Google Workspace + EDR + MDM vs Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium puts email, device management and endpoint security in one licence at $22 per user. NetNXT builds the same coverage from Google Workspace, a dedicated EDR and a cross platform MDM, then runs it for you.
Which one is right depends on what your team actually works on. If your fleet is all Windows, the Microsoft bundle is hard to beat. If you run Macs, Linux machines or a mix of both, this page shows exactly where the bundle falls short and what it costs to close the gap.
How to Choose Between Google Workspace + EDR + MDM and Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Four things decide this in almost every evaluation we run. Work through them in order and the answer usually becomes obvious before you look at price.
Start with your device mix, not your email preference
What your people work on predicts the answer better than anything else.
- Mostly Windows, one office: Microsoft 365 Business Premium fits well. Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for Business were built for that environment first.
- Mac and Windows mixed, or any Linux: Intune manages Macs, but with far less depth than Windows. Linux servers are not covered by the bundle at all.
- Design, dev or creative teams: a dedicated MDM and EDR treat macOS and Linux as first class instead of as a secondary agent.
Decide how deep your security bar really is
Included and sufficient are two different tests. Check the bundle against the control you are audited on.
- Baseline protection is enough: Microsoft Defender for Business gives you next gen antivirus, basic EDR, attack surface reduction and vulnerability management in the licence. Strong value for a small IT team.
- You need best of breed detection: a specialist EDR adds behavioural AI detection, one click ransomware rollback and threat hunting, with stronger Mac coverage than Defender.
- You want defence in depth: keeping your productivity vendor and your security vendor separate means one platform issue does not take out both layers.
Check what each licence tier actually includes
Most surprises in this comparison come from tier boundaries, on both sides.
- On Google: Business Standard includes Gmail, Drive with 2 TB pooled per user and Gemini across all apps. Endpoint management is at the fundamental level, and Google Vault for legal hold and eDiscovery starts at Business Plus.
- On Microsoft: Business Premium includes Microsoft Entra ID P1, Intune and Defender for Business, and now adds Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a paid add on at around $21 per user per month.
- On both: the business tiers cap at 300 users. Past that you move to Enterprise on either side, which changes your cost base, so model it early if you are growing fast.
Be honest about who will run it day to day
Licences are the cheap part. Configuration, tuning and response are where the real cost and risk sit.
- One vendor, one bill, one console is a real advantage. That is Business Premium's strongest argument and we say so to clients regularly.
- Multiple tools only pay off when someone owns them. Policy design, alert triage and rollback decisions need an owner. Unmanaged, a best of breed stack performs worse than a well configured bundle.
- Where NetNXT fits: we run the multi vendor stack as one managed service, so you get the specialist depth without your team learning four consoles.
Feature Comparison: What You Get in Each Stack
Capability by capability, at the tiers most SMB and mid market buyers evaluate. Gaps are marked on both sides so you can see the full picture.
