Microsoft introduces Teams Essentials aimed at small businesses

The company says its the most competitively priced offering on the collaboration market

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Teams Essentials, a stand-alone offering that is aimed at small businesses. The company calls it the, "most competitively priced online meetings and collaboration solution in the market."

The Redmond technology giant has priced Teams Essentials at Rs 100 per person, per month, giving small teams access to essential tools for hosting meetings and collaboration.

A party on teams can host meetings with up to 300 people and enjoy 10GB of cloud space per person in an organisation. The meetings that can be hosted are unlimited but are capped at a maximum of 30 hours.

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“We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They’ve had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work at Microsoft.

“Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work,” Spataro added.

Organisations using Teams Essentials will also have access to all the capabilities of the free version of Teams including email invites, Outlook calendar integration, meeting tools like lobbies and virtual backgrounds, always-available text chats and support for group projects and tasks.

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According to Mio Dispatch, The corporate messaging market has seen a lot of interest since the lockdown's hit in 2020. Microsoft is locked in fierce competition with Salesforce's Slack, which had 12 million active daily users in March 2020.

Teams is quickly catching up, with a total of 250 million active monthly users. Teams is also used by 91 of the Fortune 100 companies.