Microsoft takes fight to Slack with free version of Teams
- by Pat Wise
- in Hi-Tech
- — Jul 13, 2018
While it's late to the party, Microsoft is offering a surprisingly strong set of features with the free version of Teams.
Microsoft has upped the ante against popular chat software startup Slack by launching a free version of its own chat service, Teams.
After its launch previous year, Microsoft Teams now functions in more than 200,000 businesses across 181 markets, according to the press release.
The free tier offers up to 300 seats and most of the functionality, with a few predictable little nudges toward the paid version - which is fine and dandy - nothing is truly free these days. Free Teams supports group voice and video calling, too; Slack's free tier is restricted to 1:1 video calls.
Included are full audio and video calling for groups, unlimited app integrations (beating Slack's limit of ten), up to 10GB of file storage for the group and 2GB for each user.
By comparison, the free version of Slack is limited to 10 app integrations, 5GB of file storage and doesn't permit guest access.
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Also built in is real-time content creation with Office Online apps, app integrations, and the ability to invite people from outside of your organization to collaborate on projects.
The system is created to enable organizations to reach optimum communication and collaboration-from anywhere in the world. Microsoft also showed off new live event capabilities for Office among other productivity features and new offerings for Azure and Power BI.
To address the growing collaboration needs of our customers, previous year we introduced Microsoft Teams, a powerful hub for teamwork that brings together chat, meetings, calling, files, and apps into a shared workspace in Microsoft 365. "Teams in Microsoft 365 includes everything in the free version plus additional storage, enterprise security, and compliance, and it can be used for your whole organization, regardless of size", Markezich emphasized.
Microsoft is pushing this free version out the door later than it probably should have.
Microsoft Whiteboard is now available on Windows 10, but is also coming soon to iOS, said the release. Slack has offered a free version since it first arrived on the scene, and looking at Slack's dominance today, it seems like it was a good move.
Of course, Microsoft is leaving some of the goodies for people who subscribe to Microsoft 365, beyond just going over 300 team members.
