Hidden Costs of Switching Office Suites for a 25-Person Design Firm

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace now cost the exact same $14 a seat, so the license price will never decide this for you. The real money is hiding in five lines nobody puts on the quote, and they do not all point the same way.

You looked up the prices. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both show a small number next to each plan. You did the quick math: that number times your people times twelve months. Done, right?

Not quite. The seat price is the smallest part of the real cost. And the seat prices are now the same.

Here is the short version. At matching tiers, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both cost $14 per user per month for the plan most design firms buy. So the license is not the deciding cost. Five other lines are: shared storage, AI, backup, archiving, and the one-time cost to move. Those lines are not equal, and they do not all point the same way. Google gives you about 40 times more shared storage at the same price. Microsoft charges extra for AI that Google includes. Microsoft usually wins on fit with the software your firm already runs. There is no single winner. Which suite is cheaper depends on your firm, and we will show you three firms where the answer comes out different.

One thing up front. We do not resell Microsoft licensing. We have no margin riding on this answer. That matters, because most articles like this one are written by somebody who does.

Every seat price and storage limit below comes straight from Microsoft or Google. We do not put a dollar figure on the one-time move, because that number depends on your firm.

The seat price (the part everyone sees)

Both suites sell three business tiers. At each tier, they now land on the exact same number.

Microsoft 365 runs $7, $14, and $22 per user per month for Business Basic, Standard, and Premium. Microsoft raised these on July 1, 2026. Business Standard went from $12.50 to $14. Business Premium did not change and stayed at $22.

If you already have Microsoft 365, you keep your old price until your next renewal after July 1, 2026. So do not budget $14 if your invoice still says $12.50. Check your renewal date first.

Google Workspace runs $7, $14, and $22 per user per month for Business Starter, Standard, and Plus on the annual plan. Google moved Business Standard from $12 to $14 back in January 2025, when it folded Gemini into every business plan.

Most design firms need the middle tier. On Microsoft, Business Standard is where you get the desktop Office apps. On Google, it is where you get Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Meet, plus meeting recordings and eSignature.

Same price. So if the license were the whole story, you would flip a coin. It is not the whole story.

Same $14 a seat. One gives you 1.25 TB of shared storage. The other gives you 50.

Storage, where the two are not close at all

This is the line most comparisons get wrong, and the one most likely to cost you real money.

Split storage into two buckets. Personal storage is your own files. Shared storage is the project folders your whole firm works out of. They are priced very differently.

Personal storage is a tie. Microsoft gives each user 1 TB of OneDrive. Google’s pool works out to plenty per person. Nobody gets hurt here.

Shared storage is not a tie. It is not even close.

Microsoft’s shared pool is 1 TB for the whole organization plus 10 GB per license. For 25 users, that is 1.25 TB total. Not per person. For the entire firm.

Google’s pooled storage on Business Standard is 2 TB per user, shared across the organization. For 25 users, that is 50 TB total.

Read that table twice. Adding 3 TB to Microsoft 365 costs about $7,200 a year, or $21,600 over three years. That dwarfs every other difference in this article.

Microsoft has a cheaper option called Microsoft 365 Archive, at $0.05 per GB per month. That same 3 TB drops to about $1,800 a year. But archive is cold storage (files are parked, not live), so it is right for closed-out project records and wrong for anything your team opens during the week.

Does this matter for your firm? It comes down to one question: do you plan to put your project archive in the cloud?

If your finished project folders stay on a NAS or a file server in the office, 1.25 TB is fine and this whole section is a non-issue. If you want ten years of drawing sets, submittals, RFIs, site photos, and scans living in the cloud where everyone can search them, Microsoft will send you a storage bill and Google will not.

Where your live Revit and CAD models should live

Do not put live, workshared Revit central models in OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or Egnyte. Autodesk says this plainly. File-based worksharing was built before cloud sync existed, and those services cannot do the file locking Revit needs. You get conflicted copies, failed syncs, and lost work.

