To sign up for some Google Workspace services, such as a Business edition, you can verify either your email address or ownership of your organization's domain name. With email verification, only a limited set of features is available. To use all of the features available with the service, you need to verify ownership of your domain.
To sign up for Google Workspace Essentials Starter, only email verification is available. To get more features, you need to switch to a different edition of Google Workspace and verify your domain.
The table below compares organizations with an email-verified account and a domain-verified account.
| Email-verified accounts | Domain-verified accounts | |
|---|---|---|
| Administration | Limited, with basic sharing policies | Advanced polices for sharing, access, and security |
| Gmail | No | Yes (except Essentials editions) |
| Google Calendar | Yes, with Essentials editions only | Yes |
| Advanced user features for Google Drive, Meet, and Chat | No, basic features only | Yes |
| Google Account ownership | User owned | Organization owned |
| User data management | Admins manage users' data only for apps included with the service, such as Drive, Meet, and Chat | Admins manage all user data for core and additional services |
| Adding users | Invite a user with a Google Account in your domain to join Google Workspace | Create a new Google Account for each user |
| Deleting users | Remove accounts from Google Workspace; users keep their account | Permanently delete accounts |
| Admin roles | Super Admin only | Super Admin role, pre-built delegated and custom admin roles |
