Differences between Google Archived Users and Suspend a user

I was checking the guide to manage former employees data (https://support.google.com/a/answer/9048836), and it suggests using Archived User (AU) licenses. This page says that the benefits of this license is “A user’s archived status appears in user reports, making it easy to monitor, manage, and eventually delete archived users”.

I was wondering if you can have the same result by:

Only suspending the users (and put them in a OrgUnit called “Former Employees”).
Or even better, assign them a Cloud Identity Free license, remove the workspace license, suspend them and put them in a former employees OrgUnit.

Any thoughts?

Solution

I reviewed the document Manage former employees and their data, and there is a characteristic that is not explained explicitly why an AU license is better than suspending a user: The AU license cost is way lower than paying a full workspace license. Remember that suspended accounts are still charged at the same rate as active accounts on both the Annual billing plan and the Flexible plan..

Regarding using a Cloud Identity Free license and suspending a user, you may think that is better because there is no any cost associated. But there is a catch: the Google Vault service (among others) is not included with Cloud Identity Licenses. If you remote the workspace license of the user and only keep Cloud Identity, the user’s Vault data will be lost.

TL;DR: AU Licenses cost less than a workspace (full) license, and several important services (like Vault, Data Region Policy) are compatible with it.