Google Workspace vs Zimbra Collaboration comparison

Google and Zimbra are both solutions in the Email Applications category. Google is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Zimbra is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0. Google holds a 21.5% mindshare in EA, compared to Zimbra’s 8.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Zimbra users who would recommend it.

Google Workspace

Read 102 Google Workspace reviews

7,267 Views
5,741 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Zimbra Collaboration

Read 29 Zimbra Collaboration reviews

2,651 Views
2,518 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Google Workspace

Zimbra Collaboration

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Zimbra Collaboration and Google Workspace are competing in the organizational communication and collaboration sector. Google Workspace has an edge due to its extensive feature set and seamless integration.

Features: Zimbra Collaboration offers integrated email, chat, and calendar with a focus on customization and open-source flexibility. Google Workspace includes Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Meet, delivering real-time collaboration and seamless cloud integration.

Room for Improvement: Zimbra Collaboration could enhance integration capabilities and user interface design. It may also need a more robust mobile app and improved integration with third-party services. Google Workspace could improve offline capabilities, the meeting scheduling interface, and customization options for larger enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zimbra Collaboration allows for customizable deployments with strong support for on-premises setups, appealing to organizations wanting infrastructure control. Google Workspace offers a streamlined cloud-based deployment with minimal setup time and 24/7 support, ideal for organizations focusing on remote work and scalability.

Pricing and ROI: Zimbra Collaboration is more cost-effective with lower setup costs, appealing to budget-conscious businesses. Google Workspace, though pricier, provides a comprehensive suite that justifies its cost for companies needing extensive digital tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Workspace vs. Zimbra Collaboration Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Workspace vs. Zimbra Collaboration

July 2025

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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

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Wireless Email (2nd), Cloud Storage (5th), Content Collaboration Platforms (4th)

Zimbra Collaboration

Ranking in Email Applications

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Google Workspace is 21.5%, down from 24.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zimbra Collaboration is 8.6%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Applications

Featured Reviews

Sunil-Nair

IT Manager at Universal Carpets & Rugs

Email collaboration and accessibility have improved team productivity

The valuable features include the email service, email updates, and Google Drive. People are given email access to Google Drive. The team can share manual files and work accordingly. They can access different teams from anywhere, collectively putting files, sharing them, and managing them. Additionally, the manufacturing product does not require any downgrades. It works fine and continuously for the last three or four years. Users can access their emails from anywhere in their browser without a laptop or can directly access from Gmail. This is helpful for salespeople.

Read full review

Vidya Shree

CTO at Molecular Connections Private Limited

Deploys quickly and has a good web interface

Zimbra Collaboration has a good web interface When it comes to administration tasks like configuring specific filters or group signatures, I have to dig into the configuration since there's nothing in the graphical or web interface. The solution’s forums don't have much information or…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The collaboration features are valuable."

"The product is user-friendly and knows how to appeal to a user. Google Docs accepts some of our requirements. Its most valuable feature is performance. The product's integrations are good."

"The Hangouts feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us."

"I think it is a great subscription for me. I think it is important, especially when making an internal email subscription. For example, I can easily create my colleague's email address, and we can use it. I benefited from G Suite. I am using the G Suite Drive, which provides 30GB of storage, and it is helping for me. I think it's better for me."

"Google integrates well with our system. G Suite has an open API, so you can connect any open system with Google capable of working with API. This is the main reason we use it."

"The initial setup is simple."

"The initial setup of Google Workspace is straightforward."

"I use Keep to assign tasks to a team of programmers, which is very easy."

More Google Workspace pros

"The stability is good and keeps getting better with each new update."

"Zimbra Collaboration has integrated a lot of their party tools and they have good documentation available."

"The web interface is powerful and easy to use."

"The most valuable feature of Zimbra for our team's productivity is its efficiency in handling email communication."

"Zimbra Collaboration is a good tool for video calls...Zimbra Collaboration's initial setup phase was easy."

"We can control all the data in my IT infrastructure."

"Good email solution and it's open-source."

"The most valuable feature of Zimbra Collaboration is email functionality."

More Zimbra Collaboration pros

Cons

"To a degree, the project management service could be improved."

"When I compare with Office 365, G Suite has fewer features."

"For Google Docs, if you upload a Word document up to Google Docs, it could mess up your formatting quite a bit."

"Integration with Microsoft Outlook could be improved. The new integration was implemented last September, and we are facing some issues with OAuth 2.0 authentication."

"It takes a long time to import the data from G Suite into another platform."

"There are times the plugins or extensions in the solution do not work properly and I need to disable and enable the solution."

"The stability should be addressed."

"Google could integrate Gemini AI with Google Workspace to enhance user experience."

More Google Workspace cons

"They should enhance its online meeting features."

"It is good and competent, but you have to pay for video and group chat features."

"The solution could use more integration with third-party tools."

