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Google Workspace vs Zarafa comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Workspace
Ranking in Email Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Wireless Email (1st), Cloud Storage (6th), Content Collaboration Platforms (2nd)
Zarafa
Ranking in Email Applications
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Google Workspace is 16.6%, down from 20.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zarafa is 1.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Workspace16.6%
Zarafa1.8%
Other81.6%
Email Applications
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Assosiate Professor at Palazzo del Mediterraneo
Collaborative work with students has improved but storage limitations and support issues remain
We have Google Workspace, and we use it primarily for Drive to collect items. We categorize folders with topics and material either for students or for research. We use Google Doc to share documents, especially when we assign homework to be corrected for peer correction or classroom correction. With Teams and Microsoft, we use it for collective calls and exam supervision because we use video surveillance through camera with Teams. We use Teams for meetings and to share material with students. The ability to share documents with students and assign them things and correct them in real time has been beneficial. You can verify what they write, and they can contribute and cooperate to create a collective document, which is something that our society nowadays requires. The ability to cooperate, especially those who work with languages and those who work with writing, need to learn how to cooperate. There is co-editing and co-writing, all these sorts of things. I love the fact that I can easily have access to folders that I can categorize and where I can upload research material and teaching material.
it_user302112 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Our customers are able to use this groupware solution to connect to Active Directory and OpenLDAP, although Postgres support would be an improvement.
Zarafa has several very valuable features, among them a very good Outlook-like web interface. Furthermore, ZPush for talking between ActiveSync and mobile devices is a valuable asset. In addition, one is able to connect via Outlook and the exchange protocol to Zarafa. This makes Zarafa a free, and working, alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"IMAP works very well from all environments."
"The Hangouts feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"The features of Google Workspace that significantly improve our work include real-time collaboration on documents, dynamic email for easy suggestions and approvals, integration with BigQuery for data analysis, seamless document sharing and storage in Google Drive, and advanced calendaring capabilities."
"Drive facilitates great document collaboration and has revision and version tracking built in."
"The user interface is fantastic. It's also available for the individual person, so that's also a great thing about it."
"Being able to back up our data on Google Drive is a critical and valuable feature for our customers. It is just in sync. Imagine you change a file on the desktop, and it gets updated directly to your Google Drive. Our laptop is completely in sync with Google Drive. Google Meet, Google Sheets, and Google Docs are also amazing products. They're very versatile and easy to use as compared to Office 365. I am using Google Sheets and Google Docs, which first save the work on my memory or ROM, and then on my RAM. It gives me better productivity through Google Sheets and Google Docs."
"The valuable features of this solution are ease of use, performance is great, and collaboration. It is very easy to share and joins documents."
"Google Apps for Business and Skype for Business are the perfect solutions for every business thriving online. It is very easy and inexpensive to get work done with these applications online."
"This makes Zarafa a free, and working, alternative to Microsoft Exchange."
 

Cons

"It takes a long time to import the data from G Suite into another platform."
"The cost could be improved."
"Our users have faced an issue with increasing their email quotas over the last three months."
"Better integration without visual misrepresentation with the Microsoft suite is required."
"I find the price high for the full suite features. Compared to Exchange Online, the price might not be too high, but you cannot choose only one functionality. When you buy Google Workspace, you have to get everything, including file storage and communication tools, which I don't use."
"There are 120 different products and Google is ready to copy their competitors and vice versa. Some of them work, and some of them don't. There are many newer tools with no-code environments which allow for a leaner self-owned system, where I'm not tied to paying hundreds and thousands of dollars a year to another company."
"The pricing of the solution could be better."
"Google Meet can have a bit more functionality. It should show the views of more people. Right now, it shows just eight at a maximum, or six. When there are more people on the call, more than eight, everyone is not showing."
"Not really, although the Zarafa-index component was using a lot of memory and disk I/O bandwith."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Approximately $6 per user, per month."
"2,500 Rupees per month per user."
"The price of the solution can vary."
"I rate Google Workspace's pricing five to six out of ten. We do not pay any extra costs."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most affordable."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We have purchased an annual subscription."
"The pricing is a bit on the higher side than normal. For a basic Google account it costs $100, but Enterprise is %150."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise29
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Workspace?
The company made the decision to migrate, so I'm not sure why specifically. The company is moving the data and the Microsoft subscription is no longer continued, so I have the choice to use Google ...
What needs improvement with Google Workspace?
Before I was in a Microsoft environment, which had its own software that was not website-based. When I moved to Google Workspace, it was not seamless because I have to access it through a web view ...
What is your primary use case for Google Workspace?
I have been using Google Workspace for file organizing, including Google Drive, Spreadsheet, Gmail, and Google Form, with most of my usage being in Spreadsheet. I do use Google Groups, which combin...
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Also Known As

G-Suite Enterprise, G-Suite, Google Apps for Business, G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G-Suite Basic, G-Suite Business, Google Vault
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

There are over five million businesses that use Google Apps for Business worldwide. Some key customers include The Roche Group, National Geographic, American Red Cross, City of Los Angeles, Flight Centre, and Konica Minolta.
Tivoli, InterAkt Contour, Riagg Rijnmond, Lammerink, Revell, KMP, International School of the Hague
Find out what your peers are saying about Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Email Applications. Updated: September 2026.
914,889 professionals have used our research since 2012.