Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Microsoft’s new stand-alone Teams Essentials takes on Slack for smaller groups

Microsoft has announced a new stand-alone version of Teams that is designed for smaller companies and organizations. Dubbed Teams Essentials, the new offering aims to take on Slack and is priced at $4 per person per month.

Even though Microsoft will still offer the free version of Teams, this new option is all about affordability and extended limits for small businesses and organizations. The offering includes several core features, including extended meeting times and large meeting capacity.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

With extended meeting times, Teams meetings can last up to 30 hours, and a large meeting capacity means the ability to host up to 300 people per meeting. The other features include integrations with Google Calendar, a group chat template, and the ability to invite people to meetings using just an email address without signing up or signing in. Of course, Team’s meeting lobbies, virtual backgrounds, and together mode are included, too. These are all features that Microsoft says small businesses can use to easily meet, collaborate, and communicate.

Teams Essentials goes beyond meetings and chats too, and includes tools for work such as Office. Access to Office Web apps, file sharing, group chats, and task management is included. The offering has 10GB of file storage, which is double the amount from the free version of Teams. And, unlike the popular free version of Slack, all of Teams’ chats are persistent. You can always go back and see the context of a conversation.

Microsoft is even throwing in a mobile chat dashboard, which is included for customers purchasing Teams Essentials directly from Microsoft. This lets users click dashboard view in any 1:1 or group chat to access shared content neatly organized into categories such as locations, photos, files, task lists, upcoming events.

“The world isn’t going back to the ‘old’ way of working, so small businesses need solutions that are designed specifically for their unique needs to thrive in this new normal. Today we’re excited to introduce Microsoft Teams Essentials,” said Jared Spataro, Microsoft 365 Corporate Vice President.

Small Businesses will be able to purchase Teams Essentials from Microsoft’s Cloud Partners including Crayon, T-Mobile, and Vodafone Business. Worldwide users will be able to buy Teams Essentials directly from Microsoft.

Editors' Recommendations

Arif Bacchus
Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…
These new Zoom features take on Teams and Outlook in a serious way
The Rewind app on an iMac with a pink background, showing a grid of faces from a Zoom call

Zoom shared at its Zoomtopia event on Tuesday details about its new business services, which will include Mail and Calendar clients in addition to Team Chat, Whiteboard, Phone, and Meetings options.

Zoom will soon make its Mail and Calendar offerings available as a beta release, in an effort to compete with brands such as Google and Microsoft, which already have established mail and calendar services, for both general and professional customers. These include Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Notably, Zoom's in-house expansion comes as both Microsoft and Google place a greater focus on their professional services.

Read more
Microsoft’s new audio dock is part speaker, part USB hub
The Microsoft Audio dock with cable being connected.

Amidst the buzz of the Surface Laptop 5 and Surface Pro 9 created at today's Surface launch event, Microsoft launched a few Microsoft Teams-centric accessories as well.

One of the newly released devices is a USB-C-powered hub called the Microsoft Audio Dock, featuring a built-in speaker for meetings and music.

Read more
This Microsoft Teams exploit could leave your account vulnerable
A video call in Microsoft Teams is displayed on a laptop.

According to analysts from cybersecurity company Vectra, there's a massive vulnerability within Microsoft Teams, and countless users could potentially be affected if hackers gets their hands on it.

The program has a flaw that makes it possible for attackers to steal the login credentials of users and log into their accounts. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not planning to patch this right now, so read on to make sure you're staying safe from this unexpected Microsoft Teams issue.

Read more