Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace vs Proton vs kSuite (2026)

My Medium friends can read this over on Medium.

In June I wrote about the best productivity suite for a small team. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and a few sentences on the European options.

Since then Proton worked on their workspace offering, Microsoft raised its prices, and Europe got a handful of new suites nobody has heard of yet.

So let's do a bigger comparison. Not suite by suite, but part by part. Mail, chat, video, documents, files, tasks, admin, AI, and where your data lives. Because that's where the differences are. And some of them are big.

There is no winner for everyone. But I can rank and share what my opinion is.

1. Price

I start with the price, because the entry price is almost never the price you end up paying.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs 7 dollars per user per month, Standard 14, Premium 22. Basic and Standard went up on July 1, 2026, from 6 and 12.50, per Microsoft. In the EU you can also buy the plans without Teams, for at least 1.50 euros less on Basic and 3 euros less on Standard.

The catch: Basic has no desktop apps. Word and Excel only in the browser. Most people who pick Microsoft for Office want Standard.

Bigger catch: Copilot is not really included here. If you want a real Copilot in your account, that’s a separate add-on that’s quite pricey at 21 dollars per seat.

Google Workspace Business Starter is 6.80 euros per user per month on the German pricing page, with a one-year commitment. Standard is 13.60, Plus 21.10. Monthly billing costs more (in dollars: 8.40 instead of 7 for Starter). Gemini is included in every plan, but in Starter only inside Gmail.

The catch: Starter is thin. No meeting recordings, no transcripts, 30 GB of storage, one booking page. Most teams end up on Standard too.

Proton Workspace Standard costs 12.99 per user per month billed yearly, 14.99 monthly. Premium is 19.99. Same number in dollars and euros.

kSuite by Infomaniak* costs 1.58 euros per user per month on Standard, 6.58 on Business and 12.41 on Enterprise, billed yearly on the German page. Business and Enterprise cost half in the first year (3.29 and 6.21). There is also a free plan.

mailbox (formerly mailbox.org) costs 4 euros on Standard and 12 on Premium since September 1. Plus a flat service package for business accounts, from 25 euros a month. Small print, but it adds up for a team of three.

So in short: kSuite is the cheapest serious option. Google and Microsoft are about the same once you pick the plan you need. Proton is the most expensive.

2. Mail and calendar

Email is still where most work starts. And the differences here are big.

Microsoft is the most complete. Mailboxes grew to 100 GB with the price increase. Shared mailboxes like info@ or support@ cost nothing extra. Room mailboxes, delegation, Bookings for appointments, around 300 aliases per mailbox, per Microsoft's limits page.

One Mac detail: the old Outlook for Mac stops working with Microsoft 365 in October 2026, per Microsoft. The new Outlook is the only way forward.

Google gives you 30 aliases per user and a "collaborative inbox" through Google Groups. It works, but it's basic. And there is no Gmail app for the Mac. You use the browser, or Apple Mail via IMAP, where Gmail's labels turn into folders.

Proton has no shared mailboxes. At all. Users have been asking since 2019. You get email groups instead, so a mail to sales@ goes to several people, but they reply from their own address. For Apple Mail you need Proton's Bridge app. And Proton Calendar doesn't do CalDAV, so it doesn't sync with Apple's Calendar app. You can only subscribe to outside calendars, read-only.

That's a lot of friction for a Mac user.

kSuite is interesting here. Infomaniak has its own Mail app for Mac and iPhone, 4.7 stars on the App Store. Mail works in Apple Mail via IMAP, calendar and contacts sync with Apple's apps via CalDAV and CardDAV, with ready-made profiles. Addresses can be shared between people with their own permissions. Rooms can be booked. What's missing is a public booking page like Calendly.

So in short: Microsoft for shared inboxes and anything admin. kSuite if you live in Apple Mail and Apple Calendar. Google in between. Proton last, for now.

3. Chat

This is the one section where the result is clear before we start.

Microsoft Teams has no equal. Not in this scope. Up to 25,000 members per team, 1,000 channels, shared channels with other companies, a full phone system (Teams Phone, paid extra), webinars and town halls on Standard and up, meeting room hardware, Loop components, per Microsoft's specs. Everything in one app.

It's also heavy. On the Mac, users report high memory and CPU use. Microsoft rolled out an "Efficiency Mode" this summer that lowers video resolution to deal with it.

Google Chat has spaces, threads and huddles for quick calls. But group chats with people outside your company only became available in July 2026. Phone calls are the Google Voice add-on, 10 to 30 dollars per user. And livestreaming for bigger audiences isn't in any Business plan.

Proton has no team chat. None. Proton's own blog post on internal communication from June lists Slack and Microsoft Teams as options. It's not on the 2026 roadmap either.

kSuite has kChat. Channels, private channels, direct messages, guests from outside, webhooks and bots. It's built on Mattermost, which is a Slack-like open-source chat. Calls open a kMeet video meeting. It's the closest thing to Slack on the European side. But the integrations are few. And the kChat Mac app has 18 ratings on the App Store. Eighteen.

mailbox has no team chat. Nextcloud just added "channels" to its Talk app in September, but they are broadcast channels. Moderators post, everyone else reads.