"Zimbra must improve its solution to make it easy so that the users don't have to use webmail to connect to their accounts and log in to webmail every time. This is something that is lacking in Zimbra Collaboration. They should provide a better way to easily connect email applications on the desktop to the Zimbra server. They should also try to have more functionality for storage management, like Microsoft Exchange. Currently, the management of the email data must be done manually in Zimbra Collaboration, which we are finding very difficult. They should provide a way to save emails so that you can have more space on the server and storage. Because of the lack of this functionality, we are planning to migrate to Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft Exchange provides a better way to manage storage than Zimbra Collaboration. You cannot have a mail solution without storage management because emails will always increase. Zimbra Collaboration also needs tools for management. More back-office tools are required to manage the whole mailbox and space. You don't only manage emails but also the documents attached to the emails. Therefore, you require tools to select and decide what do you want to save or how do you want to free up space in your infrastructure."

"The tool should improve its multi-cloud feature."

"The support was lacking in my experience. However, recently the support I received was good. Perhaps they have improved."

"The solution’s forums don't have much information or documentation on administration tasks."

"Zimbra Collaboration does not have a solution roadmap as aggressive as the new collaboration mail solutions. Additionally, they can have a better interface and integration with single sign-on."

More Zimbra Collaboration cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different versions of the solution available, such as premium."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing is a bit on the higher side than normal. For a basic Google account it costs $100, but Enterprise is %150."

"Careful consideration should be given to the different licensing options and provisions should be made for additional applications that may be required for your particular business."

"It's about $8.30 up a user per month."

"There are several areas where a G Suite implementation can reduce costs: lower license fees than some competing products, reduced hardware, and IT support costs."

"The overall cost is very reasonable when considering all of the security features that you are receiving. It is a bit more expensive than our local host and/or other hosting companies that are available on the market, but it is worth it."

"The pricing is comparable, it's pretty decent."

More Google Workspace pricing and cost advice

"We pay yearly licenses for Zimbra Collaboration."

"We do not pay for licenses to use this solution."

"The solution is not expensive compared to other products."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the price a four"

"When it comes to the licensing of Zimbra Collaboration, my license covers the servers and I find its terms to be much simpler than those of Microsoft Exchange."

"Zimbra Collaboration is less expensive than Microsoft Exchange. Zimbra works for small companies because it is not expensive. Zimbra Collaboration has more security tools than Microsoft Exchange. If you are choosing between Zimbra Collaboration and Microsoft Exchange, you have to take into account the cost of security tools with Microsoft Exchange. When you purchase Microsoft Exchange, you will also have to purchase tools for security, which adds to the cost. The migration from Zimbra Collaboration to another email solution is very simple and easy. Migration from Microsoft Exchange to another email solution is very difficult. Microsoft doesn't allow migration that easily. In fact, you have to pay for tools to do that. You have to buy some expensive tools to migrate."

"Zimbra Collaboration is expensive, and there is no perpetual license option."

"I use Zimbra Collaboration's community version. We may move to the enterprise version since prices are affordable."

More Zimbra Collaboration pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Workspace?

Easy-to-build forms are allowing me to get feedback and information from my internal teams as well as from the customers very efficiently with the result data in structured manner.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Workspace?

The pricing for Google Workspace is moderate. I would rate it a five out of ten, indicating it is neither cheap nor expensive. The current cost is approximately seven to ten euros per user per mont...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Workspace?

I do not have any major suggestions for improvement. However, while the security functionalities are similar to those in competitors like Active Directory, they could be optimized for stronger secu...

See all answers

How does Zimbra Collaboration compare with Microsoft Exchange?

Zimbra is a free, open source collaborative software suite. The features I like best are the ease of integration and the email, calendar, and collaboration server with web interface. In addition, I...

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What do you like most about Zimbra Collaboration?

The most valuable feature of Zimbra for our team's productivity is its efficiency in handling email communication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zimbra Collaboration?

The solution is competitively priced.

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon WorkMail vs Google Workspace

Compared 28% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online vs Google Workspace

Compared 24% of the time

ProtonMail vs Google Workspace

Compared 10% of the time

Office 365 vs Google Workspace

Compared 7% of the time

GoDaddy vs Google Workspace

Compared 2% of the time

More Google Workspace Competitors

Microsoft Exchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 27% of the time

Open-Xchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 22% of the time

KerioConnect vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 15% of the time

IceWarp vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 9% of the time

HCL Domino vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 4% of the time

More Zimbra Collaboration Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Google Workspace

July 2025

Download Google Workspace product report

Buyer's Guide

Zimbra Collaboration

June 2025

Download Zimbra Collaboration product report

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

Similar to G Suite, all Google Workspace plans provide a custom email for your business and include collaboration tools like Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and more.

As we’ve evolved G Suite into a more integrated experience across our communication and collaboration tools, we’ve rebranded to Google Workspace to more accurately represent the product vision.

Google

Zimbra Collaboration provides administrators and their end users innovative features that solve the challenges faced by organizations using today's legacy communications infrastructure.

Zimbra

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.

NEC Biglobe, City of Ventura, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Hola Publishing, BIG, Sleepwell, LaFayette College, Xmission, DNA, Ring Line, Future Group, TIGC

Buyer's Guide

Google Workspace vs. Zimbra Collaboration

July 2025

Free Report: Google Workspace vs. Zimbra Collaboration

Find out what your peers are saying about Google Workspace vs. Zimbra Collaboration and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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