You run a 10-person contracting business out of Battle Creek, HVAC, fencing, electrical, landscaping, doesn't matter which. Email is held together with duct tape, your guys are mixing personal Gmail with whatever your old IT person set up, and somebody just asked you whether you should "switch to Microsoft." Or maybe you're already on Microsoft and you keep hearing Google is cheaper.
Here's the honest comparison, without the marketing language. What these two stacks actually look like for a small contractor in Southwest Michigan, and which one is going to cause you fewer headaches.
Which should a Michigan contractor pick?
For most 10-person Michigan contractors, Microsoft 365 is the better default. Not because it's flashier, but because the office side of your business (estimating, invoicing, project files, shared mailboxes for sales@ and service@) still runs on Excel and Outlook, and that's where the trades industry lives.
Google Workspace is the right answer if your office is genuinely paper-light, your estimators don't live in Excel, and your team is already in Gmail and won't tolerate a switch. Both stacks work. The real difference is which one your people will fight you on less.
How do Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace compare?
| Decision factor | Microsoft 365 | Google Workspace |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier (per user/mo, annual) | $6.00, Business Basic | $7.20, Business Starter |
| Office tier (owner + estimators) | $12.50, Business Standard | $14.40, Business Standard |
| Real desktop Excel / Word / Outlook | Yes, on Standard | No, web apps only |
| Shared mailboxes (sales@, service@) | Free, no extra license | Via Groups, clunkier |
| Mobile email | Outlook, workable | Gmail, better |
| Best fit | Office runs on Excel and Outlook | Paper-light, already on Gmail |
What does each one actually cost?
Pricing is per user, per month, on annual billing, according to the official Microsoft 365 pricing page and Google Workspace pricing page (as of 2026; both vendors adjust these, so verify before you buy):
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic, $6.00. Web/mobile Office apps, 50 GB mailbox, Teams, OneDrive. Good for crew and field staff.
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard, $12.50. Adds desktop Office (real Excel, real Word, real Outlook). Right tier for the office, estimators, owner.
- Google Workspace Business Starter, $7.20. 30 GB per user, Gmail, Drive, Meet, Docs. Good for crew.
- Google Workspace Business Standard, $14.40. 2 TB per user, recording on Meet, more admin controls.
For a 10-person shop with 3 office and 7 field, you're looking at roughly:
- M365 mix, 3 × $12.50 + 7 × $6.00 = $79.50/month ($954/year)
- Google mix, 3 × $14.40 + 7 × $7.20 = $93.60/month ($1,123/year)
So M365 is usually a few hundred dollars cheaper per year for a 10-person split. Not enough to drive the decision on its own, but worth knowing.
When is Microsoft 365 the better pick?
Pick M365 when your office runs on Excel, you need real shared mailboxes, and you want a job-site phone built in. Three reasons stand out.
Excel is still the language of the trades
Estimators send takeoffs in Excel, suppliers send price sheets in Excel, and your accountant wants exports in Excel. Google Sheets is fine for casual use, but once you're dealing with a vendor template that uses macros, named ranges, or real pivot tables, you'll hit Sheets' ceiling fast. For a Battle Creek excavator pricing a job from a $200 takeoff template, Excel isn't a preference, it's the file the supplier sent.
Shared mailboxes and distribution lists
You probably want [email protected] landing in three people's inboxes, and service@ feeding a tech's phone. Google can do this with Groups, but Microsoft's shared mailboxes are simpler to set up, included for free, and don't eat a license. For a contractor with multiple intake addresses, that's a bigger operational difference than it sounds on a feature comparison.
Teams as a job-site phone
Teams runs on iPhone, iPad, and any Android. Push-to-talk, file share, photo upload from a job site straight into the project channel. Most contractors already have it as part of their M365 license and never turn it on. Once you do, your group texts go away.
When is Google Workspace the better pick?
Pick Google Workspace when your team lives on their phones, you collaborate on documents constantly, or you're already on Gmail and a switch would cause a revolt.
Out-of-the-box mobile
Gmail on a phone is genuinely better than Outlook on a phone. If your team lives on their phones (and field crews do), this matters. The setup is faster, the search works better, and people don't accidentally archive emails they meant to read.
Document collaboration
Real-time editing in Google Docs is smoother than Word's version. If you're running a small marketing or creative shop alongside the contracting work, this is a win. For most contractors, you don't write enough documents together for it to move the needle.
You're already there
If your team is on personal Gmail accounts and you've never used Outlook, the switch cost to M365 is real. Migrating mailbox history, retraining everyone on a new app, and dealing with the "where did my files go" complaints will eat 40 to 60 hours of your time. Sometimes the right answer is "stay where you are, just upgrade to the paid tier."
What does switching actually cost?
Whichever direction you go, switching is not free. Plan for:
- Mailbox migration, 1 to 3 hours per user, depending on history size. Can be automated, but somebody has to manage it.
- Calendar break, recurring meetings sometimes don't survive the migration cleanly. Expect to recreate a few.
- File migration, moving from Drive to OneDrive (or vice versa) is doable but messy. The links you sent customers six months ago might break.
- Training, figure 2 to 3 hours per person to get them comfortable on the new stack. Half of that is just helping them stop reflexively opening the old app.
- Phone/desktop reconfiguration, every device that touched email needs to be set up again.
Total switching cost for a 10-person shop, if you DIY: a long weekend plus a week of slow productivity. If you have someone do it for you, $1,500 to $3,000 is a normal range.
What do I tell Battle Creek and Kalamazoo contractors?
If you're starting from scratch, new business, no existing email, pick M365 Business Standard for office, Business Basic for crew. Get a real domain (yourcompany.com), set up sales@ and service@ as shared mailboxes, install Teams on everyone's phone. You'll be set for the next five years.
If you're already on Google and it's working, stay there. Upgrade to Business Standard for the people who need real storage and admin features. Don't switch for the sake of switching. The "Microsoft is the standard" argument doesn't outweigh a clean migration cost.
If you're on a mess of personal Gmail, free Outlook.com, and one weird Yahoo address that gets all the supplier emails, fix it now, before you grow. Doesn't matter which stack, pick one, get a real domain, consolidate. The cost of doing this at 10 people is small. The cost at 25 people is enormous.
So which one should you choose?
Both stacks are fine, and the decision matters less than getting off a patchwork of free tools and onto a single, owned, professional setup. Customers can tell the difference between an email from [email protected] and one from [email protected]; so can suppliers, and so can the spam filter. Whichever you pick, authenticate it properly so your quotes land in the inbox. Our free email and DMARC check tells you in two minutes whether yours do. We've also published a Southwest Michigan Email Security Report based on auditing 435 local business domains, and 86% had no DMARC enforcement.
If you want help picking, migrating, and setting it up properly, including the parts most IT people never explain, like backup, MFA, and how to add a new employee in two minutes, that's the kind of work we do for Southwest Michigan businesses. See how we work, or book a call below.