No. For a small or mid-sized business, switching from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace is a much smaller job than most owners fear. Google's new guide for CIOs, published in October 2026, plans the move over three to nine months, because it is written for organisations with thousands of people. A small or mid-sized business can make the same move over a single weekend, after a week or two of preparation, that your team will barely notice. Every email, calendar, file and Teams chat comes across with you, and when Kimbley IT handles the move, it is part of your IT support with no migration fee.
Why the switch feels bigger than it is
Picture an operations manager at a business with 60 team members. She has wanted to leave Microsoft 365 for the best part of a year, and every time she thinks about it, the list of reasons to wait gets longer. There are fifteen years of email in Outlook, a SharePoint site that half the business relies on, and an accounts@ mailbox that three people share. One of the business's biggest clients runs everything through Microsoft Teams. At the back of her mind is a Monday morning when nobody can find anything, and every team member is asking her why.
Reading Google's own guide would not settle her nerves. It sets out a planning phase for the IT department, an early-adopter phase for 5% to 10% of the organisation, a network of champions, and a global go-live, with success stories counted in the thousands. Humana, the US health insurer, moved 13,000 people in four months.
What she wants on the other side is simple enough to describe. Each team member would have one sign-in for email, calendar, files, chat and video calls, all of which work in a browser on any computer or phone, and two people could work on the same proposal at once instead of emailing versions back and forth. It is the same reason a London property firm made the move with Kimbley IT.
It starts with one video call
Her first step is a video call with Kimbley IT. The conversation covers how many team members there are, what the business uses Microsoft 365 for today, which mailboxes are shared, which SharePoint sites matter, and who works with clients on Teams. By the end of it, she has a weekend in the diary, chosen to avoid month-end and payroll, so that the first Monday on Google Workspace can be an ordinary working day.
The move itself costs the business nothing. Kimbley IT looks after businesses that run on Google Workspace, so setting up a new client on it is simply part of IT support. There are no migration or onboarding fees because charging them would create a hurdle at the very start of a relationship meant to last for years. The version of Google Workspace the business moves to is also not the vanilla one you would get by signing up directly. It is Google Workspace by Kimbley IT, set up to reflect how a UK business actually runs. For businesses leaving another IT support provider at the same time, Kimbley IT has written about what changing provider involves.
The fortnight before, while everyone carries on in Outlook
Kimbley IT sets up the new Google Workspace and starts copying the business's data in the background, beginning with the most recently used items, so the things people reach for first arrive first. Email, calendars and contacts come over from Outlook. OneDrive files come over with their folders and sharing intact, and each SharePoint site becomes a shared drive with the same permissions. Since August 2026, we can also bring over conversations from Teams channels, group chats, and one-to-one messages.
Kimbley IT also maintains an independent backup of all the business's data from the moment the move begins and checks that everything has arrived before the weekend.
Meanwhile, the operations manager sends the team a short note with wording from Kimbley IT, outlining when the move will happen and what Monday will look like. Kimbley IT runs the training, usually via video call, so anyone who misses it or wants to see it again on Sunday evening can watch it in their own time.
Friday in Outlook, Monday in Gmail
On Friday afternoon, the team finishes the week in Outlook, as they would any other week. Over the weekend, Kimbley IT performs a delta migration to capture any new emails or files created between the original migration and the transition to Google Workspace. Every laptop and phone is set up for Google Workspace.
On Monday morning, the team signs in and finds their work lives where they left them. Gmail has been laid out to look like Outlook, so the first screen of the day feels familiar. Every Outlook folder is represented as a Gmail label with the same name. The week's meetings are in Google Calendar, the files are in Google Drive and still shared with the same people, and the old Teams conversations are in Google Chat. The accounts@ mailbox has become a shared inbox in Google Groups, still answered by the same three people.
Kimbley IT is on-site on the first day when the business has an office, and the team is large enough to require it. Team members working from home get help via Google Chat and video.
| What Moves from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace | ||
| What you have in Microsoft 365 | Where it ends up in Google Workspace | What your team notices |
|---|---|---|
| Email in Outlook | Gmail, with every Outlook folder arriving as a label of the same name. | Their email where they left it, sorted the way they sorted it. |
| Calendar | Google Calendar, including recurring meetings. | Meetings already in the diary on Monday morning. |
| Contacts | Google Contacts. | The same people to email, without retyping anyone. |
| Shared mailboxes (such as accounts@) | A shared inbox in Google Groups. | The same address, answered by the same people. |
| OneDrive files | Google Drive, with folders and sharing kept. | Their files in Drive, still shared with the same people. |
| SharePoint sites | Shared drives in Google Drive, with permissions kept. | Team folders with the same access as before. |
| Teams chats | Google Chat, including channel, group and one-to-one conversations. | Old conversations still there to scroll back through. |
The first few weeks
Most of the team already uses Gmail, Google Docs or Google Maps in their personal lives, so very little about Google Workspace feels foreign. What takes time is muscle memory. Someone who has used Outlook for fifteen years will reach for buttons that now live somewhere else, and some people take up to a month to feel at home.
Clients continue to send Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, and the team opens them directly from Gmail or Google Drive and edits them in Google Docs or Sheets. Google's Help Centre explains that when you edit an Office file in Drive, your changes are saved to the original file, so it is sent back to the client in the same format it was received.
The big client who runs everything through Microsoft Teams turns out to be easy to look after as well. For the two team members who spend half their week on that client's calls, Kimbley IT sets up Microsoft's Teams Essentials, a standalone plan for small businesses, alongside Google Workspace. Everyone else holds their meetings in Google Meet, which is already part of Google Workspace. Once Kimbley IT has confirmed that all mailboxes, files, and chats have arrived, the business cancels its Microsoft 365 licences.
Frequently asked questions
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For a business with 5 to 100 team members, it usually takes a week or two of preparation and one weekend for the switch itself. Your team keeps working in Outlook until the Friday and starts on Google Workspace on the Monday. Google's guide plans for three to nine months because it is written for organisations with thousands of people.
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Gmail uses labels, which sit down the left-hand side and work much like folders. One email can carry more than one label, so it can sit under a client and a project at the same time. When your email moves across from Microsoft 365, each Outlook folder becomes a label with the same name.
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Yes. Double-click an Excel file in Google Drive and it opens in Google Sheets, with your changes saved back to the Excel file. From Gmail, you can edit an attachment in Google Sheets, and the edited copy is saved to your Drive. Word and PowerPoint files work the same way with Docs and Slides.
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No. Your Microsoft 365 mailbox is copied, and the original stays where it is until you cancel the account. Kimbley IT runs a final copy after email delivery moves to Google, which brings across anything that arrived while the move was under way.
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es, for the team members who need it. Microsoft sells Teams Essentials as a standalone plan for small businesses, so someone who works closely with a client on Teams can keep it alongside Google Workspace. The rest of your meetings move to Google Meet, which comes with Google Workspace.
Book a call
If your business is on Microsoft 365 and you have been putting off the move, book a video call with Kimbley IT using the form below. You will come away knowing what moves, which weekend would suit your business, and what your team will see on their first Monday.
