Business G Suite Plans: What Are the Differences?

When you’ve decided that G Suite is the right productivity suite for you and your business, the next choice you need to make is which paid G Suite plan is the best. G Suite offers 3 paid plans for you to choose from: Basic, Business, and Enterprise. If you plan to use G Suite for business, then you’ll definitely want to choose between these packages so you can create custom G Suite for business emails for your company. Keep reading to find out what some of the key differences are between the packages so you can choose the best G Suite plan for your needs.

G Suite Plan Differences: Basic vs. Business

Secure Cloud-Based File Storage

The amount of storage space you get is one of the key differences between the Basic and Business G Suite plans. In the Basic package, you get 30 GB of cloud storage per user, whereas in the Business package each user gets unlimited storage space. If you will need a lot of space to store emails and files, then you should consider the Business package.

Vault for eDiscovery and Archiving

This is the other major difference between the Basic and Business plans. The vault for eDiscovery and archiving lets you hold onto, search for, and export data from everything in G Suite including Gmail, Chats, Groups, Drive, and Hangouts. This can be useful if you will ever need to search email or chat records for any reason, such as legal obligations, audits, or quality review.

Pricing

• Basic: $6 USD per user, per month
• Business: $12 USD per user, per month

G Suite Plan Differences: Business vs. Enterprise

The Enterprise package has all of the features of the Business package, including unlimited cloud storage and the vault for eDiscovery and archiving with cloud search. What makes it different are the extra administrative and security controls for enterprises such as the ability to:

• Enhance Google Drive security
• Scan email traffic for specific content
• Scan images for text
• Use a third-party archiving product to store email
• Analyze email logs in Big Query
• Use S/MIME encryption to enhance email security
• Set custom rules to automate mobile device management tasks

As you can see, these are fairly advanced features that would be most useful to larger businesses and corporations that have more sensitive date and need to take more security measures. In addition to the extra administrative and security controls, the Enterprise package has advanced data loss prevention for Gmail and Drive and a security center that provides security analytics, actionable insights, and recommendations from Google for best practices in a central dashboard.

Pricing

• Business: $12 USD per user, per month
• Enterprise: $25 USD per user, per month

Conclusion: Which G Suite Plan Do You Need?

For startups and small businesses, the Basic or Business plan will provide plenty of functionality for your business needs. You will get the professional business email as well as access to all of G Suite’s collaboration apps. The main deciding factor if you are choosing between the Basic and Business plans will be how much storage space you need. Keep in mind that to receive the unlimited cloud storage in the Business or Enterprise plan you need to purchase a minimum of 5 user licenses (otherwise you receive 1 TB of storage space).

You really only need to consider the enterprise plan if you need advanced administrative and security controls, but for most small businesses or startups this isn’t necessary. Google already has very strong security and data protection which is sufficient for all but the largest companies with sensitive data who may want to have more control and take further security measures.