If your team lives in Teams, there is no European replacement for it yet. Not one product. You'd have to glue together a chat, a video tool and a phone system from three companies.

So in short: Teams, then Google Chat, then kChat. Proton and mailbox don't compete here.

4. Video

Video calls are a commodity by now. The differences are in the details.

Teams handles 300 people on every Business plan, with breakout rooms and recordings. The old Live Events were retired on June 30, 2026. Dialing in by phone is a paid add-on.

Google Meet: 100 people on Starter, 150 on Standard, 500 on Plus. Recording and transcripts only from Standard up. Starter can't record at all.

Proton Meet is brand new (March 2026) and end-to-end encrypted. 100 people on Standard, 250 on Premium, meetings up to 24 hours. Recording only happens locally on the host's computer. No cloud recording, no transcripts, no breakout rooms.

kMeet is based on Jitsi. Recordings go straight to your kDrive, up to three hours each, with an optional text summary. End-to-end encryption only works in Chromium browsers and the desktop app, not on phones.

So in short: Teams and Meet (Standard) for anything formal. Proton for the most private call. kMeet is fine for a small team.

5. Documents

This is where Microsoft and Google split the world. And where the European ones are catching up slowly.

Microsoft has the desktop apps. The full Word, the full Excel, every track-change and pivot table the client expects. That's still the reason people pay, mostly.

On the Mac, though, Excel is not the full Excel. Power Pivot doesn't exist on the Mac, and Power Query only connects to a short list of sources. And Publisher stops working on October 1, 2026. Windows-only anyway.

Google Docs and Sheets are still the best at two people typing in the same file. For collaboration, it's king. Sheets doubled its limit to 20 million cells this month.

But there are no desktop apps. And offline editing only works in Chrome or Edge, not in Safari. When you open a client's Excel file in Sheets, macros don't run, charts become images, and locked cells become editable.

Proton has Docs and Sheets, both end-to-end encrypted, with comments, suggestions and version history. Sheets only arrived in December 2025. There is no presentation app. No Slides, no Keynote, no PowerPoint equivalent. Not on the roadmap either.

kSuite edits Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in the browser, with Docs, Grids and Points (built on OnlyOffice). Files over 100 MB can't be edited online. On Business and up you can also use Microsoft's Office Online, hosted in Switzerland. But you need your own Microsoft license for that. Which is kind of funny.

Euro-Office, the European fork of OnlyOffice behind Nextcloud and IONOS, is getting a desktop app "in the next few weeks", per Nextcloud. On the Mac only for Apple Silicon.

So in short: Microsoft if you need desktop Office, Google for working together, kSuite as the cheap middle. Proton can't replace PowerPoint.

6. Files

Storage is where the European ones win. By a lot. Surprisingly.

OneDrive gives every user 1 TB, and on Business plans you can't raise it anymore. The Mac app uses Apple's own file system integration, so files show up in Finder and download on demand.

Google Drive gives 30 GB per user on Starter, 2 TB on Standard, 5 TB on Plus, pooled across the team. Drive for desktop streams or mirrors your files on the Mac.

Proton Drive gives 1 TB per user on Standard and 3 TB on Premium, end-to-end encrypted, with up to 200 versions per file. But no shared team drives yet (announced, not launched), and search only finds file names.

kDrive gives 50 GB per user on Standard, 3 TB on Business and 6 TB on Enterprise, with files on demand on the Mac. Every file sits on three storage media at two sites in Switzerland.

3 TB for 6.58 euros. That's the storage deal of this list.

So in short: kSuite Business for storage per euro, then Proton, then Google Standard. Microsoft's 1 TB is fine for most.

7. Tasks

A good task manager and a real project tool are two of the most important things in any business. None of these suites does it well.

Microsoft Planner is the only project tool in the bunch. Boards, buckets, assignments. But the notifications are still… not great.

In early 2026 Microsoft replaced task comments with a "task chat". Since then, a new message only notifies the people who are @-mentioned. Followers and everyone else who worked on the task don't get anything anymore, and there's no setting to switch it back. And due dates only show up as a morning email digest, per Microsoft's help page. No push notification when something is due. No reminder at a set time.

For a tool that's supposed to keep a team on track, that's a strange gap.

Google Tasks has due dates, subtasks, and you can assign tasks in Docs and Chat spaces. But no boards, no projects. Planner is not great. But to be fair, Google isn't better here.

Proton has no task manager. It promised to-do lists in 2022. Nothing yet.

kSuite has a simple task list inside the calendar. Nextcloud has Deck, a Kanban board, which is more than most here.

So in short: Planner, with all its flaws, then a long gap. Many teams probably pay for a separate tool anyway.

