Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour
But, I have found staying in one of the big ecosystems works best in the long run. Your questions around contacts and calendars are a case in point.
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The problem is for G Suite you're really tied into that ecosystem on just about
every level if you want the best overall experience. This means using Chrome as your primary browser and using Android as your mobile operating system. Otherwise, you'll have the same sort of issues around things like contacts and calendars (and even e-mail if you choose to use something outside of the Gmail web interface).
While Google makes some decent iOS apps, there's no question that they're third-party apps that don't tie into the core iOS experience nearly as well as they should, and Google doesn't even (yet) have a Contacts app for iOS, so you're left with the same sort of questions about how Google's CardDAV implementation works with Apple's contacts app. On the mobile side, it's pretty much necessary to live within apps. On the desktop, Google just expects you to live within the browser (hence the existence of things like the Chromebook —*which I actually used for a while back when I was "all-in" on G Suite).
To be honest, I think most people miss that Apple really is its own "big ecosystem" because it hasn't really stretched out into the corporate market as boldly as Microsoft and Google have, but really the only missing piece for most users is FastMail, which works so well with Apple's platform that it's easy to forget it's an outside component. Besides, if you're using traditional mail clients rather than webmail, the e-mail provider is mostly just "the plumbing" that you never really interact with directly.
Similarly, those who are entrenched in the Windows world will often find the Microsoft ecosystem to be a much better fit — it ties in more closely with the core Windows operating system tools, and of course everything in Microsoft Office, from Word to Outlook, is designed to just "fit" with the WIndows user experience.
In short, G Suite is a fantastic solution for those who prefer the ubiquity of the web, but to get the best experience, you have to be willing to live in that ecosystem and essentially discard traditional desktop and mobile clients — or in the very least live with the quirks of trying to sync with them.
As much as I like Gmail on many different levels (every few months I find myself re-evaluating if I should switch back over to it, and I still maintain a paid G Suite account and keep my e-mail archive over there too), like
redge said, the choice of e-mail provider isn't a driver of ecosystem choices for everybody... e-mail is important to me as well, but I'm not about to switch to Android just because I like Gmail on the desktop, and on the iOS side, it just doesn't provide nearly the smooth user experience that Apple's first-party apps do (I've also been waiting to see if Google will update its Gmail for iOS app with the new design elements that came to Android earlier this year ... right now the app is way more clunky and cumbersome than it should be).