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Posted on: 7 June 2022
Author: Karen Rogers
Here at Corbel in Ipswich, throughout the last couple of years we have seen a massive upsurge in the use of Microsoft 365 applications in businesses across the Suffolk area. Specifically, Teams due to the need for home working and collaboration in the pandemic. In fact, globally between April 2020 and April 2021, the Microsoft Teams daily working client count soared from 75 million to 145 million.
Teams is an all-encompassing communication tool, providing more than just chat or video conferencing. It combines multiple capabilities into an online work hub for communication and collaboration.
Some of the main features of MS Teams are:
In the beginning, Microsoft Teams was available only through a Microsoft 365 Business subscription. Then, to improve the attractiveness of Teams and compete with video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft brought out a free version with less functionality in 2018.
This supported the service to increase its user base, nevertheless, there was a wide gap between the capabilities of the paid edition with a Microsoft 365 subscription and the free version. Such as, much less support, less features to use etc.
Microsoft observed that it was missing an important audience, the small business. Small business owners had a more challenging time fitting into either the free model, which has very limited group meeting timing, or the paid model, which required a full M365 subscription.
So, in December of 2021, it brought out the third plan for Microsoft Teams that it is hopeful will be ‘just right’ for smaller businesses that require the same collaboration and communication tools as everyone else. This plan is called Teams Essentials and you don’t need to sign up for Microsoft 365 to get it.
The free version of Microsoft Teams was really launched to reach the residential and home user market. A demographic that had been totally missing from the Teams userbase up to that point.
This plan has the following capabilities:
The biggest downside of using the free version for your business is the 60-minute limit on group video meetings. The 5GB cloud storage can also be restrictive for business use of Teams.
Teams Essentials is £3.00 per user per month (Annual Subscription) and was launched specifically for small businesses that may not want to subscribe to M365, yet still need a good cloud collaboration tool to keep their team productive and connected.
This option has the following capabilities:
The extra group meeting time (up to 30 hours) is more than enough to fill any type of meeting need, even those that go on all day. Furthermore, users get double the cloud storage space, and the web and phone support ensure your team has help using the app when needed. Or alternatively consider a managed IT Support contract with companies such as Corbel for businesses in the Ipswich and Suffolk area.
The version of Teams with Microsoft 365 is available with any business plan. The lowest cost plan is Microsoft 365 Business Basic which is £4.50 per user per month (Annual Subscription) However, the Basic package does not come with downloadable Office apps (Word, Excel, etc.), only the web versions.
The next step up would be M365 Business Standard at £9.40 per user per month (Annual Subscription), which is quite a bit more than the price for Teams Essentials. This one does include the downloadable Office apps.
These plans have the following capabilities:
If you are planning to use Microsoft Office software and other applications, then it makes sense to get Teams along with an M365 subscription. However, if your business already owns the offline version of the Office suite or does not need it, then Teams Essentials offers a lot of capabilities with a lower price tag.
Today’s hybrid offices and remote teams need strong collaboration tools to be competitive. Contact the Corbel Team who are Ipswich based if you need help getting started with Microsoft Teams or any other cloud applications. We’ll be happy to guide you through so you can achieve a set-up that works for your business. Or if you have a moment, take a look at our Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide here
Corbel, who are Ipswich based, offer IT Support to businesses in the Ipswich and surrounding Suffolk area covering Cyber Security, Business Continuity and IT Consulting to help our customers take advantage of technology to enable business processes.
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