6 Best Google Apps for Business

There are plenty of ways to make your life easier, including when at work, so we’re going to look at the 6 best Google apps for business. Why? Well, because Google is one of the biggest names out there and if its products aren’t already free, they’re pretty darn close to it.

Many products will help not only you as an individual but your entire team too. That’s achieved by providing tools that allow teamwork, others to give their input, to add or remove things from shared projects, to communicate at any given time, and so on.

Once called Google Apps for Work, nowadays it has a shorter name – G Suit. The tools it offers may already be familiar, since you probably use at least some of them in your private life. The major advantage of G Suite is the fact that it allows you to access the documents you work on or any other detail you’re working on from any spot in the world, whether that’s via a desktop computer or laptop or a smartphone, for instance.

Although most office type tools offer the ability to communicate with teammates nowadays, Google’s products are particularly easy to work with, and the company constantly works to improve even more and to kill out any and all bugs.

To start things off, we should mention that G Suite is not exactly a free service, but it’s not expensive either. There are two options companies can shell out money for. The G Suite Basic is $5 per user per month, while the G Suite Business is $10 per user per month.

The Basic version offers companies the possibility to create business email addresses that include people’s names and the company’s name, video and voice calls, integrated online calendars, online text documents, spreadsheets, and slides, as well as easy to create project sites, security and admin controls and 24/7 support. There are also 30 GB of online storage for file syncing and sharing.

The business version offers users unlimited storage (or 1TB per user if fewer than 5 users in the plan). There are also advanced admin controls for Drive and audit and reporting insights for Drive content and sharing. Exporting to different formats is also possible, as is the option to archive all emails sent by your company.

If you’re interested, you could also read up on the top 25 paid Android apps in 2014. Well, without further ado, let’s take a look at the 6 best Google apps for business.

6. Gmail

Everyone knows Gmail and probably has an account. The email service started as an invite-only project back in the day, but it has slowly and steadily become one of the most used email services in the world with the added benefit of being free.

When it comes to Gmail for business users, there are several plans available for users, as mentioned in the presentation above. As mentioned, employees can have their names attached to an email address that includes their company’s name, thus building trust between the two parties.

The iOS and Android apps available for users allow them to read and draft messages across mobile and desktop, even when there’s no Internet connection, with the possibility of sending out the message when you’re back online.

Gmail chat is also available, so employees can chat among themselves, or they can dial a customer’s phone number and host a video call straight from their Hangouts inbox, but more on that later. Gmail that ranks 6th in our list of best Google apps for business also comes with the added benefit of having an incredibly high uptime, with very little issues affecting Google’s servers over the years.

5. Hangouts

You may already have some personal experience with Google Hangouts as a messaging app if you have an Android-based phone. Well, Hangouts is very much an important tool for business users since it offers them the option to connect to people via HD video, voice or text. This will save companies quite a bit of cash otherwise spent on traveling to far away locations.

Hangouts for business users are also quite useful since they allow up to 25 people during conference calls. That includes both people within the organization and outside of it, such as partners and clients. The service works quite well, focusing on the people speaking at any given time and showing them on the screen rather than other people quietly listening in. The background noise muting is also quite efficient during calls. If you want, it’s also possible to share whatever is on your screen, with the projects you’re working on, such as presentation slides and so on.

One of the best parts about Hangouts, the number 5 in our list of best Google apps for business, is that the people in the group can join from anywhere, whether that’s from their desktop computer, laptop, tablet or phone.

4. Drive

Cloud storage is the hot thing nowadays, the easiest way to keep files and photos and everything else you need. Business solutions are just as efficient and useful for daily usage. Depending on the plan the company pays for employees will have 30GB of storage space for Drive and Gmail or unlimited space within the pricier plan. Alternatively, if there are less than five users in the company’s plan, there’s a 1TB limit.

As with any cloud storage service, once you designate a folder on your computer, the files deposited there will get backed up to the cloud automatically, constantly updating with any changes you make. What’s best about Google Drive that ranks 4th in our list of best Google apps for business, however, is the fact that you don’t need to have special software installed to open files since it comes with built-in support for over 40 file formats. That includes videos, photos, Office documents, PDFs and more.

3. Docs

While you may traditionally be used to Microsoft Word or the likes of Open Office, Google Docs is a viable solution, offering many of the options you’re already used to. What’s more, the documents get backed onto the Cloud. There’s also the added benefit that you get every change you make updated to the cloud-backed document immediately, with a full change history being available. It’s possible to share the link of these files to teammates, and they can make annotations, add content and so on.

Google Docs ranks third in our list of best Google apps for business. It also allows comments to be added, questions to be asked and more via the built-in chat. What’s best is that it works with all popular file types, including Microsoft Word and PDF.

2. Sheets

Everyone knows how important spreadsheets are in most offices and lines of work, so, of course, Google has an alternative of its own to one of the most popular software out there – Microsoft Excel. You can create spreadsheets directly in your browser without having to worry about installing any additional software. On top of creating basic tasks, you can also analyze data with charts, add filters and work around tables in a multitude of ways.

What’s great is that, since this is cloud-based, all files are saved online. Therefore, you can continue the work you started on your work computer on your personal tablet. Since teamwork is such an essential part of Google’s business apps, you can also add comments on the go, fire up chats with your coworkers and more.

Basically, you can enjoy people’s input wherever you are, limit the exposure of your workload, allow editing only to certain pages or rows and so on. Furthermore, you can view a full editing history, so you know who added to the spreadsheet, who removed content and more. There’s also the option to choose which teammates can edit the file, who can comment only and who can simply view by editing a list before you even share the link to the spreadsheet.

Google Sheets that ranks second in our list of best Google apps for business, comes with some advanced features to complement the fact that it allows calculations and powerful functions. For instance, it can be used to generate sophisticated charts, to generate table reports and so on.

1. Sites

One really cool feature that comes with G Suit is Sites that ranks first in our list of best Google apps for business. This is a platform enabling people to create websites for your team or your company without even needing to know the first thing about coding. Like many other site building platforms, Google’s Sites enables users to create rather complex websites with just a push of a few buttons. It’s pretty much as easy as writing a basic document.

Of course, you’ll need to pay specific attention to what you’re doing there, but the intuitive editor does a lot of the hard work for you. This means that you might be able to save up some money you’d otherwise spend on hiring web developers and programmers, which is ideal if this isn’t a large company we’re talking about or the needs aren’t too complex.

The service allows users to collaborate, just like with all other tools within G Suite. That makes it quite nice since input from others is always important when building a website, although people should keep in mind that too many opinions will likely cause more trouble than good.

All in all, this is a great suit, and it includes many other tools, such as Calendar, Slides, and Forms to name a few, as well as Google+, the social platform that didn’t really take flight after Facebook came out. Either way, these are the 6 best Google apps for business.