Skein vs Google Workspace: business email with a follow-up agent

For email, yes. Skein hosts the mail for your domain, so it replaces Gmail for that domain. It does not replace Docs, Sheets, Drive or Meet. If those are the reason you pay for Workspace, keep Workspace. If you mostly pay for Gmail and wish it chased the threads that went quiet, Skein was built for that.

Google Workspace is an office suite for companies of any size: email, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, file storage and video calls under one admin console, with Gemini built into Gmail and the other apps. It is mature, it is everywhere, and most people already know how to use it.

Skein is business email on your own domain with an agent that follows up on every conversation. Hosted in the EU. The agent notices when a customer, investor or candidate is waiting and drafts the follow-up in your tone. By default nothing is sent without your OK, from the app or, at launch, from Slack or WhatsApp, and every send has a few seconds to undo. For the contacts you choose, you can let it send on its own.

Workspace prices above are what Google shows to visitors in the EU, per user per month with a one-year commitment, before tax. The flexible plan without a commitment costs more: €8.10, €16.20 and €25.30. Starter, Standard and Plus can each be bought for up to 300 users.

Workspace wins clearly in a few places, and it is worth saying so plainly.

• The office suite. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Meet are part of the price. A team that writes proposals in Docs and keeps its files in Drive gets a lot for the money, and nothing in Skein replaces those tools.
• Maturity and scale. Workspace has years of admin controls, security settings, device management and third-party integrations behind it. Every CRM and help desk connects to Gmail first.
• Availability today. You can sign up and be live this afternoon. Skein is not open yet.
• AI across every app. Gemini works in Gmail, Docs and Meet on the plans that include it. If you want AI help writing documents and summarising calls, not just email, Workspace covers more ground.

If your team relies on shared documents and video calls more than on email threads that need chasing, Workspace is the better tool, and adding Skein next to it is not something we would push.

An agent that follows up, and asks first

Gemini in Gmail helps when you ask it to: it drafts an email from a prompt and suggests replies to the message in front of you. Skein works the other way round. It watches every thread on your domain, notices when one went quiet that should not have (the quote nobody answered, the investor who asked for the data room, the candidate waiting for next steps) and has a draft ready before you remember. Every draft says why: what it read, who is waiting, and where each link came from.

Nothing goes out without your OK by default. You approve in the app or, at launch, with a button or a reaction in Slack or WhatsApp, and you still have a few seconds to undo the send. For the contacts you choose, you can let it send on its own. For more on timing and wording, read these two guides:

• How long to wait before following up
• Follow-up email templates

Hosted in the EU on every plan

Skein runs your mail and the agent on servers in Frankfurt, for every customer, and the GDPR data processing agreement is part of the terms. Your mail is never used to train AI models. On Workspace, keeping data in the EU is a setting called data regions, and Google lists it for Business Standard, Business Plus and Enterprise plans, not Business Starter. Our guide to GDPR and EU email hosting explains what that means in practice.

Priced per person with the agent

Workspace charges the same for every user. Skein charges per person who has the agent, and the teammates who only need an address get a cheaper mailbox-only seat. Aliases are unlimited and shared inboxes such as hello@ or sales@ never count as a mailbox. The plan and its prices are on the pricing section.

• Pick Google Workspace if your team works in Docs, Sheets and Drive every day, holds most meetings on Meet, needs more than a few dozen seats with mature admin tooling, or needs email today.
• Pick Skein if you are a small B2B team whose deals, rounds and hires run through email threads, you want your mail hosted in the EU without picking a higher tier, and you want follow-ups drafted for you, sent with your approval by default.
• Starting a company now? If you do not have business email yet, start with our guide to business email on your own domain and compare a few options in Google Workspace alternatives.

Some teams keep Google Drive for files and move only email. That works: Drive does not depend on Gmail. Check what your Workspace plan bundles before you cancel it, though, since your documents and calendar live in the same account.

Moving email means changing where your domain's mail is delivered (the MX records) and bringing your history along. Skein imports your Gmail history, so the agent knows every open thread from the first day, and on supported DNS providers it writes the records for you. Anywhere else, you paste four lines.

1. 1Export what you want to keep outside email first: Drive files, Calendar and contacts.
2. 2Create the mailboxes in Skein for each person and shared address.
3. 3Import the Gmail history so open threads come with you.
4. 4Point your MX records to the new provider, and update SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
5. 5Keep the Workspace account for a few days to catch stragglers, then cancel it.

The full checklist, with what to do about calendars and Drive, is in how to migrate from Google Workspace. If DNS is new to you, read SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained first.

Skein is not open yet. It opens to its first teams soon, in waves, and founders can reserve a spot now on the founder price. Until then you can try the demo with sample mail, nothing to install.