Google Workspace Business Starter – Features & Prices (Review)

The Google Workspace Business starter is an affordable plan for individuals and small businesses. This Business starter comes with the most essential features required to run any type of online business.

For our company, I use the Workspace Business starter plan for a team of fewer than 10 users.

Google has recently upgraded G-suite and relaunched it as Google Workspace. The platform contains the same bundle of Google productivity tools, enabling a lot more integration between them. 

Google Workspace has come up with four unique pricing plans, keeping different business structures in mind. The following article will talk in detail about its first plan, the Google Workspace Business Starter. 

Google Workspace Business Starter Overview

The Google Workspace Business Starter is one of the basic business plans to get started. It will be best for businesses that work remotely and have limited team members. The plan contains all of Google Workspace productivity tools, which will immensely improve your business’s efficiency.

It is a professional suite that can accommodate upto 300 members and provide each one with 30GB of cloud storage. If you think that your business falls under this category, then Business Starter will be the most suitable Google Workspace plan. 

The new upgrade is made to allow a deeper collaboration between Google tools. The plan consists of an admin tool that will help you manage your entire Google Workspace portal. You can enhance the security of your sensitive business information by enabling security keys and 2-step verification.

The administrator will get 24*7 support to solve its portal problems. The admin will fully control all the services and features. This will enable you to manage your business using Google Workspace remotely.  You can also track your business’s performance by using reports and audits present in detail of your work insight tool.

Google Workspace Business Starter: Applications and features

The Google Workspace Business Starter plan contains some extraordinary Google productivity tool that provides services that every business requires to work smoothly.

The official website has bifurcated the Google Workspace into two parts the (production and collaboration) tools and (security and management) tools. 

So, here is a list of all the applications that you will get in the following plan.

Production and Collaboration tools

1. Gmail Business email

Through this, you get access to customize your Gmail domain name. The administrator mostly keeps its business name to look like a legitimate sender in the receiver’s eyes. For example, if your business name is XYZ, you can change it to @xyz.com from @gmail.com.

By using advanced machine learning, Gmail has achieved 99.9% of accuracy in detecting spam. Your inbox is likely to contain less than 0.1% of spam. Gmail also blocks phishing emails, which are mostly sent from unauthorized URLs. 

To protect your account, Google Workspace allows you to enforce security key features that will automatically detect and block these emails. The tool aims to provide its users with an add-free experience by blocking all the irrelevant and spam advertisements.

2. Google Meet

Google Meet allows you to stay connected with your team members via video calls. It offers a secure platform and global network to be able to achieve a smooth video calling experience. It is one of the most popular and extensively used Google productivity tools. 

All your information is encrypted in the process, and it enforces an anti-abuse filter to maintain the decorum of the meeting. Google Workspace allows a conference video calling of upto 100 members at a time, which can be conducted at a maximum stretch of 24 hours. 

It also gives you access to perform digital whiteboarding which means that the members can write on the screen during the meeting.

3. Google Drive

Google Drive provides space to create, store, and share files by limiting its access. All Google tools work on the cloud, hence, it is a safe and secure platform to store all your important device storage.

You can also enable guest access to share files with your clients. Google Workspace gives each member a maximum of 30GB of cloud storage. They can add more than 100 types of files to their drives.

4. Google Chat

Chat is a texting platform that helps you to stay connected with your team members. You can either chat one-on-one or create separate groups to discuss projects. It drastically improves the efficiency of your business. All the messages are stored for any future reference.

It is one of the most fluid platforms that can be integrated with your Gmail. You don’t need to hop on both the devices and can smoothly run your Gmail and Google Chat on the same interface. 

The administrator can create multiple virtual rooms in Google Chat and add upto 8000 members to every room.

5. Google Calendar

The Google Calendar will help you organize and schedule your team meetings. The admin can share the Google Calendar with its team members to keep track of each other's essential tasks. 

You just have to fill the meeting’s name in the assigned time and date column to inform all the members about the meeting. The platform can be accessed from both laptop and phone. 

You can also easily migrate your business calendar from other platforms like Outlook, Exchange, or iCal. If not, download it in the form of a .csv and .ics file and update it in your Google Calendar. 

Admins can reserve conference rooms, mentioning all the details regarding the capacity and resources needed to run the event smoothly.

6. Google Currents

Currents can be named one of your business social media tools in which you and your team members can post photos with hashtags, write comments, discuss topics, and many more. It helps in keeping the bond alive even if you are not with your team.

The members can post their thoughts, and others can give them instant feedback. The activities happening in Current will be visible to all members. The tool will improve your business efficiency by posting all the relevant topics in one place.

All the above are highlighted features. Check our Google Workspace Review to know more how to use it efficiently.

7 other productivity tools

• Google Docs- It is a platform that allows you to create, edit, and share files. The Doc owner can limit the access or add multiple people to work on it simultaneously. 

Google Docs is inbuilt with tools like smart compose, autocorrect, and grammar suggestions to help you with your writings.

• Google Sheets- This tool will help you organize a large chunk of data by using relevant formulas and presenting it in informational charts. It contains a smart cleaner, smart fill, and answers, which will help you get results faster.  

The platform can accommodate all types of file like .ods, .pdf, .html zipped, .csv or. Tsv.

• Google Sheets- You can create extraordinary presentations to represent technical data in simpler forms. Through slides, you can also integrate all your team members to see and give instant feedback by adding comments. 

The design platform contains various templates that can be used to make good presentations.

• Google Forms- It allows you to create forms that can be sent to your target audience for conducting surveys. Creating a Google Form is an easy process, you just have to add questions and answers using its drag and drop feature. The Google Workspace makes it easy to share the data across all applications to increase the productivity. 

All forms are accessible on phones and desktops. The platform also provides a deep analysis of all the responses converting into charts.

• Google Sites- The Google sites lets you create a well-designed page to present your professional business reports. You can also integrate your Google sites with the Docs and Drives to add all the crucial information. 

Anyone can quickly build and edit sites through its drag and drop options.

• Google Keep- The tool allows you to take notes of all the essential tasks that need to be done. Keep allows you to add photos, drawings, notes, audios, and lists. The platform will help your business to keep track of each other's activities and pre-plan events.

Security and management

To fully secure your business, the platform allows you to enable a 2-step verification process that will ask questions every time a person logs into your Google Workspace business starter account. 

Admins can also create a group-based policy to limit member access and only provide information under their working domain.

Google also protects users through its Advanced Protection Programme, where it enforces strong high protection policies to the account. It uses modern machine learning technology to scan untrusted apps, phishing emails, and other security threats.

Google Workspace Business starter Pricing

The Google Workspace Business starter costs $6 per user every month. You can choose this plan if you think it fulfills all your business requirements. 

In case you require more features choose Standard plan and I also did a comparison of Google Workspace Business Starter vs Standard showcasing the advantages of Standard plan. You can switch between plans when your organizations grows, so scaling will never been an issue here.

Conclusion

Google Workspace is one of the trustable platforms that will help you run your business smoothly. The Business starter plan is the basic plan but contains almost all google productivity tools.

The platform sincerely takes care of your business’s security by enforcing multiple safety policies that will block different types of intrusions.