8. Admin and security

Boring for some. But this is what the person who sets it all up deals with every week.

Microsoft puts the serious security tools in Business Premium (22 dollars): device management with Intune, conditional access, Defender, data loss prevention, per Microsoft. Basic and Standard get multi-factor authentication and, since July, link scanning in emails.

Google keeps Vault (archiving and eDiscovery) for Business Plus. Data loss prevention and client-side encryption are Enterprise only. Basic device management is in every plan.

Proton lets admins force two-factor authentication for everyone and has an activity monitor. Retention policies only on Premium. Single sign-on only for Pass and VPN, not for Mail and Drive. No device management.

kSuite lets admins force two-factor authentication too. But it doesn't cover the desktop and mobile apps, per Infomaniak. They keep working without it. Single sign-on is Enterprise only.

Side note: Apple Business gives you device management for Macs and iPhones for free now. That pairs well with any of the European suites.

So in short: Microsoft Premium by a wide margin, then Google. The European ones are fine for small teams, not for compliance-heavy ones.

9. AI

Every suite has an AI assistant now. The question is whether you pay for it when you don't want it.

Microsoft includes Copilot Chat, and since January it can read your inbox and calendar in Outlook. The full Copilot, with access to all your files and chats, is 21 dollars extra per user.

Google bundled Gemini into every plan in January 2025 and raised the prices for it. No opt-out. Since February there's a paid add-on for more AI on top.

Proton has Lumo, only on Premium. It runs on Proton's servers in Europe and doesn't keep logs. But it's a separate app, not built into Docs or Drive.

Infomaniak has Euria, hosted in Switzerland, not used for training. It's in Mail from Standard up and can read your kDrive files from Business up.

So in short: Google and Microsoft are more capable. You also pay for them either way. Euria and Lumo are the private options.

10. Where your data lives

For many of us in Europe, this is the reason to read this far.

Microsoft and Google are American companies. Under the CLOUD Act, US authorities can demand data from them wherever it's stored. Microsoft France's legal director said under oath in 2025 that he could not guarantee French data would stay out of US hands. Microsoft's EU Data Boundary keeps data stored in Europe. It doesn't change who owns the company. Google lets Standard and Plus customers pick Europe as the storage region. Client-side encryption is not available in any Business plan.

Proton is a Swiss company in Geneva. But a lot of its traffic runs through a data center in Frankfurt now, per Proton's own outage report. And the encryption has limits: subject lines and sender and recipient addresses are not end-to-end encrypted.

Infomaniak runs its own data centers in Switzerland. In May 2026, the founder gave the majority of the voting rights to a public-interest foundation. So no one can buy it without the foundation's approval.

mailbox is hosted in Berlin, with BSI C5 and ISO 27001.

One caveat. Swiss and German hosting keeps you out of the CLOUD Act. But not out of reach of everyone. Since August, Europe has its own version, the e-Evidence Regulation. Sovereign means fewer governments can get to your data. Not none.

So in short: kSuite and mailbox, then Proton. Google and Microsoft can't promise it.

11. Apple

I've wished for this one before. And Apple got a step closer this year. Sort of.

Since April 14, Apple Business is free in more than 200 countries. Device management, company accounts for your staff, and business email, calendar and a company directory with your own domain.

But… the email part is US only. Apple's own guide says it can be added "only for organizations based in the United States." So for me in Germany, Apple Business is free device management. Not a workspace.

The rest are the apps we know. Pages, Numbers and Keynote do real-time collaboration for up to 100 people. But while a document is shared, you can't use tracked changes. The web versions are weak. And everyone needs an Apple Account. FaceTime tops out at 32 people, with no recording. Reminders can assign tasks in shared lists. And there's no team chat.

What's missing is everything I listed in the Apple workspace Apple should build. The pieces are still all there.

Would I use it? Yes. Over Microsoft and Google, any day.

Will they build it? Probably not.

12. Downsides

Moving costs more than any plan. Twenty people, three years of shared drives, calendar invites and permissions nobody documented. Google made it easier this summer, it can import Teams chats and OneDrive now. Proton can only migrate whole Google organizations so far, Microsoft 365 is "planned". Leaving Google isn't instant either: an organization export takes between 48 hours and 14 days.

Nobody is outage-free. Google went down for over an hour on May 30. Infomaniak for about four hours on July 15. Proton had all services offline for several hours at night on August 27.

Also, people might not know the European names. Expect a few "is this safe?" replies when you send a kDrive link for the first time.

And the European suites are younger. Fewer integrations, fewer admin tools, smaller support teams.

The Bottom Line

For most small teams, Google Workspace seems to be the new default. Maybe rightfully so. If you live in Excel and Teams, you probably need Microsoft. Unfortunately. If privacy is the job, Proton and kSuite are solid. As long as you can live without chat and slides.

If Apple ever did a proper Apple Workspace, I’d be totally intrigued. What about you? What do you use?

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