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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 (9th), 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 October 2026, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Google Workspace is 17.3%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zarafa is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Workspace17.3%
Zarafa1.8%
Other80.9%
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."
"There are several online forums and a lot of support materials online."
"The real-time editing feature is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is simple to use."
"The tool helps me keep a backup of old emails. Like everyone else, I love the Google search engine for searching emails on webmail. The Google Workspace connector for Outlook works well, so I have no issues with that."
"The most valuable features are the speed at which G Suite Enterprise works, the much faster archiving features compared to other solutions on the market, and the ability to easily and securely share Google Maps within my department, organization, or user groups."
"We value the collaboration levels that are offered. Having everything integrated in a single platform is a dream come true 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."
"This makes Zarafa a free, and working, alternative to Microsoft Exchange."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, I would like to be able to use the solution offline, and I can't do so. It would be ideal if there was some sort of offline mode available."
"For Google Docs, if you upload a Word document up to Google Docs, it could mess up your formatting quite a bit."
"Google Workspace has limitations as a document or file management system. Without a workspace account, manual actions are required to perform tasks such as managing groups of people. Additionally, managing permissions individually is a time-consuming and inefficient process. It's difficult to articulate, but the process is not very streamlined."
"I am not a big fan of how Gmail organizes the mail. I find it complicated to see which mail from which users send at which date. Especially if there is a lot."
"Google Meet can have a bit more functionality."
"Google Meet is a very good product, but it's not up to the mark if you compare it against other products like Zoom or Microsoft Teams."
"Google Workspace needs to be more flexible, like Microsoft Excel."
"The meeting platform of Google Workspace has room for improvement."
"Not really, although the Zarafa-index component was using a lot of memory and disk I/O bandwith."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"We normally purchase the license on a yearly basis."
"I rate Google Workspace's pricing five to six out of ten. We do not pay any extra costs."
"The pricing is very high, although I cannot tell if this is the result of the Indian vendors artificially inflating it."
"The pricing is comparable, it's pretty decent."
"We pay on yearly basis."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"You pay for Google Workspace based on your usage and the apps you use, but in my case, it's free, but if I used it a lot more, I'd probably need to pay. 15GB is enough for me, but I see myself upgrading and paying the additional charges for more storage regularly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
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: October 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.