[dotBen]

Even at twice the price, the value of the collective Google Workspaces suite for most people is a no brainer.

I pay more per month to the calendar scheduling SaaS provider I use than I do to Google - who provide the calendar plus email, drive, docs, meet, etc.

An important lesson here for founders is price anchoring. Google is in a tough place because the prices are anchored to historically low amounts - they're increasing them by $1/m because that's about all they can do and the talk of 'all the next value' is their best attempt to break out of that anchor. If they were to bring this suite to the market today, I bet it would start at the $20/m mark.

[mdasen]

I guess it doesn't seem cheap compared to Microsoft 365. Google's $6 plan includes 30GB per user while Microsoft's includes 1TB per user. Google offers a $12 plan and Microsoft a $12.50 plan, but Microsoft's $12.50 plan includes Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc. for desktop. If your business is going to be licensing those apps, it seems like a good deal compared to Google's subscription.

Maybe people just really prefer Gmail? I know people have negative feelings toward Microsoft Teams.

I guess with Google Workspace, I'm not quite sure how it's that different from what people are used to getting for free (other than with corporate permissions). Google's $6 plan doesn't really include much for storage and their $12 feels like Microsoft's $6 plan.

If Google is in a tough place, I'd argue it's because they anchored their pricing to free with their consumer offerings. You're not wrong that Workspaces provides a lot of value compared to a lot of subscriptions. At the same time, it's something people are accustomed to getting for free and the $6 plan doesn't really offer much on top of their free services. Microsoft is throwing storage at their low-tier plan - offering a clear differentiator from their free service. Microsoft is offering their Office suite for their mid-tier plan - something that is a $440 purchase or $12/mo over the course of 3 years; you're basically getting all the services for free for the price of Microsoft Office. Microsoft is offering lots of device management tools that businesses need in their high-tier plan.

You are totally right that Google's pricing is low for some definition of low. Lots of SaaS that does a lot less costs more. It's just that Microsoft seems to be throwing more value for your dollar at the problem. If you're going to be buying the Office suite for a lot of your employees, wouldn't it make more sense to buy Microsoft 365? Or are Google's services so superior that you'd rather pay twice? That's not a rhetorical question, it's just been a while since I've had a basis of comparison.

Ultimately, you're right. It's kinda silly for businesses to quibble over even $50/mo/user given that they might be paying their employees more than that per hour. But I think that people aren't always rational when it comes to pricing and Microsoft is likely counting on that with their offering.

[MisterPea]

Why pay so much for a calendar scheduling service?

[btian]

Probably because G Workspace is comically cheap.

[MisterPea]

The whole industry of calendar scheduling boggles my mind. It seems Google/Microsoft consider them small fish to fry, but Calendly is a multi-billion dollar company

[minhazm]

Calendly is useful for scheduling meetings with people outside of your company. For meetings inside of your company Outlook and Google Calendar already have built in scheduling tools to help find a time that works for everyone.

Even then Outlook does have FindTime and has a plugin system to let you use third party tools like Calendly. There's also a product called Microsoft Bookings that's more of a direct competitor to Calendly. But at the end of the day Calendly's revenue is estimated at around $100 million from what I could find online and that's a drop in the bucket for Microsoft or Google.

[toomuchtodo]

Genuinely curious question: So why doesn’t Google or MS offer a built in Calendly functionality? Think of how your calendar auto populates with Zoom details if you schedule a Zoom meeting in Outlook. Simply because they consider it a market not with competing in vs a product feature? This has to have had come up in a product discussion somewhere in these orgs.

Edit: someone mentioned in thread that Gsuite supports this natively now, so I suppose my question is more MS focused.

[JoBrad]

MS has a few similar tools.

MS Bookings is pretty similar, but last I checked was more work to setup for an individual than Calendly.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/sched...

Their mobile app has a Send Availability function, which I can’t find in the desktop apps at all.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-send-my-...

And there’s also the ability to insert your calendar into an email from the desktop app. This is more coarse grained than the mobile app feature, and it basically sticks a table with your availability for some time period in an email.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/send-an-outlook-c...

I use Calendly

[amf12]

Google Workspace has this feature. It's mentioned in the post.

[asah]

fyi gsuite now supports calendly-like scheduling for paid subscribers. Works great.

[dotBen]

Calendly is the industry standard and works better than Google's which is weirdly implemented. Calendly as a company shouldn't exit really, Google should have had it wrapped up.

Value of easy scheduling of my time is worth the money of the extra vendor.