"Should We Leave Microsoft 365?" The Honest Answer Is About Two Dollars.

Every few months someone asks whether they'd save money leaving Microsoft 365 for Google Workspace. One analyst put a number on it, and the number goes the wrong way by about two dollars.

Every few months a client asks some version of the same question: could we save money by moving off Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace? It's a fair question. The honest answer is boring, which is why nobody's selling it to you. First, our interest: we deploy and support Microsoft 365 for our clients, so we're not a neutral party here. Check the reasoning; don't take our conclusion on trust. On September 15, a Gartner analyst speaking at the firm's own conference in Australia put a number on the comparison. Google Workspace licensing is cheaper than Microsoft's top-tier bundle. Then you add back what Google's price doesn't include — a phone system, the security tooling, the reporting, operating-system licensing — and by his arithmetic you land about two dollars per person per month above where you started. Two dollars. In the wrong direction. The technical part — you can skip this box Per Domenico Scriva, senior principal analyst at Gartner, speaking at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Australia and reported by Simon Sharwood in The Register on September 15, 2026. The comparison is Google Workspace against Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft's most complete bundle. Google Workspace licensing is cheaper than E5 but does not include telephony, the security tooling, business intelligence, or operating-system licensing that E5 carries; adding equivalents brings the total to roughly $2 per user per month above the Microsoft figure. Scriva also stated that a migration "takes at least two years to get it done," and advised organisations signing three-year Microsoft 365 agreements to begin migration planning almost immediately if they intend to move. Google includes its Gemini assistant in Workspace; Microsoft charges separately for Copilot. Gartner has published no public report containing these figures — they are an analyst's remarks at a Gartner event, reported by a named journalist. What that actually means The comparison is against E5, which is the expensive one. Microsoft sells several tiers. E5 bundles the email and documents everyone pictures when they say "Microsoft 365" together with a phone system, a security suite and reporting tools. Comparing Google's price to E5's and stopping there is how you produce a saving that doesn't exist. "About two dollars" is one analyst's arithmetic , said out loud at a conference, not a study we can hand you. Treat it as an order of magnitude — roughly a wash — not a budget figure. "At least two years" is his estimate for actually finishing a migration. That's the number most people get wrong, and it isn't a licensing cost at all. It's your staff. The part that's on neither price list If you're on one of Microsoft's business plans rather than E5 — which most 15-to-75-person companies are — the licence comparison is a different sum and could genuinely favour Google. We're not going to pretend otherwise. What doesn't change is the rest of the bill: every document template, every saved report, the spreadsheet somebody built five years ago that the business now quietly runs on, the line-of-business application that exports to Excel and nothing else. And two years of people being slower at their own jobs while they learn where everything moved. Scriva's other observation is the genuinely useful one for planning: if you intend to move, start planning almost immediately after signing a three-year agreement — because the work takes longer than the contract you're trying to get out of. What to do If the reason you want to leave is that a renewal price annoyed you, that's a negotiation, not a migration. Get a quote for the tier you actually use before you price a move. If the reason is a real capability gap, write down the specific thing that doesn't work. A named problem survives contact with a spreadsheet. "We're fed up with Microsoft" doesn't. And if you run the arithmetic and it lands close to even — which is the likely outcome — that's an answer, not a failure. Staying put on purpose is a decision. Switching by accident isn't.