| Capability | Managed by NetNXT Google Workspace + EDR + MDMBusiness Standard tier | Microsoft 365 Business PremiumSingle vendor bundle |
|---|---|---|
| Business email and calendar | Gmail and Google CalendarFull featured business mail and shared calendars. Mailbox migration effort applies when moving from Exchange. | Exchange Online50 GB mailbox per user, rising to 100 GB from August 2026, with Outlook on desktop and web. |
| Office and productivity apps | Docs, Sheets and Slides, web firstWorks offline in Chrome but there is no installed desktop suite. Heavy Excel users may struggle. Some firms keep a handful of apps only Microsoft 365 licences alongside. | Desktop Office plus webInstalled Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Still the strongest option for complex spreadsheets and macros. |
| Cloud storage | 2 TB pooled per user on DriveTwice the storage and pooled across the organisation, so heavy users can draw more without buying add ons. | 1 TB OneDrive per userPlus SharePoint team sites. Fixed per user allocation rather than pooled. |
| Video conferencing | Google Meet, 150 participantsRecording to Drive included. Enough for typical SMB meetings and training sessions. | Microsoft Teams, 300 participantsLarger meeting capacity and deeper chat and channel collaboration built in. |
| Identity, SSO and MFA | Google identity plus JumpCloudMFA, SSO to SAML apps and security keys. Context aware access is limited at Business Standard, so we add the JumpCloud Device and Identity tier when you need conditional access parity. | Microsoft Entra ID P1Conditional access, SSO, MFA and self service password reset. The benchmark for Windows centric identity. |
| Device management for Windows | JumpCloud MDMFull Windows policy control, patching, software deployment and remote assist from one console. | Microsoft IntuneMature and deeply integrated with Entra ID. The strongest Windows management on the market. |
| Device management for macOS | Mac first MDMZero touch enrolment, full policy enforcement and patching for Macs, treated the same as Windows rather than as an afterthought. | Intune, limited on MacMac support exists but policy depth is noticeably narrower than Windows. This is the most common pain point we hear from mixed fleet teams. |
| Endpoint security and EDR | SentinelOne Singularity CompleteAutonomous AI detection and response, one click ransomware rollback and threat hunting, with support across Windows, macOS and 13 plus Linux distributions. | Microsoft Defender for BusinessEndpoint protection with basic EDR included in the licence. Windows coverage is deepest. Detection maturity on macOS and Linux is generally rated behind specialist vendors. |
| Data loss prevention | Safetica endpoint DLPControls USB and removable media, printing, screenshots, cloud uploads and email on both Mac and Windows. Broader than the basic Microsoft 365 policies and not tied to one SaaS platform. | Basic Purview DLPCovers Exchange email and Office documents. Advanced endpoint DLP for removable media and third party cloud apps needs the Microsoft Purview add on at around $10 per user. |
| Email security and anti phishing | Gmail built in protectionSpam and phishing filtering rated best in class out of the box. Advanced attachment sandboxing sits in higher Google tiers. | Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1Safe Links, Safe Attachments and anti phishing policies, now included in Business Premium. Powerful once configured properly. |
| Archiving and eDiscovery | Not in Business StandardGoogle Vault starts at Business Plus. If you have a legal hold or eDiscovery requirement, we price that tier in rather than leaving the gap open. | IncludedLitigation hold and basic retention through Microsoft Purview. A clear win for the bundle if legal hold is a standing requirement. |
| AI assistant | Gemini includedAvailable across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet at no extra cost on Business Standard. | Copilot not includedMicrosoft 365 Copilot Business is sold separately at around $21 per user per month, which nearly doubles the licence cost if you want it. |
Plan contents reflect what each vendor publishes at the time of writing. Both revise their tiers periodically, so we confirm current entitlements during your assessment.
How Much Does Each Stack Cost Per User?
List pricing per user per month on an annual commitment. Here is the plain arithmetic, including where our stack costs more.
| Component | Google Workspace + EDR + MDM Managed by NetNXT | Microsoft 365 Business Premium Single vendor bundle |
|---|---|---|
| Productivity and email licence | $14.00 Google Workspace Business Standard | $22.00 Everything below is inside this price |
| Endpoint security and EDR | $2.00 SentinelOne Singularity Complete | Included Microsoft Defender for Business |
| Device management and MDM | $7.00 JumpCloud, all operating systems | Included Microsoft Intune |
| Endpoint DLP | $3.00 Safetica or equivalent | $10.00 Microsoft Purview add on for endpoint DLP |
| AI assistant | Included Gemini across all apps | $21.00 Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add on |
| Total per user, per month | $26.00 | $22.00 rises to $53.00 with endpoint DLP and Copilot added |
A note on these prices: treat this as a starting model, not a quote. Vendor list prices change, partner and volume discounts apply, and your actual figure moves with user count, how many devices each person carries, which operating systems you run, and which components you keep or drop. Remove endpoint DLP, or run EDR on servers only, and the NetNXT stack lands at or below Business Premium. Add Google Vault for legal hold and it moves up. We build the real number around your requirement before anything is signed.
