We at Pics.io work on top of Google Drive and each of our business days starts with the same questions from the perspective clients:
- Why should we choose Google Drive for our business?
- We are using Dropbox or Microsoft Office 365, why should we migrate to Google Drive to use your service?
- Why do we have to spend additional funds on Google Workspace if we have been using Google Drive already?
To answer these and many other questions we receive from our customers, we decided to prepare a comprehensive guide called G Suite Maximizer to summarize our knowledge on the topic. In this article we give a brief overview of this guide and we believe that after getting acquainted with it you will have no question left concerning the best cloud-based storage for your business needs.
When Does the Right Time for Google Workspace Come?
As your business scales, what were once relatively simple tasks like onboarding new employees, maintaining data security, or organizing your files become increasingly complicated. At this point for any small business person, there is really only one option that takes care of all your needs. That option is Google Workspace. From an Enterprise class email backbone, to an amazing online storage solution, to a full suite of office applications; Google Workspace delivers the backbone that your business needs to run and thrive.
Google Workspace is a SaaS platform created by Google to help businesses run some of their underlying web-centric systems. A couple other comparable products would be Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox and Zoho Workplace. All of these platforms give a lot of really cool functions for a very inexpensive price. But, Google Workspace is the most highly valuable tool for individuals and businesses worldwide. Notable Google Workspace customers include Uber, BuzzFeed, PwC, and, of course, HubSpot.
If you haven’t tapped into the Google Workspace platform for your business, we encourage you to check it out and propose our G Suite Maximizer Guide to run into Google Workspace world and understand its value for your business prosperity.
What Does Google Workspace Offer Your Business?
Google Workspace is an online business management suite and it’s complete with:
- Docs: a powerful word processor with most of the same features as Microsoft Word
- Sheets: a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel
- Slides: a presentation maker similar to Microsoft’s PowerPoint
- Google Drive: a cloud file storage and sharing solution
- Gmail: the most popular email application on the planet
- Calendar: a very powerful calendaring solution
- Hangouts: a complete video conferencing platform
- and a bunch more that can appeal to each business differently — depending on needs.
All of these features are offered for free to a certain extent by the standard Gmail interface. Google Workspace shines over its free counterpart in these areas:
- Integration: All services work seamlessly together — even more so than the Free version
- Hangouts: Will shortly be only available through Google Workspace
- Online Storage: With 5 Google Workspace for Business accounts, you gain unlimited online storage which is by far the best offering on the web!
One of the greatest benefits of going with Google Workspace for your business is that most of your employees are probably already used to using products like Gmail for email and Google Docs. This makes the transition super easy and ensures you don’t have to waste time explaining to new hires how to utilize company tools; unlike Zoho or Office 365 where there might be more explanation needed.
Google Workspace also has the best compatibility on mobile devices compared to any other email provider. It simply works, everywhere! And if you already have a personal Gmail account, Google makes it super easy to one-click switch between accounts (personal Gmails and Google Workspace accounts).
In addition, Google Workspace for Business is not just Gmail, Google Docs and a cloud-based Drive; there are thousands of integrations and apps available on the Google Workspace Marketplace covering every possible business need. Each of these cloud-based integrations for Google Workspace enable a business to build a unique ecosystem of interrelated systems, all delivered through the cloud and accessed using a single Google sign-in.
Read our full guide to uploading files to Google Drive.
The Difference between Free and Enterprise Google Workspace
First of all, it’s important to know the difference between the free version of Gmail and what you get in Google Workspace.
Yes, you could set up a Google account on your own and get an email and access to apps like Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google Drive. However, your email address will be an @gmail.com domain, and your cloud-based storage will be limited.
Google does make it easy to enter the Google Workspace for business ecosystem, though, offering a few different pricing tiers. Even the lowest priced tier gives you the ability to have a custom email domain — that is, yourname@yourbusiness.com — immediately adding grativas and professionalism to your outfit.
The basic tier gives you access to a business email, video and voice conferencing plus secure team messaging through Hangouts, shared calendars, document creation and 30GB of cloud storage. It’s aimed at the small business market.
A business tier gives an enhanced office suite with unlimited storage and archiving plus shared drives, as well as access to a low-code app development environment, smart search across the Google Workspace with Cloud Search, and enhanced security and administration controls. This is for the small to medium business that collaborates more and creates a lot of data to store securely.
Finally, the enterprise suite is billed as a premium deal with advanced controls and capabilities. The biggest differences come in the security and administration controls, plus the ability for IT teams to really get into the analytics and data loss prevention techniques that any enterprise-grade system requires.
Making Google Workspace Fit Your Business Needs
Customize the design
But you don’t need to go full-on into the enterprise suite to be able to start customizing Google Workspace for business. Like we said: at any paid plan tier you get the custom email domain, giving that professional shine, plus you can customize the design to add your logo, create document templates, and more.
Customize security
Google Workspace builds comprehensive security in at every layer, and centralized administration makes setup and management simple and efficient. It’s so strong that the world’s leading organizations, including Asics, Veolia and Spotify, trust their data and admin to Google Workspace for business.
Customize through integration with Pics.io DAM
Google Workspace is a great solution for teams who need a cloud storage for their media files. Indeed, but once you have 1000+ files in your cloud storage, managing them with Google Workspace alone becomes a nightmare. It happens because:
- Google Workspace does not support all the file formats you need for your work
- Google Workspace does not allow to customize your assets with keywords and metadata
- Google Workspace doesn’t have enough tools for efficient team collaboration
- Google Workspace does not have proper version control and you can get confused with multiple asset revisions
To make a long story short, Google Workspace alone is not enough for efficient file management. If you want to work with metadata, leave comments, tag your teammates, assign tasks, approve one of the drafts… you need something else.
This something is our Pics.io Digital Asset Management (DAM). Our solution works on top of Google Drive and does not require any additional software. Yes, we use your unlimited Google Workspace storage & make the most of it. So, you don’t have to migrate your files anywhere. Nor do you have to pay twice for storage with other DAM services.
In addition, you get is a convenient visual interface with lots of DAM features that you can’t find in Google Workspace, including collaboration tools, version control and metadata management. You can explore our Google Workspace Maximizer Guide to learn more about the perfect combination of Pics.io DAM + Google Workspace.
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