But “not in a sync folder” does not mean “not in the cloud.” Autodesk names three supported places for a central model. Pick the one that fits how your people actually work:

• A file server on your office network: right for a firm where everyone sits in one building on one LAN.
• Revit Server: built for a firm with more than one office collaborating over a WAN.
• BIM Collaborate Pro (now called Forma Design Collaboration): Autodesk’s own cloud worksharing, right for hybrid and remote staff, and for sharing models with outside consultants.

One warning that catches small firms every year. Autodesk warns that file-based worksharing over a VPN causes slow syncs and crashes. So if you have people working from home and you put the models on an office file server, you have built a problem, not a solution. That is the case where BIM Collaborate Pro is worth the money.

None of these three options are Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Your model host is a separate decision and a separate line in your budget. Do not let a suite salesperson tell you their cloud drive solves your BIM problem.

AI is now a real line item

Most cost comparisons still leave this out entirely.

Google includes Gemini in Business Standard at $14. Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, Meet, and Chat. No add-on, no upsell.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard at $14 includes Copilot Chat, which is the free-standing chat window. It does not include Copilot inside Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams. For that you buy up:

Microsoft is running a promo on the Copilot Business add-on, $18 instead of $21, through December 31, 2026. First year only, with an annual commitment.

So if you want real AI for all 25 people, Microsoft costs about $8,550 more over three years on the cheapest path.

The honest counterweight. Most firms do not need AI on every seat. Many buy it for five or ten people and skip the rest, which shrinks the gap a lot. And “included” is not the same as “good enough for your work.”

The add-ons nobody quotes you

Backup for your cloud data. This surprises people every time. Microsoft and Google keep your data available. They do not keep a backup you can restore from. Microsoft says so in its own shared responsibility guidance: recovery from accidental deletion and ransomware is on the customer. If somebody empties a project folder or an account gets hacked, you want your own copy. Third-party backup is a per user monthly cost, and you should budget it on either suite. This is what we call the 3-2-1 rule, and cloud data is not exempt from it.

Email security. The built-in spam filter is not phishing protection. Microsoft is closing part of this gap. Business Standard is picking up URL time-of-click protection and a 50 GB mailbox bump in the summer 2026 rollout, so check what you already have before you buy a filter twice. If you still need one, budget for it on either suite.

Archiving and legal hold. Litigation Hold on a mailbox needs Exchange Online Plan 2, or Plan 1 plus the Exchange Online Archiving add-on. Business Standard ships Plan 1, so it needs the add-on. Business Premium already includes archiving, so it does not.

Google puts Vault in Business Plus at $22, and Vault does retention, hold, and eDiscovery with no add-on. So at the $22 tier, both suites cover legal hold.

Why a firm should care. Your E&O carrier and your contracts almost certainly expect you to keep project email and records for years after substantial completion, and how many years depends on your state’s statute of repose. Ask your carrier and your attorney what your number is, then price archiving to match. Do not guess. This is the one line on the page where being wrong costs you legal standing, not just money.

Backup and email security cost about the same on both suites, so they do not pick a winner. They just make your real bill bigger than the license quote. Get real prices for both before you budget.

The one-time cost to move

Everybody wants a single number here. A single number would be a lie.

Moving a firm means mailboxes, files, calendars, contacts, shared drives, and permissions, all moved without losing anything. Then people relearn their day. Tickets go up. Simple tasks take longer. That dip is real money even though it never shows on an invoice.

The cost depends almost entirely on distance. Moving toward what your team already half-lives in is cheaper.

For example, let’s say your firm runs desktop Office and Outlook today. Moving to Microsoft 365 is a short trip. Moving to Google means new tools for everyone, so the labor, the training, and the slow weeks all run longer. We are not putting a dollar figure on it here, because the honest number depends on your mailboxes, your files, and your setup.

This is the line your real quote will differ on most, and anyone who hands you one confident figure without looking at your tenant is guessing.

