Microsoft Teams Licensing Overview for MS Teams Plan Selection
Perhaps the only thing more complicated than Microsoft Teams licensing is its robust feature set. However, that is exactly why MS Teams has become the most popular communication and collaboration tool. That too, for both people and businesses alike. The real problem is that new and sometimes even existing customers get confused about which MS Teams plan they need. Considering the recent changes, Microsoft has removed Teams from many of its popular Enterprise grade plans and created Teaams free options for the rest. So to help users select the plan, we have this writeup at their disposal. Let’s start with the reason why you need a plan to select a plan.
Table of Contents
Why Do You Need a Microsoft Teams Licensing Guide At All?
No one wants to pay for something that they won’t ever use. The same is true for organizations as well. That’s why careful consideration must be given during the Microsoft Teams licensing selection.
The direct licensing cost is just part of the total monetary equation. Administrators may fail to take the training time of regular users into account. This is because the regular user might not be knowledgeable enough to get/use the extra features.
Moreover, there is a reason why Microsoft improves the security of its heavier Microsft Teams licensing plans, as they are quite complicated on their own. So there is an increased risk of people within the organization messing up a critical part that they don’t know about.
Having too many access points also increases the surface area from where external agents can damage the MS Teams environment.
All these reasons together make a very strong case for you to use an expert point of view before arriving at a decision.
Also Read: How to Migrate Teams from One Tenant to Another Easily
Microsoft Teams Licensing Overview
Home Plans
- Teams Free
- Personal MS Teams
- Microsoft Teams Family Plan
Business Plans
- Teams Essentials
- Business Basics
- Business Standard
- Business Premium
Enterprise Plan
- Microsoft Teams Enterprise Standalone
Apart from this, some geographical locations, like North America, have access to the Telephone feature of MS Teams. Which works essentially as a carrier with a phone number and all.
There is also a set of hardware integrations that Microsft sells under the name Microsoft Teams Rooms. Which makes any enclosed space into a meeting room for hybrid-style work.
This was an overview of all plans Microsft provides for its users, which include Teams software. Next up, we start the explanation of the Home plans.
Microsoft Teams Licensing Guide for Individuals and Families
These plans are for personal use. That can be used to communicate with family and friends over long distances.
Microsoft Teams Free Edition
Free tier of Teams available for any individual only covers the most basic form of online video conferencing. In that, it allows 1 hour of break-free communication for up to 100 users. Apart from that, it has one-to-one chats and the ability to set up communities. Which is a free toned-down version of channels. Although it can only be configured via the mobile app. It has a browser-based and desktop-based app configuration as well.
Choose it if you wish to try out the MS Teams communication prowess. Note that you get only a small glimpse of what it’s capable of. To understand the full feature set you can get a 30-day free trial of any premium plan.
Personal Microsoft Teams licensing
The cheapest premium edition on Teams starts at 6.99 a month. If you take the annual subscription, then you get 2 free months as the price bumps up to $69.9. The advantages of this plan over the free edition are as follows:
Attendee limit triples to 300 and the max meeting duration is 30 hours.
The cloud available for you goes up to 1TB from 5GB
You get premium versions of other Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, etc. Other changes include an ad-free experience across the board.
Family Level Edition, MS Teams
The family edition is like a pro version of the regular MS Team premium license. It allows the same features to be shared between 6 members of a family through a joint billing account. The price goes up to $9.9 per month or $99.00 per year. However, it is still a bargain when compared to six individual licenses.
Business Level Microsoft Teams Licensing Explained
The variation within business plans is a bit more complicated. Sometimes you see Teams as a standalone product, while at other times it is part of a Microsoft 365 bundle. So this is our attempt at clearing out this confusion.
The first and cheapest business plan is Microsoft Teams Essentials it contains only Teams and is a relatively new plan. It was made for those businesses who are in the market for only a communication tool and nothing else. By default, this is charged $4.00 per user and can either be paid on a monthly or yearly basis. This cheaper version also lets to host unlimited meetings capping at 30 hours. Where you can add up to 300 people.
The next three teams’ options are part of the Microsft 365 Basic, Standard, and Premium version. Each is more expensive than the last. The main difference between these plans and the earlier one is that they contain other Microsoft products as well. Thus offering a more complete business suite at a greater price. The Basic plan expands storage to 1 TB and the Standard version allows Copilot as an addon.
When you unlock the Enterprise Grade Microsoft Teams licensing for your organization, you bring communication and collaboration to the next level. Your regular meetings will run uninterrupted for up to 30 hours. Plus, everyone on the team gets 10 GB of extra cloud storage to keep things organized. A dedicated support team is available to all via phone or web.
And to top it all off, data encryption ensures your conversations and files stay secure no matter what. To see so many advantages that an enterprise plan has over a regular business model, the next natural question is what can an administrator do to upgrade. Don’t worry, as we have an answer.
How to Change an MS Teams Plan?
While changing personal licenses is easy, it happens on its own when you purchase the premium version. However, the same cannot be said for businesses and enterprises. For that, the admin needs to follow a series of steps given below.
- Go to Microsoft Entra admin center log in with privileges equal or greater than License Administrator
- Pick the Microsoft Entra ID
- Go to All Users> Users
- Open the user profile page.
- Remove existing Microsoft Teams licensing
- Select Licenses >> Assignments to edit license assignment
As the amount of data increases multifold. So if you are an admin who wants to move your Teams channel data, then you should only trust the tried and tested SysTools Teams Migration software. Designed to keep all user data safe during transit, the tool contains multiple filters to trim your Teams data. So you only move what’s required and leave the unwanted data behind.
Conclusion
In this write-up, we gave people instructions on how to select Microsoft Teams licensing for any particular use case. We went on to discuss the individual, business level, and options available for enterprise-grade plans. In the end, if any professional situation demands a shift from one MS Teams channel to another, we highlighted a solution for that as well.