Frequently Asked Questions
For a Windows first company with a moderate security bar, often you should not, and we recommend Business Premium when it fits. The case changes when your fleet is mixed. Microsoft Defender for Business protects Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, but its detection depth outside Windows is widely assessed as less mature, and Linux endpoints are not covered by the bundle. Microsoft Intune has the same pattern on device management: excellent on Windows, noticeably thinner on Mac. If a real share of your machines are Macs or Linux boxes, a specialist EDR and a Mac first MDM give you the same standard of protection on every device instead of strong protection on some and baseline on the rest.
No, and this is the most common misreading of the plan. Business Standard gives you Gmail, Docs, 2 TB pooled storage per user, Meet for 150 people and Gemini across all apps. Google lists endpoint management on Business Standard as fundamental, which means passcode enforcement and remote wipe rather than full device policy control. Advanced endpoint management arrives at Business Plus, which is also where Google Vault for retention, legal hold and eDiscovery starts, and DLP for Drive and Chat sits in the Enterprise tiers. That is exactly why our stack adds a dedicated MDM and endpoint DLP instead of pretending the base plan covers them. If you have a legal hold requirement, we price Business Plus in from the start.
Unmanaged, yes, and we would rather say that plainly. Four consoles, four renewal dates and four support queues is real overhead, and a badly configured best of breed stack is less safe than a well configured bundle. That is the specific problem NetNXT solves. We consolidate licensing, policy design, patching, alert triage and incident response into one managed service with one point of contact. Your team sees a single relationship. The specialist depth stays under the hood.
If your business runs on complex Excel models, macros, Access or deep SharePoint and Power Platform integration, Microsoft 365 is the better productivity fit and we will tell you so. In that situation the more useful conversation is adding a specialist EDR, a Mac capable MDM or endpoint DLP alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it. You keep the apps the business depends on and close the gaps that matter for your device mix. A full stack swap is not the only option on the table.
At the configuration priced above it is $4 per user per month more, roughly 18 percent. That premium buys three things the bundle does not fully deliver: independent EDR with ransomware rollback, MDM that treats macOS and Linux as first class, and endpoint DLP covering USB, print and third party cloud apps on Mac as well as Windows. It also includes Gemini, where Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is a separate charge of around $21 per user. Whether the premium is worth it is a risk decision, not a pricing one. For a 40 person Windows office it usually is not. For a 200 person mixed OS company handling regulated client data, the difference is small against the cost of one ransomware incident.
A typical 100 user migration runs four to six weeks and is phased so nobody loses email. Mail, calendar and contacts migrate with a staged cutover. OneDrive and SharePoint data moves to Google Drive with permissions mapped across. EDR and MDM agents deploy quietly in the background before the switch, so endpoint protection is already live when users change over. Domain and DNS cutover happens in a planned window, usually across a weekend. We run parallel mail flow during the transition and keep your Microsoft tenant available in read only mode for an agreed period afterwards.
Yes, and it is a common outcome. Finance teams, analysts and anyone living in complex spreadsheets often keep an apps only Microsoft 365 licence for desktop Excel while the rest of the company runs on Google Workspace. The EDR, MDM and DLP layers are vendor agnostic, so they protect Windows and Mac endpoints the same way regardless of which productivity suite that user is on. It costs a little more per head for those specific people and removes the single biggest objection to moving. We usually identify that group during the assessment rather than after the migration.
It covers the endpoint and access controls those frameworks ask for, which is usually where audits get difficult. MDM gives you a verifiable device inventory with enforced disk encryption, screen lock and patch status on every machine. EDR provides detection, response and the audit trail for incident handling. Endpoint DLP addresses the data transfer controls that DPDP and ISO 27001 Annex A both expect around removable media and unsanctioned cloud uploads. What no product gives you is documented policy, evidence collection and access reviews, which are people and process work. We support that side too, but it is worth budgeting for separately rather than assuming a licence solves it.
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