ChatGPT is OpenAI's general-purpose AI assistant, launched November 2022 and now used by over 800 million people weekly. It's a chat interface (with optional document upload, voice mode, image generation, and custom GPTs) that handles writing, analysis, coding, research, and decision-making tasks.
For SMB operators, ChatGPT competes directly with Microsoft 365 Copilot — and often wins on price, reasoning quality, and flexibility. The trade-off is integration: ChatGPT can't read your Excel files unless you upload them, can't draft Outlook emails in place, can't summarize Teams meetings automatically.
What it does well
Writing and reasoning. ChatGPT's GPT-4o and successor models are consistently strong at structuring arguments, drafting professional content (proposals, reports, emails), and explaining complex topics. It excels at one-off analytical tasks: paste in a spreadsheet, ask for insights, get useful output in seconds.
The custom GPT feature lets you build specialized assistants — a "client onboarding assistant" with your firm's onboarding doc loaded, or a "Excel formula explainer" that walks junior staff through formulas. Easy to set up, no coding required.
Where ChatGPT loses to Copilot
Integration. Every Excel or Word task with ChatGPT requires copy-paste. For a finance team running variance analysis on the same data every month, that friction adds up. Copilot in Excel handles the same task without leaving the spreadsheet.
ChatGPT also doesn't have native access to your organizational data (SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive). You can build workarounds with custom GPTs that pull from URLs or uploaded files, but it's manual.
Who should use it
If you're a solopreneur, consultant, or work outside the Microsoft ecosystem, ChatGPT Plus at $20/month is almost always the better choice over Copilot. If your team works heavily in Excel and you can justify $30/user/month, Copilot in Excel wins on integration alone.
For most SMBs, the right answer is both: Copilot for integrated work, ChatGPT for general reasoning and writing.