Google Workspace Explained: Apps, Drive, Sharing, Free vs Paid
Updated · By Robert Breen
The problem
Maria runs a six-person cleaning company. Everyone uses a personal Gmail address. When her scheduler quit last month, the client schedule and price list were in his Drive, and she lost a week rebuilding them from old emails.
What you’ll be able to do
By the end you will know what each Workspace app is for, where business files should live so they never leave with an employee, how to share without exposing a file to the whole internet, and when a paid plan is worth it.
Google Workspace in one sentence
Google Workspace is Google’s set of browser-based apps for email, calendars, files, documents, spreadsheets, slides and video calls. A free Google account gets the same core apps; a paid Workspace plan adds a business email address on your own domain, more storage, admin controls and team-owned storage.
Which app for which job
| Job | App | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | Labels, search and filters; your own domain on a paid plan | |
| Schedules and bookings | Calendar | Shared calendars and meeting invites with Meet links |
| Files and folders | Drive | Everything stored once, opened anywhere, shared by link |
| Letters, proposals, SOPs | Docs | Live editing with comments and suggestions |
| Lists, trackers, budgets | Sheets | Formulas, drop-downs and filters, edited by many at once |
| Presentations | Slides | Decks that the whole team can edit together |
| Video calls | Meet | Calls straight from a Calendar invite |
Where files should live
Every file in Google Drive has an owner. In My Drive, that owner is a person, which is exactly how Maria lost her schedule. On a paid plan, a shared drive belongs to the team instead: when someone leaves, the files stay and the admin simply removes them from the drive.
On a free account there are no shared drives. The workaround is for the business owner to create the important files in their own Drive and share them with staff, so ownership never sits with someone who might leave.
Share on purpose
Every file has two layers of sharing permissions: the named people who can view, comment or edit, and the "general access" setting. "Restricted" means only the named people. "Anyone with the link" means anyone on the internet who gets the link, no sign-in needed. For a price list or client schedule, keep it Restricted and add people by email. Google’s sharing help page lists every option.
Mistakes are recoverable. Version history shows who changed what in a Doc, Sheet or Slides file and lets an editor restore an earlier version.
Maria’s fix
Maria moves the business to a paid Workspace plan, creates addresses like scheduling@ on her domain and sets up a shared drive called Operations for the schedule, price list and client files. The next time someone leaves, she removes their account and nothing is lost.
Check your understanding
Who owns a file in a shared drive?
Show the answer
The team or organization. Files in a shared drive belong to the organization, so they stay when the person who made them leaves.
"Anyone with the link" means…
Show the answer
Anyone on the internet who has the link, no sign-in needed. It opens the file to whoever gets the link. Use Restricted and add people by email for anything sensitive.
Can a free Google account create shared drives?
Show the answer
No. Shared drives are only available with work or school (Workspace) accounts.
Sources
Written from these official help pages. Menus change, so if a button has moved, the help page has the current wording.
- Google Workspace Learning Center: What are shared drives?
- Google Drive Help: Share and manage access to files and folders
- Google Docs Editors Help: Find what’s changed in a file
- Google Workspace Learning Center: Tips to work with people not on Google Workspace