GOOGLE WORKSPACE BULK ADMINISTRATION

Gopher Tools vs. GW Manager: More Admin Tasks, One Add-on

A new school year doesn't arrive with just a list of users to create. It brings class groups, staff licenses, Chromebook moves, and changes to your organizational structure—all landing on the same admin's desk. That's the workload I want GW Manager to help you finish.

GW Manager brings 15 modules and more than 60 functions into one Google Sheets add-on, with paid plans starting at $350 per administrator per year. For schools that need bulk administration across their Google Workspace environment, that combination of coverage, clear pricing, and visual guidance is why I recommend it over assembling a set of Gopher tools.

I'm the founder of GW Manager. In this comparison, I'll show you where our approach gives you more room to work, what the subscription costs, and what you get when it's time to actually use a feature.

Six Reasons to Choose GW Manager

Here's where I would start if you were evaluating GW Manager for your school or district.

What you need	What GW Manager gives you	Why it matters
Broad task coverage	15 modules and 60+ functions	Handle work beyond accounts, groups, and Chromebooks.
One place to work	One Google Sheets add-on	Change the task in the sidebar as your work changes.
Predictable tool costs	Published prices per administrator	Calculate your budget without counting every student as a paid tool seat.
Help completing a task	Videos, written steps, and annotated screenshots	See the workflow before running it yourself.
Clear results	Task status and row-level results	Find the records that succeeded and those that need attention.
Product help	Direct contact at support@gwmanager.com	Bring us the task you're trying to finish.

You can explore the GW Manager overview, feature tutorials, and pricing before installing anything.

1. Go Beyond Users, Groups, and Chromebooks

Those three areas matter, but they don't cover everything an admin gets asked to do.

What happens when you need to create OUs for a new campus? Assign licenses to incoming staff? Add custom fields to your directory? Restore a batch of accounts deleted by mistake?

With GW Manager, those jobs are part of the product's wider coverage. You can keep using the same add-on as your task list grows.

ONE ADD-ON. A WIDER ADMIN TOOLKIT.

Compare the Work You Can Do

Explore the bulk tasks covered by GW Manager, grouped just like our pricing table.

Google Workspace bulk administration: GW Manager and Gopher Tools
Feature	GW Manager	Gopher Tools
Organizational Units
Create organizational units	Yes	No
Update the organizational-unit structure	Yes	No
Delete OUs	Yes	No
Export OUs	Yes	No
Users
Create users	Yes	Yes
Update user details	Yes	Yes
Delete users	Yes	Yes
Restore deleted users	Yes	No
Export users	Yes	Yes
Suspend users	Yes	Yes
Reactivate suspended users	Yes	Yes
Rename users	Yes	Yes
Reset passwords	Yes	Yes
Update recovery information	Yes	No
Update employee and manager details	Yes	Yes
User Aliases
Create aliases	Yes	Yes
Delete aliases	Yes	Yes
Export aliases	Yes	No
Groups
Create groups	Yes	No
Update group names and email addresses	Yes	Yes
Delete groups	Yes	No
Export groups	Yes	Yes
Group Aliases
Create group aliases	Yes	No
Delete group aliases	Yes	No
Export group aliases	Yes	No
Group Settings
Update group access and posting settings	Yes	Yes
Export group settings to Sheets	Yes	Yes
Group Members
Add users to existing groups	Yes	Yes
Update member roles	Yes	No
Remove users from existing groups	Yes	Yes
Export membership data	Yes	Yes
Licenses
Assign licenses	Yes	No
Change licenses	Yes	No
Remove licenses	Yes	No
Export licenses	Yes	No
Mobile Devices
Approve, block, or wipe devices	Yes	No
Delete mobile devices	Yes	No
Export mobile devices	Yes	No
Custom Schemas
Create schemas	Yes	No
Update schemas	Yes	No
Delete schemas	Yes	No
Update values in existing user custom fields	Yes	Yes
Export schemas	Yes	No
OAuth Tokens
Export user tokens	Yes	No
Revoke user tokens	Yes	No
ChromeOS Devices
Export devices	Yes	Yes
Move devices between OUs	Yes	Yes
Update device details	Yes	Yes
Disable or deprovision devices	Yes	Yes
Domains and Domain Aliases
Add domains and aliases	Yes	No
Delete domains and aliases	Yes	No
Export domains and aliases	Yes	No
Domain Shared Contacts
Create shared contacts	Yes	No
Update shared contacts	Yes	No
Delete shared contacts	Yes	No
Export shared contacts	Yes	No
Efficiency Tools
Filter records before bulk actions	Yes	Yes
Schedule bulk changes	Yes	No

Comparison based on official product information and GW Manager’s product review. Gopher support is assessed across its separate add-ons. GW Manager features require the applicable plan. Reviewed September 21, 2026.

See GW Manager plans →

Now look at the jobs below the usual user and group checkboxes. Those are the ones that can send you looking for another tool after you've already paid for the first one.

For example, updating a user's existing custom field isn't the same job as creating the schema—the structure that defines those fields. Moving an account to an OU isn't the same as building the OU structure. I want your admin tool to help with the work around the account, too.

Restore Accounts in Bulk

GW Manager includes an Undelete Users action. Gopher for Users' quick-start guide explicitly says it has no undelete-users action.

In our bulk restore tutorial, you'll see how to supply the user IDs and destination OU paths, run the batch, and verify the result. Recovery remains subject to Google's eligibility rules.

That is a useful difference when account cleanup goes wrong. Your bulk-management tool can help you recover eligible accounts as well as create them.

Keep License Work in the Same Tool

Creating an account may be only the first part of onboarding. Staff may also need the right license assigned.

