[8cvor6j844qw_d6]

Recently helped a small business set up a Google Workspace account and we hit a wall during registration.

Told the owners that if Google is already being difficult during signup, imagine being locked out later with client work on the line. Pulled up a few horror stories about Google lockouts to drive the point home. They ended up with another workspace solution.

[bilalq]

When trying to upgrade from the Business Standard to Business Plus plan, Google will reduce your workspace storage from 2TB/user to 0 bytes for up to 24 hours while it upgrades you.

These are actual quotes from support:

> Upon checking, I see that the storage is showing as 0 bytes, because of the upgrade that has been done from business standard to business plus. Not to worry as this is very normal.

> I understand your concern and how important it is for the storage to be updated due to the business requirements. > > To give you full transparency into what is happening: when a Workspace subscription is upgraded, our backend systems must first detach your previous Business Standard storage allocation before provisioning the new Business Plus limits. During this transition window, the quota temporarily defaults to zero.

> Now please turn ON user storage limit nor shared drive storage limit. Once you turn ON, please wait for 5 minutes and then please turn it OFF.

^ That last attempt to try to force storage quotas to reset faster didn't work, btw. Still took hours.

[gedy]

Google Workspaces are just like Windows 11 on the network, and constantly running Windows update. You never know what changes, installed/uninstalled, or breaks.

[remus]

I feel like I must be using a different gogole workspace. I've used it every day for the last 10 years and just don't seem to have these issues? Stuff just seems to work for the most part? It's all way more stable and low-admin than any other desktop software I've used at least!

[dotancohen]

Are you a home user or corporate? Do you maintain a deployment for multiple users?

[remus]

Both

[bborud]

This is why I have I have started planning to transition away from Gmail for all domains I manage. Gmail doesn't actually get any better as a product - just more annoying as they try to upsell me on crap I don't want or need. It gets a bit more shitty every year.

The sheer size of Gmail means I have zero chance for support even though I pay for a service. The risk is too great to be acceptable.

[Aurornis]

> and we hit a wall during registration.

What does this mean? The scanning a QR code and sending a text message from this article, or something else?

[super256]

With which workspace solution did they end up with?

[p0w3n3d]

I assume "next leading brand" ;P

[cromka]

Hopefully that means Nextcloud ;)

[thisislife2]

No idea, but there's Zoho.com ...

[dakolli]

Cloudflare for email people, its the best and free

[xp84]

Can you clarify this statement please?

[dakolli]

https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/products/email...

[petu]

But it's only for receiving and you still need external mail server/address?

[traderj0e]

I'm confused too. Cloudflare is a DNS, anti-ddos, CDN, and light cloud

[traderj0e]

What do they use instead? Grass tends to be greener on the other side. Though it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft offered better support despite having a worse product.

[benoliver999]

I've been reasonably happy with it since 2013 now.

This last year however, I've started to hear complaints from staff of annoying popups about AI stuff people don't want to use

[FireBeyond]

Yeah, I can't even register a new Gmail/workspace account at this point. "This phone number has been used too many times."

[dotancohen]

This is useful. What were the horror stories?

Which workspace solution did the client settle on?

[thrownaway561]

Everyone hates on Microsoft, but their platform is 50x better than Google. Personally nowadays I would be looking at Proton if I was going to setup a workspace for my company.

[windexh8er]

This is hilarious. Microsoft has had many issues and outages with M365 in the last few years. I mean, I guess if you don't rely on mail, then sure.

[SV_BubbleTime]

We are 365 shop… I cannot think of one single time the 365 being down has affected us at all. Maybe you’re right I don’t know. Maybe your region is worse than my region.

[windexh8er]

Then I would gather you don't rely on mail like many of their customers. Just do a simple search of M365 outages and you'll get plenty just in the last year.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I would say we do rely on email. But that we have not noticed any interruption.

[windexh8er]

Just to put a pin in it, hard to argue with the official history [0].

[0] https://x.com/MSFT365Status

[b112]

If one takes the comment to mean, 50x better for support, I can believe that. After all, 50x almost nothing can be achieved fairly easily.

[nottorp]

Maybe MS actually has support. The UI is so much worse than Google's (which is bad enough for communication compared to Slack) that you just cannot win though.

[traderj0e]

Nobody cares about very temporary outages, they care about support

[xp84]

I have to say, I’m finding the “New Outlook” deeply unsatisfying coming from a GSuite company the past 4 years. MS was better in 2021 than it is now. The new one reeks of Jony Ive style minimalism. I constantly can’t find anything I need, and it takes a lot of fiddling to do simple things.

I generally have rooted for MS over GOOG on this type of thing, so I am not saying this out of fanboyism.

[eowln]

Outlook is better than Gmail? This is a hotter-than-the-Sun take.

Have you actually tried both?

[permalac]

Used them both for years.

Outlook eats Gmail for breakfast. The way shared accounts, lists, and work assignments are done in Outlook require their backend (share point inheritance), and google drive is pretty good even for some small files, but when all is considered O365 wins.

Then if you are in Europe, you should not use any of those and other very good solutions are currently growing super fast.