The days of businesses being able to leverage Teams for free are gone – it sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s true, and there’s no way round it…

After becoming the de-facto platform for collaboration since Covid, Microsoft is milking Teams for all it’s worth, announcing the deactivation of the ‘free Teams app for business’ and introducing the new Microsoft Teams Premium licence.

Full transparency – there’s a ‘Microsoft Teams (free)’ option … but we’ll get to that in a minute…

What’s the big deal?

Even before the pandemic, thousands of businesses used Microsoft Teams to keep teams close and collaborative. Then Covid thrust the technology into the economic mainstream, along with other communications platforms, to overcome the challenges of lockdowns.

Ever since, those same businesses have come to rely on Teams for more than just messaging and video calls. Some may use it for file sharing, others for voice calls and for many, Teams has become an integral platform to keep the cogs of industry whirring.

Those same businesses will now have to pay $7 (approximately £6) per user per month to keep the functionality they were used to!

Given the rising costs of doing business and the UK’s path to economic recovery, which can amount to a considerable cost for large and small businesses alike. Yes, the new tier adds fancy bells and whistles, such as Chat GPT integration, but don’t get too excited, it’s not AI-powered conversations for your customers, simply live transcriptions – talk about anti-climax…

“The annual cost simply to keep Teams running for 20 members of staff will be about £1,440. And that’s before you get into Direct Calling licences, minute allowances and online storage capacity!”
Mark Pillow, Managing Director, Voip Unlimited

So, what’s the big deal? Teams will quickly turn from an economic life-saver, into an operational budget-drainer…

What about ‘Microsoft Teams (free)’?

To ensure Microsoft doesn’t alienate every single business, it is introducing a new free tier of Teams, but accounts will not auto-transfer from the previous free tier to the new one.

That means users will have to manually transfer files from one to the other, while also recommending that those same users upgrade to ‘Microsoft Teams Essentials’, which provides 10Gb of cloud storage and unlimited group meetings, for £3 per month per user… And that’s ignoring all the faff and wasted time in switching licences and transferring information!

So, what’s the solution?

As the title suggests – Voxone.

It’s our purpose-built UC solution, with one simple cost per user and nothing more – no add-ons to bleed you dry – and it does pretty much everything Teams does and more!

Voxone is the ultimate communication solution, no matter the size or scope of your customers. With one, easy-to-budget price and no upsells necessary, sales conversations become far smoother, with less push-back on each additional paid feature.

But don’t worry… There’s still plenty of room for margins, and your customers get a fully-fledged UC solution, with all the features they need. You also get the support you need to get the most from our platform and any advice on behind-the-scenes optimisations we can help you perform.