G Suite or Office 365, time to consolidate?

54and56

Looking for an experienced steer here.

I'm a self employed consultant offering two distinct services XXX & ZZZ both of which have .ie domain name webistes and both of which operate 2 email addresses 54and56@XXX.ie, info@XXX.ie and 54and56@ZZZ.ie and info@ZZZ.ie.

I originally signed up to G Suite for email hosting and G Drive cloud storage for all my documents etc but I use MS Office apps a lot so always had Office 365 software and have always used Outlook as my email client.

Over the last few years Microsoft have moved away from stand alone apps so I ended up buying an Office 365 Family subscription and moved all my storage onto OneDrive from G Drive as I figured most of my content is MS Office files so might as well align the two.

My annual Office 365 family subscription is up (€99 renewal) and I'm wondering should I just bite the bullet and switch everything to Microsoft 365 Business Standard which would include Teams as that's increasingly important during and likely post the Covid lockdown.

At the moment I pay for 4 G Suite licenses which cost €240 a year in total.

If I switch to Microsoft 365 Business Standard I guess I'll have to pay for 4 licenses as I'll be using two email addresses with each domain which would total €504 per annum or are users only defined by the installation and activation of the apps in which case there would be only one user and if so how could I then run 4 email addresses?

My instinct is I should bite the bullet and fully migrate to Microsoft 365 Business Standard but before I do I'd really appreciate some input from any experienced MS 365 users/admins here who can validate or correct my thinking.

Microsofts SKUs are constantly changing but it sounds like you might get away with:
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
10er a month, Office on 5 devices ticks all the boxes. 1TB of OneDrive storage. You can add multiple emails to the same mailbox. If it's just you that will work.

54and56

ronoc wrote: »

Microsofts SKUs are constantly changing but it sounds like you might get away with:
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
10er a month, Office on 5 devices ticks all the boxes. 1TB of OneDrive storage. You can add multiple emails to the same mailbox. If it's just you that will work.

Yep, just me for now anyway.

Thanks for sanity checking.

I'm a bit nervous of doing the migration myself so will start with a trial of Microsoft 365 Business Standard and see how I go.

54and56

54and56 wrote: »

Yep, just me for now anyway.

Thanks for sanity checking.

I'm a bit nervous of doing the migration myself so will start with a trial of Microsoft 365 Business Standard and see how I go.

It's really good value.

You have 30 days to mess around with it. You can test with the built in XXXXX.onmicrosoft.com domain.

Just make sure you have all your mail and contacts in a PST file if it goes pear shaped. Repointing the DNS and activating the domains on O365 is sometimes the trickiest part.

JohnnyFlash

We used GSuite for a number of years, but made the move to Office365 for small business and years back. It was a great idea tbh. Feels much more integrated and streamlined a service; we could get rid of the local file server we were using for storing files, and the iOS and Android office apps are very slick for the field workers who aren’t particularly tech savvy.

smuggler.ie

Combination of different lic's can be used to reduce cost, as example:
x1 Business Standard for install and activation of Office apps(up to 5 seats)
xN Exchange online(Plan1) , and/or xN Business Basic(Essentials)


....yes , you can install/activate Office under one license and set to use with other account(lower license)


In some instances(for likes of info@, etc), completely free shared mailboxes could be used...

54and56

ronoc wrote: »

It's really good value.

You have 30 days to mess around with it. You can test with the built in XXXXX.onmicrosoft.com domain.

Just make sure you have all your mail and contacts in a PST file if it goes pear shaped. Repointing the DNS and activating the domains on O365 is sometimes the trickiest part.

Yeah, I'm having great craic trying to get this set up all right!

I successfully set up all the DNS records for the XXX.ie domain, it's uncomfortable territory for me but the MS directions weren't too hard to interpret but I'm struggling to complete setting up DNS records for the 2nd ZZZ.ie domain I've added as I keep getting an error saying "You can only have one SPF record." which leads me to a help page thats waaayyyy over my head.

This could be a long process involving a lot of coffee and temporary suspension of the swear jar rules!!

54and56

54and56 wrote: »

Yeah, I'm having great craic trying to get this set up all right!

I successfully set up all the DNS records for the XXX.ie domain, it's uncomfortable territory for me but the MS directions weren't too hard to interpret but I'm struggling to complete setting up DNS records for the 2nd ZZZ.ie domain I've added as I keep getting an error saying "You can only have one SPF record." which leads me to a help page thats waaayyyy over my head.

This could be a long process involving a lot of coffee and temporary suspension of the swear jar rules!!

Depending on the DNS host there can be a lag in the records updating. As always youtube is your friend

ressem

You can use a web tool like mxtoolbox.com to check for existing SPF records
https://mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx
If one exists it'll have to be modified, not just another one added.

And as ronoc said... with Google apps and MS 365 you can have multiple email addresses and domains attached to one user.

E.g. an alias domain so a user that gets myaddress@XXX.ie automatically receives also myaddress@ZZZ.ie without any cost.
Or multiple alias email
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/add-or-remove-a-user-s-email-alias-cb86b53b-bebf-4e0a-b781-c49270d85ea3

Or a distribution list which acccepts mail from info@zzz.ie and redirects it to john@xxx.ie
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/create-distribution-lists?view=o365-worldwide

54and56@XXX.ie, info@XXX.ie and 54and56@ZZZ.ie and info@ZZZ.ie.
could all be received into one mailbox JohnDoe@xxx.ie, and then use rules to distribute into separate subfolders, or all thrown into the same inbox.

With Google Apps you can choose which to use as the Reply From address, chosen per-email at send-time.

But with Outlook 365 you are stuck with one primary From email address per user (without mucking around each time in the admin console/ powershell).
i.e. all mail sent would have From JohnDoe@xxx.ie

Buying one account for each mail, all to be read by a single person shouldn't be necessary, unless I'm missing something. (e.g. I think I've 10 SMTP aliases over 3 domains + and addition 5 distribution list email addresses attached to one 365 work license.)

Civilian_Target

Dunno if you ever got resolution to this - but I was in the same situation as you and moved away from GSuite to Migadu. (I knew I didn't want Microsoft for email.) Very happy - it's cheaper and works better

54and56

Civilian_Target wrote: »

Dunno if you ever got resolution to this - but I was in the same situation as you and moved away from GSuite to Migadu. (I knew I didn't want Microsoft for email.) Very happy - it's cheaper and works better

Yeah, went full MS. Had some wrinkles with my personal and corporate MS accounts conflicting and lost some old (>5 years) archived emails which annoyed me busy isn't a big deal really.

Have you say the MS support is amazing both in terms of timely responses (submit a ticket and generally get a call back within an hour) and quality of the helpdesk staff (almost always UK based) is superb.