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The shift to remote work over the last two years has caused companies to rely on their digital tools for completing work and communicating. And remote working is not becoming a thing of the past anytime soon.

It has been found that 26% of UK workers plan to continue to work from home permanently. In addition to this, 77% of remote workers say they’re more productive working from home. Finally, 85% of managers surveyed expect that having teams with remote workers will be the new normal.

One of the most popular online communication tools, which has risen massively in popularity, is Microsoft Teams. Therefore, we want to explain the differences between the three versions available for your business.

Between April 2020 and April 2021, the Microsoft Teams’ daily active users count rose from 75 million to 145 million.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Teams is an all-in-one platform, providing a range of work tools for communicating, collaborating and working.

Some of the key features of MS Teams include:

• Video and audio calls
• Webinar registration & attendance reporting
• Team chats
• File storage and sharing
• In-app collaboration in Word, Excel, PPT, and more
• In-app collaboration in 3rd party applications
• Status notification and alerts
• Use on all devices

Next, we’ll go explain the differences between the three MS Teams plans so you can make an informed decision on what would best suit your business.

Microsoft Teams Free Version

The free version of MS Teams was created with the intention to meet the needs of people using it for out-of-office reasons. This was an audience segment which had been catered to by the Microsoft Teams service before.

This plan has the following capabilities:

• Unlimited group meetings for up to 60 minutes
• Up to 100 participants per meeting
• 5GB of cloud storage per user
• Unlimited chat
• File sharing, tasks, and polling
• Data encryption for calls, files, meetings, chats
• Co-authoring capabilities
• Ability to add tabs inside group channels

One of the limitations which may not work for your business is that group meetings have a maximum time limit of 60 minutes. In addition to this, the 5GB cloud storage also be difficult for you to require a lot of storage space.

Microsoft Teams Essentials

Teams Essentials is £3 per user each month; this was created specifically for small businesses that may not want to subscribe to M365, but still require a good cloud collaboration tool to ensure their team can communicate and collaborate effectively.

This plan has the following capabilities:

• Everything in the free version, plus:
• Unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours
• Up to 300 participants per meeting
• 10GB of cloud storage per user
• Anytime phone and web support

A benefit of this package is that you can set group meetings to last up to 30 hours which ensures you will always have as much time as you need to get the job done! Furthermore, users get double the cloud storage space compared to the free version; this package also provides phone and web support to ensure your staff has help using the app if needed.

Teams with Microsoft 365

The version of Teams with Microsoft 365 is available for your business with any subscription type. The cheapest plan available is £4.50 per user each month. However, this package does not come with downloadable Office apps (e.g. Word, Excel, etc.), it only provides the web versions.

However, the next step up would be M365 Business Standard which will cost your business £15.10 per user each month. This one does include the downloadable Office apps for the users.

These plans have the following capabilities:

• Everything in the Essentials version, plus:
• Office applications (either web or web & downloadable)
• All the many M365 cloud apps (OneDrive, Forms, SharePoint, OneNote, and many others)
• 1TB of cloud storage per user
• Webinar hosting
• Customer appointment management
• Premium security features

If you were already planning to use Microsoft Office software and other Microsoft applications, then it would be appropriate to get the Teams and M365 subscription. On the other hand, if your business already owns the offline version of the Microsoft Office applications or does not need it, then Teams Essentials offers a lot of capabilities at a lower price.

Do You Need Help Getting Teams for Your Business?

Today’s hybrid offices and remote teams need powerful collaboration tools to ensure everyone can work effectively and efficiently. Contact us if you need help getting started with MS Teams or another cloud tool. We are happy to provide further guidance and advice:

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