Microsoft Teams Free Tier may be coming according to product references

[AlTech]

Microsoft Teams may be getting a Free Tier to compete with Slack according to recently discovered product references in the product EULA and subscription agreement.

 

The alleged free Microsoft Teams tier would be limited and contain fewer features than the current paid versions which are part of Office 365.

 

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It appears Microsoft may be a little closer to launching a free version of Microsoft Teams as it seeks to challenge Slack in the workplace. References to a free tier first popped up in February within a developer preview of the communications app. Now, the free tier looks to be coming more into focus thanks to Microsoft's own documentation.

The references come by way an official end user notice and a subscription agreement spotted by Twitter user WalkingCat, who is known for digging up in-development projects from Microsoft. In both, Microsoft Teams (free) is mentioned, along with some details of what to expect.

 

This is a quote from the EULA spotted by a Twitter user:

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Microsoft Teams (free) is intended for use by organizations, such as small businesses or groups of coworkers. If you were invited to join a group in Microsoft Teams (free), the group you are joining in the Microsoft Teams (free) instance will be considered your organization for the purposes of this notice, and the person administering the group will be considered the administrator of your account in Microsoft Teams (free).

 

So yeah, personally I'm not fond of Slack, Atlassian's HipChat or any other proprietary solution. And this won't change that.

 

Source: https://windowscentral.com/references-microsoft-teams-free-tier-appear-documentation

[williamcll]

How about upgrading skype instead?

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, williamcll said:

How about upgrading skype instead?

They're different products for different market segments. Skype is more of a consumer product whilst Microsoft Teams is squarely aimed at Businesses and Enterprise.

[Bouzoo]

Is there a reason why the quotes in all your posts are ridiculously big?

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Is there a reason why the quotes in all your posts are ridiculously big?

I'm on mobile. Idk if that changes anything but I'll clear the formatting.

[FratStar]

17 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

So yeah, personally I'm not fond of Slack, Atlassian's HipChat or any other proprietary solution. And this won't change that.

 

So what would you use? Personally and in a situation where you may be doing business?

[schwellmo92]

Eh I’m not a fan of Teams, My team was forced off Slack and on to Teams and not a day goes by that I don’t wish we were still using Slack. Slack and Teams both suffer from the Electron clunkiness, but Teams is much worse and messages take up way too much screen real estate.

[AlTech]

39 minutes ago, FratStar said:

So what would you use? Personally and in a situation where you may be doing business?

Well, I'd use Rocket.Chat. It's open source, uses E2E encryption,  and can be easily hosted on your own server hardware. A few companies and Educational institutes host it. 

 

The main communication app I use personally in my everyday life is Signal which is also OSS. I also use WhatsApp a bit because a lot of people aren't willing to ditch it. I already have enough of a problem convincing people not to use FaceBook Messenger. People generally in my experience are fine making the compromise to go with WhatsApp. But going to Signal is just something a lot people aren't willing to do.

[FratStar]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well, I'd use Rocket.Chat. It's open source, uses E2E encryption,  and can be easily hosted on your own server hardware. A few companies and Educational institutes host it. 

 

The main communication app I use personally in my everyday life is Signal which is also OSS. I also use WhatsApp a bit because a lot of people aren't willing to ditch it. I already have enough of a problem convincing people not to use FaceBook Messenger. People generally in my experience are fine making the compromise to go with WhatsApp. But going to Signal is just something a lot people aren't willing to do.

I think the biggest issues is hosting it yourself. When a company is looking to cut costs they wouldn't want to deal with the expense of hosting collaboration tools on-prem. Paying in-house teams to support the the infrastructure and possibly the tool it self would just be too costly when you can just pay M$ to do it. When going to the cloud Collaboration is one of the first things companies look at the move there. Also having used both Slack and Teams too I really am of the mind of use the one that's cheaper to launch.

 

I personally use and prefer Signal as well, but people don't want to make the jump as you said. Google refuses to make a single integrated messaging app with E2E encryption where they don't collect the data.

 

I haven't seen too many people using FB messenger as a form of communication other than to fb friends, but my family that are over seas do use WhatsApp and sometimes hangouts. Most people I know just use SMS and obviously if you have an iPhone you'll be blue instead of green or w/e the status symbol is.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, FratStar said:

I think the biggest issues is hosting it yourself. When a company is looking to cut costs they wouldn't want to deal with the expense of hosting collaboration tools on-prem.

Some do because of the privacy benefits. 

Although Rocket.Chat does have their own paid plans which are mildly expensive and include support.

1 hour ago, FratStar said:

Snip