Best Approach for Moving a Small Remote Company from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365
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MellowPine47
I'm new to handling this type of migration and am looking for guidance on pricing, planning, and best practices. We're a fully remote company with fewer than 50 users and are considering moving from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. I initially thought we might need to build a traditional Active Directory domain, but I'm also evaluating Microsoft Entra ID for cloud-based identity and device management. I can recreate the user accounts, but I need to migrate everyone's email and would prefer to run both platforms concurrently for a while before completing the cutover. What migration tools and approach would you recommend?
Answers
Tools such as BetterCloud can help manage and automate SaaS administration, onboarding, offboarding, and account changes. It may be useful if you want broader Google Workspace-to-Microsoft 365 management, but it’s probably more than you need for a basic mailbox migration.
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Microsoft’s built-in migration tools may be sufficient for fewer than 50 users. The small-business Gmail-to-Exchange migration process can move the mailboxes and is a good place to start if you don’t need advanced scheduling or reporting. You can also plan a staged migration and keep the old service available during the transition.
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BitTitan is worth considering for the mailbox migration. It supports batches, trial runs, and pre-stage migrations, so you can copy most of the data ahead of the final cutover and keep downtime low. For a company of this size, it’s generally straightforward and reasonably priced.
MellowPine47: That sounds useful, especially the ability to stage the mailboxes and test the process before switching everyone over. I’ll compare its pricing with the built-in migration options.
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For a fully remote organization, you probably don’t need to deploy on-premises Active Directory. Microsoft Entra ID joined devices can provide cloud-based identity and sign-in management without maintaining domain controllers.
MellowPine47: That’s what I’m leaning toward. I wasn’t sure whether traditional AD was still considered best practice, so I wanted to confirm before designing everything around it.
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MellowPine47: I hadn’t looked at it yet. The automation features sound interesting, although I’ll first focus on the core identity and email migration requirements.