Many users use email hosting services like G Suite hosting for their emails. Even more small businesses are seeking open-source replacement of the G Suite business productivity suite. But the problem is how to choose the suitable alternatives to Google G Suite? We’ve got you covered.
Google Workspace (formerly named Google Apps for Your Domain, Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Work, and G Suite) has a prominent name in the domain of business productivity and collaboration tools.
With over 6 million paying businesses and 120 million G Suite for Education users, it is hard to argue that Google is a dominating force in the industry after Microsoft.
The great news is that Google Workspace / G Suite is not your only option in the world. Many companies have made impeccable and significant development and created productivity applications that facilitate spreadsheets, email client, presentation, real-time communication, group chat, and much more, some of which strongly challenge Google Workspace’s leading service.
The multiple G Suite alternatives offer an excellent office suite with cheap pricing over a Google Workspace subscription.
It is no exaggeration to say that open-source G Suite alternatives rule the world of business collaboration suites. If you are looking to avoid the hardware costs without losing the ability to work with professional collaboration tools crucial to your business, these solutions could be for you. Here are our recommendations for the top 5 great G Suite free alternatives.
#5 Best Google G Suite Alternatives
1. Zimbra Collaboration Suite – Best G Suite Open Source Competitor
There are multiple features that the Zimbra mail server possesses which makes it the incredible G Suite free alternative globally. It comes in two variants – Open Source & Network Edition. To get the in-depth difference between these two, have a look at the post – Difference between Zimbra Open-Source & Zimbra Network Edition.
Just step into the future by introducing technological breakthroughs. Let’s understand each of the Zimbra features in detail.
The Benefit of Professional Business Email
It is one of the most important factors because if you are using free email service, then your audience keep wondering who you are, and the majority of these email dump into the Trash folder.
Like G Suite or O365, Zimbra offers a professional business email address that differentiates you from spammers and reflects authenticity and credibility. And customers are likely to respond to your messages if you use a business email rather than a free one.
Calendar To Manage Meetings
Another remarkable feature of Zimbra is the integrated shared calendar to manage all your important appointments. One can easily create a calendar and shared it with the team. You can create different calendars per user. Further, you can subscribe to an external calendar in .ics format.
Zimbra Connect
The Zimbra connect is a feature that comes in the Zimbra network edition only. It provides you options like Group Chat, Group, and channel video call, screen, and file sharing. And at the corporate level, Zimbra connect provides – Corporate Messaging and Channel video calls with unlimited participants. No doubt! It is the best simple, powerful solution to your communication needs.
Connect with Mac & MS Outlook
In such an instance, the client is using an enterprise email client such as Outlook on the Mac platform. In this case, Zimbra facilitates Exchange web services that let you connect the Zimbra mailbox(es) with the Mac Outlook client.
Further, if any user uses Outlook on the Windows platform, then Zimbra offers a MAPI Connector. It enables users to view their complete Zimbra mailbox right in the Outlook mail client.
Unlimited Storage Space
If you take hosting of Zimbra from NetForChoice, then you don’t have to pay for the per user account. Instead, you can pay for the storage disk which you can scale up in the future as your business grows. Afterward, you can create multiple users of different storage allocated. Hence there is no restriction on user creation.
Affordable
As we said earlier, Zimbra plays smartly on price. It is one of the email server platforms that always with the cost-effective price race. By paying a reasonable server storage fee, you can take advantage of unlimited user creation, email access at any time regardless of device.
We’ve only touched the bare outlines of what you can do with the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. There a lot more features and options available, from self-organizing mailboxes to freedom of client choice.
2. ONLYOFFICE or OnlyOffice
- A free software office suite devised by Ascensio System SIA. It is based on three components – Document Server, Mail Server, and Community Server.
- It is also considered the best G Suite free alternative as it supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
- OnlyOffice facilitates Online Document Editors, Document Management Platform, Mail Service, Corporate Communication tools, and Project Management Tools.
- Deploy either as a SaaS model or implement on a private network.
- The dashboard of OnlyOffice is divided into significant multiple modules: Documents, CRM, Projects, Mail, Community, Calendar, and Talk. All of the aggregate in a bundle entitled OnlyOffice Groups.
- The OnlyOffice is a comprehensive document management and sharing system exclusively for OnlyOffice files.
- The Projects module is integrated to manage the complete project from planning to reporting. It includes Gantt Charts.
- The CRM module is used to maintain the client databases, sales, tasks, online billing, sales reports, etc.
- The OnlyOffice mail module combines a mail server and mail aggregator. The email server creates customized domain mailboxes and mail aggregator for centralized mailbox(es) management. Plus, the Calendar module enables planning and monitoring of meetings and deadlines.
- Last but not least. The community module facilitates corporate social networks. It includes Polls, Blog, Forums, News, Orders, Announcement, and Messenger.
3. WikiSuite
- WikiSuite is an open-source enterprise solution, especially devised for knowledge-centric organizations.
- WikiSuite includes:-
– Free / Libre / Open Source Software
– Available as Self-hosted or SaaS model
– Robust Security
– Community managed
– Intuitive web admin panels.
- The Email communication offers Calendar, Newsletter, Webmail, Address Book, IMAP / CardDAV / CalDAV, Anti-spam, Smart Mail Filters.
- The File and Sync offers Backup, Versioning, Master Folders, Search within files, File Sync support, Offline access.
- One can easily manage, measure, and optimize business processes using the WikiSuite BPM and Analytics module.
- The WikiSuite security includes Intrusion Prevention System, Anti-virus & Anti-spam security, Data Encryption.
- Facility of real-time communication and screen sharing.
4. Kolab Now (formerly known as MyKolab)
- Kolab Now is a free, open-source software offering web-based email and groupware service.
- Run by Kolab Systems AG.
- Kolab Now offers server-side encryption. It offers two types of accounts: Individual account & Group Manager account.
- Facility of ActiveSync option to synchronize emails, contacts, events, and tasks from Kolab Now to a mobile device (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry Z10). In addition, one can CalDAV and CardDAV capable clients to synchronize data.
- The Kolab client support Linux, Windows, and macOS. Offers server-side email filtering to protect the mailbox.
5. Kopano
- Kopano is an open-source groupware application suite and offers a fantastic office collaboration suite. Kopano is the renamed Zarafa Collaboration Platform.
- The open-source collaboration tools include Email, Mattermost chat, Calendaring, Email Encryption, Video Meetings, Document collaboration, file storage service, and more.
- It is faster and requires less maintenance & hardware resources. As well as, it needs lower investments than Cloud-based Google Workplace.
- If you are already paying for G Suite a considerable amount, then Kopano would be the best free alternative to Google G Suite.
Getting Started With Open Source G Suite Alternatives
It is the end of our article G Suite free alternatives that you can check out right now. You can see that we’ve presented these open-source G Suite alternatives in descending order of convenience; the ones at the list of the top are feature-rich and widely supported, and the ones at the bottom are less feature-rich.
See the list of the best alternatives to G Suite emails and let us know which alternative can pose a serious challenge to Google Workspace. If you need any consultation regarding email hosting, fill the form with your required details for the free consultation.