Google Workspace plans and UK prices
| Plan | Annual plan | Flexible plan | Storage per user | Stand-out additions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Starter | £5.90 | £7.00 | 30 GB, pooled | Gmail on your domain, Meet, Drive, Docs; Gemini in Gmail |
| Business Standard | £11.80 | £14.00 | 2 TB, pooled | Meet recording, custom email layouts and mail merge, Gemini in Docs, Sheets and Meet |
| Business Plus | £18.40 | Higher | 5 TB, pooled | eDiscovery and retention (Vault), 500-person meetings with attendance tracking |
| Enterprise | By quote | By quote | 5 TB, expandable | S/MIME encryption, 1,000-person meetings, advanced security |
Prices are per user per month, excluding VAT. Business Starter, Standard and Plus can be bought for up to 300 users; Enterprise has no limit.
Annual or flexible?
- Annual plan — the lower price, billed monthly, in exchange for committing to your user count for a year. You can add users during the year but not reduce below your commitment.
- Flexible plan — about 16% more, but you can add and remove users at any time and pay for what you use each month.
Seasonal businesses and teams that change often are usually better off flexible. A stable team saves around £13 a year per user on Starter by committing annually.
Which plan does a small business need?
- Business Starter is enough for most small teams that mainly need email, calendars and video calls. Watch the storage: 30 GB per user is shared between Gmail and Drive.
- Business Standard makes sense if you store a lot of files in Drive, record meetings, or want Gemini across Docs and Sheets.
- Business Plus is for businesses with retention or legal-hold requirements — regulated firms, or anyone who may need to search and preserve email for a dispute.
The costs that are easy to miss
- VAT at 20% on top of every price.
- The end of the introductory offer. Google regularly discounts the first few months for new customers; the price then rises to the standard rate.
- Shared inboxes. Gmail has no direct equivalent of an Exchange shared mailbox; teams use Google Groups collaborative inboxes or a paid user for addresses like info@.
- Outlook. If people want to keep using Outlook, it works through Google’s sync tool, but not as smoothly as with Exchange.
- Migration. Moving existing mail, calendars and files in takes time, or costs money if someone does it for you.
How it compares with Microsoft 365
| Google Workspace | Microsoft 365 | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Business Starter, £5.90 (annual) | Business Basic, £5.40 (annual), £6.48 monthly |
| Entry mailbox | 30 GB shared with Drive | 100 GB mailbox plus 1 TB OneDrive |
| Mid plan | Business Standard, £11.80 | Business Standard, £10.80, with desktop Office apps |
| Email app | Gmail | Outlook |
Our full Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 comparison covers the differences beyond price, and the best email hosting in the UK compares the wider market.