Microsoft launched a new standalone version of Teams for small businesses on Wednesday morning, the first paid version of its communication and collaboration service to be offered separately from other Office apps and services.
Shares of Zoom Video Communications closed down more than 6% after Microsoft’s announcement, and RingCentral stock dropped 8%, signaling Wall Street’s take on the potential threat to those competing services.
Microsoft Teams Essentials costs $4 per user/month, with unlimited group meetings that can last as long as 30 hours each, up to 300 participants per meeting, and 10GB of cloud storage per user, in addition to customer support, file sharing, task assigning tools, polling, and data encryption.
The pricing undercuts a $14.99 per user/month entry-level paid service from Zoom and a $19.99 per user/month “essentials” service from RingCentral, as noted by Barron’s in its coverage of the launch.
Microsoft Teams launched in 2017 and has grown significantly during the pandemic. Microsoft said in July that Teams had reached 250 million monthly active users, up from 145 million in April, primarily in business and work settings.
