what tech to use, just call Seeto, and we’ll help you work through your options.
Postscript and Final Notes
Many assumptions were made, but only some things were covered. This section is intended for those who are technically minded and transparently shows the workings. Consider it as the appendix.
What wasn't covered
There are a lot of additional tools that we see in a typical tech stack. Almost everyone has an HR system (we recommend BambooHR and HiBob), a finance system (we recommend Xero) and things like ticketing tools for customer support and development teams (like Jira or Zendesk). This is just the tip of the iceberg, and every company has a wildly different collection of these tools, so we have focused only on the very core tools to keep this as simple as possible. A slightly amusing side note - at one point, our comparison included a Salesforce Enterprise licence as a fun comparison. At ￡132 pupm, it was double the price of ALL the other components in our most expensive, AI-enabled stack.
If you think something should have been included and wasn’t, feel free to let me know in the comments. It was probably left out of this article on purpose, but it would be great to know what tools you’re using.
Caveats
Where possible, publicly available pricing was used, excluding special and introductory offers and focusing on recurring prices. Monthly prices for an annual subscription term have also been used where possible (this usually gives a helpful and universally accessible discount).
Some prices have been converted from USD to GBP at current exchange rates. Please note that the converted prices may differ at the time of reading.
The product and tier selection
For many of the tools, pragmatic choices were made about the tier and selected products suitable for a company of 50 people.
Everyone at Seeto hates the ‘SSO Tax’, or the cost many companies charge to add SAML SSO to a product. In our view, this should always be free as it has a material impact on security. We have avoided enterprise pricing tiers; however, we have generally chosen products that include Google single sign-on as an alternative to true corporate SSO. This is a benefit of the Google stack over others - for instance, Slack, Notion and Atlassian all offer login via your Google account.
So, the tiers chosen were:
Four features were selected from Okta that are suitable for an initial implementation:
JumpCloud was chosen as the MDM solution, as it offers reliable management of Mac and Windows laptops and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) devices. If we were using only Macs, we might consider Jamf or Kandji, while Microsoft EMS/Intune would be a good option for Windows. There are many options available, and I selected one.
Google also has two pricing plans for Gemini for Workspace:
These weren't included; this was announced after the completed article. Prices between all the major players are expected to be volatile over the next six months.
Sources
Here’s a list of freely available, vendor-supplied pricing.?
Absolutely, diving into the nitty-gritty of your tech preferences is essential! ?? Steve Jobs once said - The only way to do great work is to love what you do. Seems like Seeto truly understands how choices reflect on both productivity and costs. Great read! ???