Google Workspace

Pros

Gsuite offers all the tools you need for collaborative document creation from forms, surveys, spreadsheets, slides (powerpoint), cloud storage, calendars, note taking, accounting and reports.

The templates available for education have many solutions available from lesson planners, calendars, quiz creation, gradebook, reports and meeting programs. Templates can be shared within the community and you can find templates that other schools use and share if it is not available in the standard set. The organizational email system is way more user friendly than other systems. I have worked with a team to establish Gsuite in two schools as the main system, and we are a Google school and the staff and admin do not need Microsoft office anymore as this system covers alternatives to those program.

It auto-saves your work and when working on collaborative documents it is easy to see who has input different items and easily go back and restore previous versions if needed.

Easily compatible to connect data to Google sites.

Cons

I wish that all the options that are available for excel exist in the Google Spreadsheets - e.g. being able to select multiple tabs and edit all of them at the same time.

As a private international school it is fairly costly with a charge per staff user. Support education in the private sector too - it needs a substantial budget for large schools.

Pros

The G Suite functionality is perfect for collaborating across different teams. The versioning system is quite intuitive as compared to other archaic methods. One of the most enticing thing about G-Suite is that it provides and end-to-end offering from domains, docs to storage with Google Drive. There are other competing products, but they do not really match the G-Suite with it's tight integration with different operating systems, and more specifically with the Chrome browser, that enables cross-platform support even for Linux distros.

Cons

G Suite docs are great for versioning and creating quick drafts and share ideas, however the docs that include, slides/spreadsheet/text are severely lacking in features that MS Office has, specifically in terms of the flexibility in customizing margins for example, or even basic features in editing complex math/symbols.

Additionally, support for Google Drive while great for Windows/OS X operating systems, is non-existent for Linux distros, specifically their Google File Stream offering, which was one of the driving motivation to switch over to the G Suite.

Pros

G Suite is extremely comprehensive, providing everything from e-mail (Gmail) to cloud storage (Google Drive) to office applications (Docs, Sheets and Slides). An organization can effectively use G Suite for nearly all of one's offices needs. G Suite has fantastic collaboration tools - especially when multiple people are working on the same document. In addition, G Suite's admin console allows for some impressive tweaks and customizations.

Cons

G Suite's interface is beyond clunky, especially when it comes to the Google Apps side of things. Using a web browser to work on a spreadsheet (Google Sheets) can be a lesson in frustration, as a good chunk of the interface is taken up by not only the web browsers interface, but various unnecessary items within the Google Apps interface. In addition, delving into any of G Suite's backend settings will take you down a rabbit hole of complexity and confusion.

Pros

Having G Suite allowed us to condense several different file organization/data base software programs into one (G Suite). This allows our non-profit animal rescue to store animal records (owner surrender forms, shelter paperwork, vet invoices, behavior evaluations) in an organized fashion. We also use G Suite for our forms (adoption, owner surrender, etc.) for information coming in. It is very easy to organize and/or search for information. All of our volunteers can have access to what we need without navigating complicated software or programs.

Cons

Some of the add-ons to particular features within G Suite can become discontinued and no longer supported which means we need to find new and similar add-ons to meet our needs. I do appreciate that these discontinuations are done with the purpose of maintaining client privacy and ensuring that add-ons are reputable.

Some people get frustrated when they do not take the time to organize their Drive and thus they have difficulties finding documents. Organizing documents on Drive is not as intuitive for many people as it is on the actual computer drive (I'm not sure why!).

Pros

The feature I like most about GSuite is the range of collaberation and communication tools it offers and its ability to integrate with my everyday web experience. I use Google Docs and Drive to collaberate on web projects. To give a specific example, I use Google docs to put together a sitemap and have my clients make edits to it before placing content on the site. I use GSuite as a way for clients to upload website assets and make them available to me for use on web projects.

Cons

GSuite is not very intuitive when it comes to setting up options on the administrative side. Everytime I want to look for a particular setting, I need to reference the documentation or Google help site to see where the option is - it's never where you would expect it to be. I can tell that the software was developed by programmers, but I believe they might want to add a few more UI/UX people to the team that develops the administrative interface.