What makes a move bigger:

• Shared mailboxes, distribution groups, and public folders: these do not have clean equivalents in Google and get rebuilt by hand.
• Outlook rules, signatures, and old PST files: years of them, and people forgot they had them.
• MFA and conditional access: your whole security setup gets rebuilt from scratch on the other side.
• Anything integrated with email: see the section below on software fit.

And if your firm already lives in Google and runs great there, flip all of this around. The cheaper move is always toward what your people already know.

Three firms, three different answers

Here is the same 25-person firm, three ways. The tables count only costs we can source from Microsoft and Google: licenses, storage, and AI. Then we weigh the move against what is left.

Firm A: Office-native. Models on an office file server. Finished projects archived to a NAS. No firmwide AI.

On sourced costs, this is a tie. So the move decides it. For a firm that already runs Office, staying with Microsoft is the shorter, cheaper move, and Microsoft fits design software better. This is the most common small firm, and it is why the conventional answer is usually right.

Firm B: Same firm, but it wants 4 TB of project records live in the cloud and searchable.

Microsoft needs about 3 TB beyond its 1.25 TB pool, which is $21,600 over three years at $0.20 per GB. Google needs nothing. It already has 50 TB.

Google comes out about $21,600 lower before the move, and no move estimate closes a gap that big. If those records can live in Microsoft 365 Archive at $0.05 per GB instead, the extra storage drops to about $5,400 over three years. Then the gap is about $5,400, and for an Office-native firm the move to Google could eat most of it. So the real question is not which suite. It is whether your archive needs to be live.

Firm C: Same firm, but it wants AI on all 25 seats.

Google comes out about $8,550 lower before the move. For an Office-native firm, the move to Google eats into that, so get a real move quote and compare. And many firms buy AI for five or ten people, not 25, which shrinks the gap a lot.

Three firms. Three different answers. That is the actual finding.

The argument the spreadsheet does not show

If you only read the tables, Google looks better than most people expect. So why do most small firms still land on Microsoft?

Because of what plugs into it.

Many practice management tools, such as Deltek Vantagepoint, Ajera, BQE, and Newforma, integrate most deeply with Outlook. Bluebeam and your Autodesk workflows sit next to Office, not next to Docs. Your consultants email you .docx and .xlsx files and expect the same back. Spec sections and door schedules break in small, constant, infuriating ways when they round-trip through Google Sheets.

That is a real cost with no line item. It shows up as friction, every day, forever. This is the honest reason Microsoft usually wins for design firms, and it is a far better reason than any training estimate.

Flip side, because it deserves saying. If your firm already runs on Google, your people are happy, and your practice management tool is web-based, switching to Microsoft to chase a fit problem you do not have would be a waste of money.

Frequently asked questions

We will price it out for your real firm

A blog table is a map. Your firm needs the real number.

The right tier, the storage you will actually use, whether AI belongs on 25 seats or five, and an honest migration quote based on where you start today. Those four answers move the total by tens of thousands of dollars, and none of them come off a pricing page.

Our managed IT services help small architecture and engineering firms price these moves and run them cleanly, so you do not lose files, email, or a week of work. Based in East Tennessee. Serving firms nationwide. So your team can focus on the design, not the migration.

If you want the real three-year number for your firm, give us a call for a free IT checkup. We will tell you straight which suite costs less over time, even when it is not the answer we expected.

Sources: Microsoft 365 Pricing and Packaging Updates, effective July 1, 2026; Microsoft 365 Business Plans and Pricing; SharePoint limits, Microsoft Learn; Buy more OneDrive and SharePoint storage, Microsoft Learn; Pricing model for Microsoft 365 Archive, Microsoft Learn; Exchange Online Archiving service description, Microsoft Learn; Place a mailbox on Litigation Hold, Microsoft Learn; Microsoft 365 Backup best practices whitepaper; Microsoft 365 Copilot Plans and Pricing for Business; Google Workspace Pricing Plans; Google Workspace: the future of AI-powered work for every business; Buy more Google Workspace storage for your organization; Autodesk: How to use cloud-synced services with Revit files; Autodesk: Revit file-based worksharing over WAN or VPN