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Google Workspace vs ownCloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Workspace
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Email Applications (1st), Wireless Email (1st), Cloud Storage (8th)
ownCloud
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
20th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Google Workspace is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ownCloud is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Workspace6.9%
ownCloud1.7%
Other91.4%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Hikmah Hikmah - PeerSpot reviewer
Brand Protection Analyst at Corsearch
Collaborative tools have improved team communication and file organization across projects
Before I was in a Microsoft environment, which had its own software that was not website-based. When I moved to Google Workspace, it was not seamless because I have to access it through a web view in the browser. Most of it does not have stable connection because it is based on web view. It would be great if Google Workspace had its own application built into the PC or a desktop application. The operation is a bit different from Microsoft, which makes it difficult for me. For example, with Microsoft, we could easily access the shared mailbox with one URL and have access to it. With Google Workspace, we have to set it up by ourselves inside our own mailbox, which is a bit difficult because of how it operates differently. I think it can be improved more. Currently, guidelines are just in the form of a document that we can read by ourselves. It would be really helpful if the guidelines themselves were built into the environment itself. Since Google Workspace is in web view, maybe that would be possible. That would be more helpful than just reading a document.
SC
Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Self-hosted file sync tool used to deploy custom web UIs.
I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market. It’s a full web application platform, an indispensable tool for a business of any size that needs to deploy any kind of custom web UI. If you build an ownCloud app, you’ve got authentication, storage, security, caching, and database layers already fully baked for you. You just need to build your UI and custom logic. Your app doesn’t even need to interact with files, sync, or interact with other ownCloud features. Any web UI can be included without ownCloud. It can even be a portal to web interfaces of other applications within a business using the external app to display external sites within ownCloud. This is the case as long as that site allows itself to be displayed within a frame.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's simple and easy to get working and started."
"It is quite a useful tool. It allows many people to work on a document. You can actually provide review comments and tag anybody to make the comment changes. You can also attach a document in Google Chat."
"The features of Google Workspace that significantly improve our work include real-time collaboration on documents, dynamic email for easy suggestions and approvals, integration with BigQuery for data analysis, seamless document sharing and storage in Google Drive, and advanced calendaring capabilities."
"G-Suite is a costly investment, but it is better than other solutions in terms of features, functions, usability, and uptime."
"I use Keep to assign tasks to a team of programmers, which is very easy."
"IMAP works very well from all environments."
"G Suite and all of Google were the first to have a built-in multifactor authentication without needing to purchase another product."
"G Suite is quite secure in that I can choose the people whom I want to share with, and it's not automatically available to everyone."
"I think it’s probably the best self-hosted file sync tool on the market."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is not intuitive at all."
"Less customizations than there used to be."
"The product could improve the number of participants allowed in a meeting and the strength of the meetings."
"I would rather migrate from Google to Microsoft, as I prefer Microsoft."
"Scalability is not as good as we would like."
"The tool should improve its on-prem capabilities to include people who are working offline. The pricing is also a challenge for both the Indian and overseas markets. The tool has a cap of 300 licenses. The product's price has also increased by 10 percent. Businesses are struggling to justify the ROI. Users cannot block emails unless they have a strong firewall."
"The feature set of Google Sheets is limited."
"In the next release, I would like to see more encryption of documents, mail, and things like that. There should be a better way to encrypt mail and documents that are pushed through this system. That would be some improvement or additional features that could be good to have."
"Even with fast disks, it still takes a fair bit of time to write most schema changes to multi-GB tables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay for Google Workspace based on your usage and the apps you use, but in my case, it's free, but if I used it a lot more, I'd probably need to pay. 15GB is enough for me, but I see myself upgrading and paying the additional charges for more storage regularly."
"2,500 Rupees per month per user."
"It's cheaper to run a couple of users in a Google platform than what it would be with Microsoft Exchange."
"We pay on yearly basis."
"The price per client within the business is too high."
"We normally purchase the license on a yearly basis."
"The main challenge regarding startups with identity services is you could be on a platform that works well but the services are expensive. For example, Microsoft Azure costs approximately $30 per user which is expensive. You end up choosing a different platform, such as G Suite Enterprise because it is priced reasonably and is less expensive than other solutions."
"The pricing is very high, although I cannot tell if this is the result of the Indian vendors artificially inflating it."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise29
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Workspace?
The company made the decision to migrate, so I'm not sure why specifically. The company is moving the data and the Microsoft subscription is no longer continued, so I have the choice to use Google ...
What needs improvement with Google Workspace?
Before I was in a Microsoft environment, which had its own software that was not website-based. When I moved to Google Workspace, it was not seamless because I have to access it through a web view ...
What is your primary use case for Google Workspace?
I have been using Google Workspace for file organizing, including Google Drive, Spreadsheet, Gmail, and Google Form, with most of my usage being in Spreadsheet. I do use Google Groups, which combin...
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Also Known As

G-Suite Enterprise, G-Suite, Google Apps for Business, G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G-Suite Basic, G-Suite Business, Google Vault
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

There are over five million businesses that use Google Apps for Business worldwide. Some key customers include The Roche Group, National Geographic, American Red Cross, City of Los Angeles, Flight Centre, and Konica Minolta.
CERN, Joy Global, Sciebo, Bauhaus, datto
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Google, Dropbox and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.