Office 365

[sal]

That's rather a bad argument really. "Oh it's not much, per month, compared with salaries". Sure, until you find you're subscribing to 10 such things. The whole reason they do monthly pricing is to make you think that way. It's the same silly "it's only a day's rate stop worrying" nonsense you here quite often.

You have your Office sub, your source control hosting sub, your issue-tracking sub, they soon mount up. Then you have Windows and (for instance) Visual Studio, maybe some nifty VS plugins, yada yada.

Not saying it's not worth it, but saying it's not even worth analysing is a bad move. Especially when the OP only mentioned it in reference to email.

Believe it or not, i know something about running a business with more than 1 employee. You can hardly beat that price for these SLAs. If you decide to skimp on what is the front of your company and now days essential for almost any business, you are doing a poor job.

it's £3.1/month/mailbox probably less than the toilet paper per employee per month. Why not cut on that as well...

But this went way off topic.

My suggestion to the OP is to try both of them and see which one fits his own needs. Asking which one is better gmail or office365 is kind of asking which one is better Mercedes or BMW.

[d000hg]

Believe it or not, i know something about running a business with more than 1 employee. You can hardly beat that price for these SLAs. If you decide to skimp on what is the front of your company and now days essential for almost any business, you are doing a poor job.

I'm not sure why your pride is hurt. I've raised perfectly reasonable points and questions, which you've answered well without any need to start a willy-waving contest.

[jpb2001]

Fastmail

I use Fastmail Business:
https://www.fastmail.com/signup/#/signup/business.html

$15 per year for Basic or $30 per year for Standard accounts. Use with Thunderbird or other IMAP software (including Outlook).

[Spoiler]

Currently use both Google apps (gmail) and Office 365 for a couple of small businesses. I much prefer O365.

It looks like they've changed the packages again (used to be able to get small biz, midsize biz & enterprise), so I would want to check that you can mix 365 business essentials licenses (no office suite) with 365 Business/premium (with office), if you wanted some licenses with and without the desktop office suite.

[WhatNoWebsite]

IMHO... GMAIL

I've just started a contract recently where they insisted I install Office 365 on my laptop which I did with disastrous results. Their problem, not mine.

I work from home using Open Office which opens all Microsoft Office products, share files using DropBox and use Hangouts for instant chat with zero issues with clients around the globe.

[stek]

IMHO... GMAIL

I've just started a contract recently where they insisted I install Office 365 on my laptop which I did with disastrous results. Their problem, not mine.

I work from home using Open Office which opens all Microsoft Office products, share files using DropBox and use Hangouts for instant chat with zero issues with clients around the globe.

I'm no M$ fan but Open Office is a pile of poop as is IBM Symphony and all other clones based on this Open Source garbage.

I'm an Apple Fanboi and Office for Mac is better than iWork, the iWork suite is pretty good even in it's cut down iCloud format, just that Mac Office has all the bells and whistles needed nowadays to work with the other M$ tulip. Still prefer Pages etc for a simple Doc with no frills.

[cojak]

And I've heard that the yearly subscription includes Office for Mac. I hope so because OfM 2011 is getting a little long in the tooth and I'm beginning to miss some of the functionality of Office 2013...

[DaveB]

it may or may not be relevant, but if you are dealing with public sector at all, O365 has been formally accredited for use at OFFICIAL by the Pan Government Accreditors at CESG. Google Apps/Mail etc hasn't, although CO have accredited it internally for their own use.

[vwdan]

IMHO... GMAIL

I've just started a contract recently where they insisted I install Office 365 on my laptop which I did with disastrous results. Their problem, not mine.

I work from home using Open Office which opens all Microsoft Office products, share files using DropBox and use Hangouts for instant chat with zero issues with clients around the globe.

I just don't get this post. Office 365 isn't something magical - it's a subscription to good old fashioned Microsoft Office with some Exchange and Sharepoint hosting. To be honest, having used Google Apps for years, I found shifting to Office 365 a fantastic experience.

If it was just an e-mail account, all you needed to do was it any Exchange compatible e-mail client.

The only fancy stuff, really, is the streamed version of Office, but I've never actually had a need to use it.

[cojak]

I've only just got my subscription because I needed Visio, but I'll have a play with it next week.