£5.90 a month gets you Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Slides on Google Workspace’s cheapest tier. That’s a reasonable price for what it does. It’s also considerably more than several genuine alternatives charge for a team that doesn’t need the full Google ecosystem, and a fair few businesses land on Google Workspace by default rather than by comparison.

This guide covers the real options: Zoho Workplace, which does the same job for under half the price, Microsoft 365 for teams that want desktop Office apps specifically, and Proton Workspace, which has quietly become a genuine contender in 2026 after adding its own Docs and Sheets. We’ll also cover when a full suite isn’t the right call at all.

Zoho Workplace: The Direct Replacement

Zoho Workplace is the closest thing to a like-for-like swap. Same shape as Google Workspace, email plus a document editor, spreadsheet tool, presentation app and shared storage, at £2.40 a month on the Standard tier against Google’s £5.90 for Business Starter.

Zoho’s apps are called Writer, Sheet and Show, and cover the same ground as Docs, Sheets and Slides for most day-to-day use: writing documents, building spreadsheets, putting a deck together. Cliq, Zoho’s built-in chat tool, replaces the role Google Chat plays inside Workspace (and can replace Slack!).

Where Zoho pulls further ahead: distribution lists and conditional routing rules are built into every paid tier, custom admin roles let a specialist manage your email without touching billing, and Mail Lite, the email-only tier at 80p a month, exists for a business that wants none of the office apps at all. Google doesn’t sell an email-only version of itself at any price.

Microsoft 365: The Right Call for Desktop Office

If your team genuinely needs Word, Excel and PowerPoint installed on the desktop, offline editing, complex spreadsheet macros, Microsoft 365 Business Standard at £10.80 a month is the honest answer, not a workaround.

Google’s own apps and Zoho’s Writer, Sheet and Show are web-based; Microsoft’s aren’t, and that distinction matters more than the price gap once a team actually depends on it. Microsoft raised this price by roughly 12% on 1 July 2026 as part of a wider global repricing, so budget for it moving again rather than treating today’s figure as fixed.

Proton Workspace: The New Privacy-First Contender

This is the one worth knowing about even if you’ve not heard of it as a Workspace competitor. Proton rebranded its business suite to Proton Workspace in March 2026, and it now genuinely includes Docs and Sheets alongside Mail, Calendar, Drive and Meet, not just encrypted email with nothing else.

Workspace Standard runs around $12.99 a user per month on annual billing (Proton bills in USD, EUR or CHF rather than natively in GBP, worth knowing before you commit), with 1TB of storage per user and video meetings for up to 50 people.

The trade-off is maturity. Reviewers consistently note that real-time co-editing and advanced formulas in Proton Sheets lag behind Google and Microsoft, and integrations with common CRM and marketing tools are thinner.

What you get instead is genuine zero-access encryption, Swiss jurisdiction, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, credentials that matter if your business handles legal, healthcare or financial data and privacy is a first-order requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

When You Don’t Need a Full Suite At All

A meaningful share of businesses buying Google Workspace never open Docs, Sheets or Slides, they just wanted a Gmail-quality inbox on their own domain.

Fastmail is worth knowing about here: an independent, ad-free email provider with no office suite attached at all, priced around £5 a user a month, built for teams that see email as the job rather than one app in a bundle.

It won’t replace Google Workspace for a team that collaborates on documents daily, but for one that just wants reliable custom-domain email, paying for Docs and Slides you’ll never touch is money spent on nothing.

Which One to Actually Pick

Most UK small businesses land on Zoho Workplace once they’ve done this comparison properly: same shape as Google Workspace, a fraction of the price, and nothing forced on you that you don’t need.

Microsoft 365 earns its higher price only if desktop Office apps are a genuine requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Proton earns consideration if privacy and compliance sit above cost and ecosystem breadth on your list of priorities.

Fastmail is the right call if the honest answer is that you never wanted an office suite in the first place.

If Zoho is where you’re heading, our Zoho Mail setup service handles the domain records, migration and distribution groups so the switch actually works on day one, not just on paper. For a full head-to-head against Google specifically, see our Google Workspace vs Zoho Mail comparison.

Common Questions

What’s the best cheap alternative to Google Workspace?

Zoho Workplace, without much competition. £2.40 a month for the same office-suite shape as Google Workspace’s £5.90 entry tier, and Zoho Mail Lite at 80p if you don’t need the office apps at all.

Is there a Google Workspace alternative with both email and office apps?

Yes, more than one now. Zoho Workplace has offered this for years. Proton Workspace joined properly in 2026, once it added Docs and Sheets alongside its existing Mail, Calendar and Drive.

Is Proton a real alternative to Google Workspace?

Genuinely, yes, as of its March 2026 rebrand from Proton Business Suite. It’s not as mature on collaboration or integrations, but it’s no longer “just encrypted email” the way it was a couple of years ago.

What’s the cheapest way to replace Google Workspace?

If nobody on the team touches Docs, Sheets or Slides, Zoho Mail Lite at 80p a month or Fastmail at around £5 both undercut Google by a wide margin. If the office apps matter, Zoho Workplace Standard at £2.40 is the cheapest full-suite option on the market.