As your team grows, it’s important to keep an eye on your costs, especially for IT software and cloud services.
Google Workspace is a popular choice for many businesses due to its comprehensive suite of cloud-based tools that enable collaboration across teams and secure file storage.
However, as more and more people join that team, it’s important to keep track of how much you’re spending on Google Workspace and if what you’re paying for is actually being used.
This guide will cover ways to reduce your Google Workspace costs and save money while still providing your team with the tools they need to be productive.
What Google Workspace licences are there?
Before you can save money, you need to know what you are paying for. Google offers four primary tiers for most businesses:
- Business Starter: Great for small teams that need professional email domains and 30GB of storage per user.
- Business Standard: The most popular choice among workplaces. It increases storage to 2TB per user and adds features like meeting recordings and noise cancellation in Google Meet.
- Business Plus: More suitable for larger organisations, offering 5TB of storage, enhanced security (Vault), and eDiscovery.
- Enterprise: Designed for much bigger organisations with more demanding needs. Comes with unlimited storage, advanced data loss prevention (DLP), and premium support.
Read more: Picking a workspace plan: Starter vs Standard vs Plus vs Enterprise
How to reduce your Google Workspace costs
There are a number of ways that you can look into reducing your licensing costs for Google workplaces, including:
Annual plans are cheaper
One of the easiest ways to reduce your Google Workspace costs without sacrificing features across the team is to switch to annual plans rather than monthly ones.
By committing to an annual plan, you can save up to 16% compared to monthly plans.
It’s pricier upfront, but you’ll save money over the course of the year.
Email aliases
Businesses often have multiple email addresses for different departments, such as billing@, hello@, or finance@. While these email addresses are useful and are important for communication, they can also start racking up costs without you even knowing it.
The solution isn’t to scrap these email addresses, but to use Google Groups instead. There’s no need to pay for these role email addresses separately when you can use a collaborative inbox that costs you nothing and offers the same functionality, if not more.
Google Cloud Identity
One of the most common mistakes businesses make is paying for more expensive plans than some team members need.
You might be paying for Business Starter, Business Standard, or even Business Plus for staff who probably don’t need it. You can easily move them to Google Cloud Identity Free and save money.
If there are 10 users who you think don’t need Google Workspace, or need a very limited version of it, Google Cloud Identity Free is the way to go
Take advantage of multiple licenses
Similar to the above, there might be people on your team who need Google Workspace but don’t need all the features of higher-tier plans.
If you’re paying for a higher-tier plan for a team member who isn’t fully utilising it or doesn’t need it, consider moving them to a lower-tier plan to cut costs.
A final thought
Don’t let Google Workspace licenses sit unused and waste money.
Keep on top of your licence costs, remove and change tiers for those who don’t need them, and your monthly costs will drop significantly.
