Business email hosting in Vancouver: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or your web host

A lot of small offices never chose where their email lives. It came bundled with the website, or someone made a Gmail address in year one and it stuck. That choice decides how well your mail is protected and who keeps it when an employee leaves. This is a plain comparison of business email hosting in Vancouver and the rest of the Lower Mainland, how to tell which setup you’re on, and what a move involves.

Business email hosting in Vancouver: what offices use today

When we checked the public DNS records of 3,392 Lower Mainland businesses in September 2026, 42% received their mail through Microsoft 365 and 24% through Google Workspace. Another 7% used a mailbox that came with their web hosting plan (GoDaddy, Namecheap, a cPanel host and so on), and 7% ran their own mail server. The remaining 13% had no mail server on their website’s domain at all, which means the team sends from somewhere else, often a free Gmail address.

None of these is automatically wrong, but they differ in what you can do when an account gets broken into or a long-time employee quits.

How to check where your email is hosted

An MX record is the public setting that tells the internet which company accepts your mail, and anyone can look it up.

1. Open Google’s free Dig tool, select MX, and type your domain without “www” (for example, yourfirm.ca).
2. If the answer ends in mail.protection.outlook.com or mx.microsoft, you’re on Microsoft 365.
3. If it shows smtp.google.com or another google.com address, you’re on Google Workspace.
4. If it names your web host, or something like mail.yourfirm.ca, you’re on a hosting mailbox or your own server. Ask whoever runs the website which one.
5. If it names Proofpoint, Mimecast or Barracuda, a security filter sits in front of your mailbox. About 6% of the businesses we checked had one.
6. If nothing comes back, your domain doesn’t receive email at all.
7. Write down the answer and who holds the admin password.

Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace for small business

On security, the two are close. Both let one admin require multi-factor authentication (a code or app prompt on top of the password) for every account. Microsoft’s free security defaults make everyone register for MFA and block older sign-in methods, and Google lets an admin enforce 2-Step Verification company-wide. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recommends MFA wherever you can turn it on, and email is the first example it gives.

Both can also keep records. Microsoft 365 turns on a standard audit log by default on plans that include it, keeps those entries for 180 days, and offers retention policies that block permanent deletion for a set time. Google’s equivalent is Vault, included with most Workspace plans and sold as an add-on for some.

When someone leaves, a Microsoft 365 admin can block the account, forward new mail to a coworker or turn the mailbox into a shared one the office keeps using. A Google Workspace admin can suspend the account the same afternoon without deleting the person’s mail or files. Google still bills for suspended accounts, so once the data is handed over, you delete it.

Microsoft 365 tends to fit better when your team lives in Word, Excel and Outlook, when clients send spreadsheets and tracked-changes documents all day, or when your accounting or legal software plugs into Outlook, which is common in accounting and law offices.

Google Workspace tends to fit better when your staff already work in Google Docs and Sheets and share files by link more than by attachment. For eligible nonprofits, Google offers Google Workspace for Nonprofits at no charge and Microsoft discounts Microsoft 365 Business Premium by 75%, so a charity in New Westminster should compare both.

What web host mailboxes usually leave out

Some web hosts run their bundled mailboxes well. Ask yours four questions. Can you require MFA on webmail? Is there spam and phishing filtering beyond a basic score? Can you restore a message someone deleted last month? Is there one admin screen where you can lock an account the day someone leaves and see recent sign-ins? If most answers are no, it’s time to price a move.

Running your own mail server means you own the patching, the spam filtering and the backups, and if the person who set it up has moved on, nobody may be doing them.

The trouble with a free Gmail address

An address at yourfirm.ca shows a client that the quote came from your business, while a Gmail address could belong to anyone. A scammer can create a lookalike Gmail account in a minute, so clients can’t easily tell yours from a fake.

Control is the larger problem. A personal Gmail account belongs to whoever created it. If your office manager in Surrey set it up and later leaves on bad terms, the password and years of client email go with them, and there’s no admin you can call. BC’s Personal Information Protection Act (section 34) expects organizations to make reasonable security arrangements for personal information, which is hard to show when client files sit in an account the business doesn’t control.

What moving your email involves

For a six-person bookkeeping office in Richmond, the switch itself usually fits into a weekend once the planning is done. First, create a mailbox on the new platform for every person, which Microsoft recommends so mail keeps flowing. Next, copy the old mail across. Microsoft’s IMAP migration moves email but not contacts or calendars, and Google’s import tool can pull from Microsoft 365, another Google account or any IMAP mailbox.

Then the MX record gets changed at your domain registrar, usually on a Friday evening so the change has the weekend to settle (Google notes new MX records can take up to 72 hours to be recognized). It’s the right moment to update SPF, turn on DKIM signing and set up DMARC, which our DMARC guide for BC businesses covers. On Monday morning, each phone and copy of Outlook gets signed in to the new account.

Umbrella is a Burnaby Microsoft Partner that also sets up and supports Google Workspace, so we’ll recommend whichever suits how your office works. Read more about our Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services.

Common questions

Is Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace cheaper for a small business?

It depends on the plan and how many people need the desktop Office apps. Prices change, so compare both official pricing pages for your headcount.

Will we lose email while we switch providers?

Not if the new mailboxes exist before the MX record changes. Mail that arrives during the changeover lands in one mailbox or the other, and the migration copies older messages across.

How long does it take to move email to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?

It’s usually one weekend for the switch once the new mailboxes are ready, plus planning time that depends on how much old mail you’re moving.

If you’re not sure which setup your office is on, or who holds the admin password, a free IT assessment will answer both and tell you whether a move is worth it.