Microsoft announces Teams Essentials, a standalone Microsoft Teams offering for small businesses

Microsoft today announced Teams Essentials, a standalone Microsoft Teams offering for small businesses. Team Essentials will cost $4 USD per person, per month and will provide the following:

• Unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours
• Meetings with up to 300 people
• 10 GB of cloud storage per user

When compared to Slack, Teams Essentials provides a more affordable and professional meeting solution for small businesses.

“We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work at Microsoft, said they had to demonstrate a great deal of flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology. “Teams Essentials is specifically built to meet the unique needs of small businesses, helping them thrive in this new era of working.”

Teams Essentials also includes existing and new capabilities included in the free version of Teams:

• Simple, easy invitations only requires an email address. Users are not required to register, log in, or install Teams to join the meeting.
• In addition to Outlook Calendar integration, new Google Calendar integration makes it easy to schedule meetings in Microsoft Teams. *Coming soon
• Professional meeting tools and capabilities like meeting lobby, virtual wallpaper, Together mode, closed captioning live and live reaction.
• Never lose context or continuity with always get ready chat in Microsoft Teams.
• Quickly start a team project and hold meetings with anyone, assign tasks to teammates, and create polls for quick feedback, all in one hub with New small business group chat template. * Coming soon to desktop and web

Businesses can purchase Teams Essentials from Team website or through multiple Microsoft Cloud Partners to suit their needs.

The source: Microsoft