GW Manager has dedicated license actions, so you can move from account work to license work within the same product. Start with the bulk license-assignment walkthrough, which shows the input sheet and the results.

Build the Structure Around Your Users

If a new campus or department needs several OUs, prepare those requests as rows. GW Manager can create the structure in bulk.

The OU creation tutorial shows the full process. This is exactly the kind of task I don't want you to overlook when choosing a tool: it may not appear in a user-creation demo, but someone still has to do it.

2. Use One Add-On Across Your Admin Work

Gopher is a family of separate add-ons, available individually or in a bundle. GW Manager brings its modules into one add-on and sidebar.

That difference becomes useful as soon as your work crosses categories.

Say you're preparing the next intake. First, create the OUs you need. Then create the users, add group members, and handle license assignments. In GW Manager, you choose the relevant module and action as you move through that list.

Each action has its own task sheet, so the required information stays clear. If that sheet already exists, GW Manager recognizes it; you don't need to insert it again.

You still review and run each task deliberately. The benefit is that you can learn one general way of working and apply it across a much wider set of jobs.

Watch the GW Manager overview and demo.

3. Know Your Cost Before You Commit

GW Manager's paid pricing starts at $350 per administrator per year. You can see the plans and calculate the cost yourself.

Plan	Annual billing, per admin	Monthly billing, per admin	Listed daily operations
Standard	$350/year	$39.99/month	5,000
Enterprise	$450/year	$49.99/month	Unlimited

Prices shown are in USD. Each admin needs a license. Google Workspace subscriptions are separate. See current GW Manager pricing.

For two administrators on annual Standard billing, the tool costs $700 a year. The published price is based on the administrators using GW Manager, rather than charging a GW Manager seat for every student they manage.

For a school budget, that is straightforward: count the admins who need access and select the plan that fits their workload.

The value becomes clearer when you put the price beside the range of work you can do. You are buying a product that covers licenses, OUs, schemas, and other admin areas alongside your user and group tasks.

If you already have a Gopher quote, compare its annual software cost with your GW Manager total. A current public Gopher dollar price wasn't available in the official pages reviewed, so I won't attach a made-up savings percentage to your school. Our own price and coverage are there for you to inspect.

4. See How to Do the Job Before You Run It

I want you to be able to open a GW Manager tutorial and work through the task with me. A feature name on a pricing page is only the beginning.

Our documentation library lets you search for the job you need and browse by category. Open a task such as creating users, assigning licenses, or restoring accounts, and you can follow the video alongside the written explanation and product screenshots.

GW Manager documentation library with task search, category filters, and illustrated tutorial cards.

Find the task you need in the GW Manager documentation library.

Here's why I put value on that format:

Watch first: see how the task works before changing your own data.
Follow the screenshots: recognize the sidebar, sheet, and controls when it's your turn.
Read the steps: return to one detail without replaying an entire video.
Check the outcome: know what a completed job should look like.

GW Manager tutorial page showing written instructions and a product screenshot with blue rectangles and numbered click guidance.

The OU tutorial shows where to click, alongside the written explanation. Its video is available on the same page.

Think about handing a task to another member of your IT team. You can send them the guide for that exact job. They can see what to enter, where to run it, and how to check the result.

That is part of the value you're getting with GW Manager: help using the features you've paid for.

5. See What Happened to Every Row

Bulk actions need clear results. If you submit ten records, you should be able to tell which ones completed and which need correcting.

GW Manager shows task status and writes results to the task sheet. You can also verify the change in the Google Admin console.

Here is an example from our original OU documentation. It requests ten OUs and deliberately includes one invalid parent path. Nine requests succeed; the invalid one returns an error. These original screenshots illustrate the workflow; interface styling and historical plan counters may differ today.

Select the Task in the Sidebar

Choose Manage Org Units, then Create Org Units. Insert the task sheet if it is missing; use the existing one if it is already there.

GW Manager sidebar showing Manage Org Units, Create Org Units, and the task-sheet insertion controls.

Prepare the Batch and Execute

Each row contains an OU request and its parent path. Review the rows, select the run action, and execute the task.

Ten organizational-unit requests prepared in Google Sheets with GW Manager execution controls visible.

Check the Results

The sheet shows nine successes and one invalid-parent error. You can identify the row that needs attention without guessing whether the entire batch failed.

GW Manager results showing nine successful OU creations and one invalid-parent error.

Verify the Structure in the Admin Console

The created OUs appear in the directory structure. The displayed total also includes the existing root OU.

Google Admin console showing the OU hierarchy created in the GW Manager documentation example.

You can follow the complete OU tutorial when you're ready to try it. The same habit—prepare, run, check—helps you work through other bulk tasks with confidence.

6. Get Help With the Task You're Trying to Finish

Documentation is there to help you work independently. When you need product help, you can reach us at support@gwmanager.com.

Tell us what you're trying to accomplish and which GW Manager action you're using. If something isn't working, include the error and a screenshot with private information removed. That gives us the context to help with your actual task.

As the founder, I care about what happens after you install the add-on. The useful outcome is that you've completed your admin work and know how to repeat it next time.

Choose GW Manager for Your Next Bulk Task

Your admin workload reaches beyond creating users. The tool you choose should give you room to handle the next request without starting another product search.

That is the case for GW Manager: a broad range of bulk tasks, one familiar place to work, published pricing, and visual tutorials that show you how to use it. For school and district admins who need that range, I believe it is the stronger choice.

Start with a task that's already on your list. Find its GW Manager tutorial, follow the walkthrough, and try a small batch. Our free plan includes 20 lifetime operations so you can get a feel for the workflow before choosing a paid plan.

Explore GW Manager and choose your plan.