Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed, secure cloud desktop service. Amazon WorkSpaces removes the complexity in managing hardware inventory, OS versions and patches, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
$21
per month
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Google Workspace enables teams of all sizes to connect, create and collaborate. It includes productivity and collaboration tools for work: Gmail for custom business email, Drive for cloud storage, Docs for word processing, Meet for video and voice conferencing, Chat for team messaging, Slides for presentation building, and shared Calendars.
For our use case, we found Amazon WorkSpaces well suited to remote work and other "work from home" and "work on the road" situations where the end user did not need to consume HD media (notably 4K) and did not need to produce any multimedia (audio, video, etc), but rather needed to perform more typical tasks such as web-browsing our corporate intranet and internal online apps, accessing files and using them through office productivity suites (Office - both online and desktop, and LibreOffice are under testing), etc.
Since our company is structured around Google Workspace at the moment, it is well suited for our entire workflow. I do have concerns though, for when it comes time for our company to have our own intranet built and how well the data migration will be from Google Workspace to that intranet that gets built.
It's terrific to have a suite of products that is built to work together, rather than having to piece tools together.
The email and calendar are the tools I use most often together. I use Gmail through Apple Mail rather than in the browser, and it works great. Also really easy to access and use my calendar.
I use the other suite of features both for my own company internally and to share files with clients. Super easy to use and share.
A single Google Workspace user should be able to have more than one Google Voice phone number (ideally)
At times, Google Meet seems a little clumsy (but I think they're about to address that with the new release...It may or may not be better. Who knows? :))
Some screen layouts are a tad clumsy, but they are sufficiently malleable that once one gets the hang of it, one can customize the environment quite a bit.
A viable (for small business), relatively-inexpensive, virtual desktop that would include/could include a Windows license or, at least close-to-perfect emulation.
It would be great if there was accommodation for those who send out a great deal of mail in a given day. Not everyone who does that is a spammer. Although, by Google standards, and relative to some others, Google allows for sending out a good bit of mail, for those who do mass volumes and would prefer not to have their own mail server, it would be good if Google could find a way to accommodate them.
There is no better solution for cloud storage and real time collaboration. The amount of features included in G Suite is unmatched and out of other things we’ve tried over the years, nothing comes close to being as great of a tool.
For its Primary purpose in our organization, providing developers and testers a clean, isolated and configurable environments which saves hours. The usability is nearly perfect. Usability is only suffering when user is into more intensive task like any kind of graphic works. At that time user is not experiencing the smoothness like a local machine
On the user end, it's great, probably some of the most user friendly products out there. On the admin side, it can get a little more arcane, but it's still better than a lot of other services. At worst I wrangle some CSVs to perform mass changes, but it's a far cry from the days of Powershell scripts or purely manual entry.
AWS support in general is pretty good, and WorkSpaces is no exception. We haven't had too much need for support but on the occasion we have, they've been quick to respond and helpful. Our issues have been resolved rapidly.
I have not had to use much support for G Suite, but I imagine it would be a great service, as is everything else that Google provides. I've searched for questions through the help center, and that was easy to use and easy to find. I'm sure I would have no complaints.
WorkSpaces (VDI) is a much more robust solution that competitor offerings when considering scalability and security. Amazon WorkSpaces has a substantial free tier to explore if this is the right solution for your project without purchasing other solutions. Considering this, AWS is a great solution to explore Virtual Desktop experiences and workstations for any growing remote business.
We selected Google Workspace for it's ease of use and clean UI. Microsoft Office granted does have a lot of features and may be more advanced in certain areas (Excel vs sheets), however for the range of functions we need, google workspace provided the necessary features for an affordable price. In particular Outlook compared to Gmail is more outdated and clunky, and I have found more issues with Outlook's deliverability in the past than I do with Gmail. Meet is also much more modern and clean, with useful features like record and Gemini that feel much cleaner than Teams. I have also found that inviting external users (ones that don't use the same workspace as you) is much easier through google meet than teams calls. Drive also has a much cleaner UI, and easier to adopt than OneDrive.
