Published on June 1st, 2019 | by Sunit Nandi

G Suite Basic or Business: Things to Consider Before Choosing Your G Suite Plan

In a way, buying a piece of software is like marriage. If you choose the wrong one, then your life will be miserable. However, unlike marriage, it’s easier to make the right decision when it comes to selecting the software. Since all the information is on the internet, you only need to carry out research and weigh out the options against your requirements. This is particularly important for online business suites. This is because there is so much expenditure involved, the security of the information that you store and your team’s productivity.

G Suite Basic or Business

The three main editions of G Suite are Basic, Business, and Enterprise. Each of these suites allows you to use G Suite as your organization’s core, calendaring, and other office collaborations. As compared to the team’s edition, you’ll need to verify your domain and modify it severally.

The major differences between Basic and Business are the search, storage, and compliance capabilities. While the Basic has a storage capacity of 30GB per user, the Business delivers unlimited storage. The Business includes Cloud Search for Google intelligent search of your G Suite and works comfortably on the web with a mobile app. The Business also has a vault with archiving, and data hold capabilities for legal and policy requirements. The increased storage and the enhanced search capabilities, therefore, make G Suite Business worth it.

Similarities between the plans

Here is a summary of the features that are common to all the G Suite editions:

Access to applications such as sheets, Docs, Slides, Gmail, and Drawing.
An ad-free experience.
Access G Suite apps on your mobile device.
Ability to edit and access Microsoft files.
The ability to work offline.
The ability to Whitelist apps.
Strength control and password monitoring.
The ability to apply user managed security keys.

Differences

Here are some of the key differences:

Price: If you want to pay per year, then the Basic edition would be best for you.
Storage space: When you switch to a paid edition, the storage space of the suite increases. With the Basic edition, users get 30 GB of secure cloud-based storage per user while the Business plan has unlimited storage.
Google Vault: The Vaults refers to Google’s eDiscovery and archiving tool for the G Suite that you can use to easily retain, track, access, and manage your corporate data. Without the Vault, every time a G Suite administrator deletes an employee’s account from the Admin Console, their data will be lost forever. Although the Basic edition users do not have the Vault, Business and Enterprise users are protected by the feature.
Security Center: Most employees tend to spend a lot of time on online suites such as G Suite. There is a lot of information that is exchanged, passed, and stored in the G Suite apps. This means that it’s a major target for phishing, hacking, and malware attacks. This can only be protected using the Security Center, which can only be found in the Enterprise edition.
Cloud Search: G Suite comes with multiple services; hence, it can be a bit difficult to locate what you’re looking for. You could end up wasting a lot of time looking for things. This is where Cloud Search comes in. Unfortunately, Cloud Search is only available for Business and Enterprise users.

Which G Suite plan is right for you?

If you have a small business that includes a handful of people and yourself, then you can probably make do with the Basic G Suite. You’ll still get the main software such as Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Gmail. The main drawback to G Suite Basic is that Google Drive only has 30 GB of storage. For a full team that’s creating Google Docs all the time, it’s extremely easy to reach that limit.

The G Suite Business plan does not have this cap since it comes with unlimited storage. However, most of us are likely to be satisfied with unlimited storage. If Google’s Drive Storage wasn’t so restrictive, the G Suite Basic Plan would be amazing. In case the cost is a major worry, and you really want the G Suite Basic plan, then you can look for another way to store your documents such as Dropbox, which makes it easy to clear up space whenever you need to.

Wrap up

Security features, storage, and reporting capabilities are some of the major points to consider when choosing the best plan. Therefore, you need to analyze the differences further and evaluate them against your requirements before deciding whether the additional features are worth the cost.

Tags: basic, choosing, collaboration, consider, G Suite, groupware

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.