Originally Posted by TenFour
If you need and use MS Office applications anyway it makes sense to at least consider Microsoft 365 for Business. The basic level is only $5 per month per employee and includes email at your own domain with 50GB of storage and 1TB of storage for files, plus online versions of the Office apps making it the cheapest online storage solution around. Love them or hate them, Microsoft's Office apps are the standard in most businesses. This also gives you company-wide calendars, contacts, Teams (for meetings), etc., which are critical to most businesses. Google's Workspace provides similar online productivity apps that are probably the second most used in the business world after Microsoft, but Google only provides 30GB of storage at the $6 per month level. Where Google's business offerings really shine are around email and online collaboration. Sharing in real-time documents, including editing, is excellent with Google's apps. Gmail is by far the best online business-grade email I have used in terms of spam filtering, reliability, and deliverability. No fuss, just works all the time. Nobody blocks Gmail or else they block most of the world. Fastmail is excellent for a smaller provider, and also includes contacts, a calendar, notes, and some file storage. No office apps, and not as much in collaboration stuff. I personally have never had a problem with FM customer service, though it can be a bit slow at times in responding. Nonprofits can get Google Workspace for free and can get Microsoft cheaply. Google and Microsoft offer 24/7 customer service via phone, email, and online. One advantage of the bigger players, like Google, Microsoft, and Fastmail, is that there are enough people using the services to generate robust online forums that can provide assistance and answer a lot of questions that customer service doesn't always do the best with.
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