Whole-organisation productivity suite migrations are among the most complex and disruptive IT projects a company can undertake. Email, calendar, documents, drive, and video conferencing all move simultaneously — and the entire organisation is affected.
Google Workspace Business Standard is $14/user/month. M365 Business Standard is $12.50/user/month — a slight cost advantage for M365 at scale. But cost is rarely the primary driver. Most switches happen because: a new enterprise IT policy requires M365, a parent company acquisition mandates standardisation, or the business needs Teams to replace Slack (with its included-in-licence advantage), native Office desktop apps, or SharePoint's document management depth.
This is a whole-org migration: every person's email, files, and calendar moves. The logistical complexity and training cost scale with headcount in a way that no other tool migration does.
Conservative estimates for a 30-person organisation. Whole-org suite migrations are high-complexity — adjust the risk buffer upward for your situation.
| Input | Suggested Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Current monthly cost (Google Workspace) | $420 | Business Standard, 30 users |
| New monthly cost (M365) | $375 | Business Standard, 30 users |
| Contract months remaining | 4 | Google annual contract mid-point |
| Migration hours | 90 | Email + Drive + SharePoint + deployment |
| Staff hourly rate | $85 | IT admin + specialist consultant blend |
| Retraining hours / person | 8 | Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint |
| Staff needing training | 30 | All users — whole-org migration |
| Downtime hours (total) | 60 | |
| Downtime cost / hour | $80 | Blended team productivity cost |
| Risk buffer | 20% | Whole-org migrations commonly overrun |
Pre-filled with conservative 30-person estimates. Scale the staff count and hours to your organisation size.
Open Calculator with These ValuesAll values are editable. Results are estimates only.
For a 30-person organisation, budget 8–16 weeks end-to-end: 2–4 weeks of planning and setup, 2–4 weeks of parallel running, and 2–4 weeks of training and full cutover. Larger organisations (100+ people) typically take 3–6 months with dedicated project management. Rushing the training phase causes months of productivity issues post-migration.
Simple documents convert well. Complex Sheets (with Apps Script macros, custom formulas, or complex formatting), Slides (with embedded charts), and Docs (with custom templates) often need manual fixes post-conversion. Google Apps Scripts (automation code) has no equivalent in Office and must be rebuilt as VBA or Power Automate flows — a significant engineering effort for automation-heavy organisations.
Only if you're currently paying separately for Slack AND Google Workspace, and Teams would genuinely replace Slack. If your team is happy with Google Chat, the Teams argument is weak — the migration cost will dwarf the subscription saving for years. The strongest case for M365 migration is enterprises that need SharePoint's document governance, Teams' video meeting depth, or compliance features (Advanced Compliance, Purview) that Google doesn't match.