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Microsoft Teams

Meet, chat, call, and collaborate in just one place

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Overview

What Microsoft Teams does

Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration. Part of the Microsoft 365 family, it integrates with Office apps and services.

What people use it for

  • Remote meetings
  • Team collaboration
  • Document sharing
  • Project management
  • Webinars

Related searches

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Microsoft Teams.

  • Resource-heavy application; slow to load and consumes significant CPU/memory compared to alternatives
  • Limited channel structure; maximum of 200 public and 30 private channels per team
  • Cannot invite guest users to specific channels; guest access grants full team visibility
  • Unable to chat during screen sharing; limits real-time collaborative communication
  • Limited customization options for branding and interface; cluttered UX compared to Slack
  • Channels cannot be moved between teams; requires manual replication for reorganization

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Microsoft Teams

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

  • Microsoft Teams logo
    Microsoft Teams    vs
    Zoom logo
    Zoom

    Zoom: Leading video conferencing platform with superior meeting quality and video reliability, widely adopted for large-scale meetings and external communication.

  • Microsoft Teams logo
    Microsoft Teams    vs
    Webex by Cisco logo
    Webex by Cisco

    Webex by Cisco: Unified communications platform with strong video, phone, and recording capabilities, offering more flexible meeting and channel management than Teams.

  • Microsoft Teams logo
    Microsoft Teams    vs
    Google Meet logo
    Google Meet

    Google Meet: Integrated collaboration tool within Google Workspace with simpler UX, automatic calendar integration, and less resource-heavy than Teams.

Pricing

What Microsoft Teams costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Free

  • Unlimited chat
  • 100 participants in meetings
  • 5GB file storage
  • Screen sharing
  • Together mode

Microsoft Teams Essentials

$4 /mo

  • 300 participants in meetings
  • 10GB cloud storage
  • Phone & web support
  • Meeting recordings
  • Whiteboard

Microsoft 365 Business Basic

$6 /mo

  • Everything in Essentials
  • 1TB OneDrive storage
  • Web & mobile Office apps
  • Email hosting
  • SharePoint

Microsoft 365 Business Standard

$12.5 /mo

  • Everything in Basic
  • Desktop Office apps
  • Webinar hosting
  • Attendee registration
  • Customer bookings

Capabilities

Features

  • Chat & channels

    Chat & channels capability

  • Video conferencing

    Video conferencing capability

  • Screen sharing

    Screen sharing capability

  • File collaboration

    File collaboration capability

  • Office integration

    Office integration capability

  • Live events

    Live events capability

  • Phone system

    Phone system capability

  • Apps & workflows

    Apps & workflows capability

  • Office 365

    Integration with Office 365

  • SharePoint

    Integration with SharePoint

  • OneDrive

    Integration with OneDrive

  • Outlook

    Integration with Outlook

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does Microsoft Teams have a free tier?

Yes. Microsoft Teams offers a free Home tier with unlimited chat, 60-minute group meetings for up to 100 people, 5GB cloud storage, and basic file sharing, though limits are restrictive for growing teams.

Source
What are Microsoft Teams' paid plans?

Microsoft Teams Essentials costs $4/user/month (chat, calling, meetings, 10GB storage). Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs $7/user/month (includes desktop Office apps, 1TB storage). Premium plans with Copilot start at $23.50/user/month.

Source
What are Microsoft Teams' primary features?

Teams provides real-time chat, video and voice calling, meetings with up to 300 participants, file sharing and storage integration with OneDrive, recording and transcripts, and deep integration with Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook).

What integrations does Teams support?

Microsoft Teams integrates with calendar apps (Outlook, Google Calendar), project management tools (Trello), and works with Zapier for custom workflow automation. Teams also has native connectors to many Microsoft 365 apps and third-party services.

Behind it

Who makes Microsoft Teams

Company
Microsoft Corporation
Based in
Redmond, WA
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Microsoft Teams, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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