With “Microsoft Teams Essentials“, Microsoft has presented a new, stand-alone Teams offering for small businesses. It’s specifically tailored for retailers, restaurants, nonprofits, and other smaller professional user groups.
Microsoft wants to kill two birds with one stone: No IT skills are required for Teams Essentials, so there are no entry barriers for small companies; In addition, the Teams Essentials plan contains more features than the free version of Teams and that at an affordable price.
According to Microsoft, the core functions of Microsoft Teams Essentials include unlimited group video calls for up to 30 hours with up to 300 people, group chats, and calendar integration with Outlook and Google Calendar. Teams Essentials also offers 10 GB of cloud storage for file sharing and task management with colleagues.
What the Teams Essentials plan doesn’t offer, however, are the channel functions, whiteboards, and threaded messages that are available in the regular Teams app. Microsoft is now starting the new entry plan at a price of 4 US dollars or 3.40 euros per user per month. According to the announcement by Jared Spataro, CVP of Microsoft 365, it is “the most affordable all-in-one solution currently on the market”.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic, a slightly more expensive plan for $5 per user per month, includes everything listed in Microsoft Teams Essentials plus meeting recordings with transcriptions, 1 TB of cloud storage, and web – and mobile versions of Microsoft’s Office apps. For most companies, this will probably remain the better choice.
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