Publish Date
06/03/2025
Categories
Blogs Hot Topic
Microsoft has announced that Skype will be discontinued by May 2025, signalling a shift toward Microsoft Teams as its primary collaboration platform. While a free version of Teams is available, it has significant limitations that may hinder business productivity. Companies looking for seamless communication, enhanced security, and advanced collaboration tools will benefit greatly from upgrading to a paid Teams plan.
Microsoft Teams Free vs. Paid: Key Differences
The free version of Teams offers essential communication features, including chat, file sharing, and group meetings. However, as businesses scale, they often encounter roadblocks that can impact efficiency. Here’s a breakdown of the main limitations of Teams Free and the advantages of a paid subscription:
- Meeting Duration & Capacity – Free meetings are capped at 60 minutes with a maximum of 100 participants. Paid plans extend meetings up to 30 hours and allow 300+ participants, making them ideal for webinars and larger teams.
- Storage Space – The free plan includes just 5GB of storage per team. Paid plans start at 10GB per user and can go up to 1TB per user with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, ensuring sufficient space for all documents and media.
- Meeting Recordings & Transcripts – Teams Free does not support meeting recordings or transcriptions. In contrast, paid plans allow businesses to record meetings, generate automatic transcripts.
- Security & Compliance – The free version lacks advanced security features, making it less suitable for businesses handling sensitive data. For companies that take security seriously, paid plans offer multi-factor authentication (MFA), data encryption, compliance tools, and IT admin controls to ensure robust protection against cyber threats and unauthorised access.
Why Businesses Should Upgrade
Investing in a Teams paid plan ensures better collaboration, stronger security, and higher productivity. Businesses gain longer meeting times, increased storage, advanced file sharing, webinar hosting, and seamless integration with third-party applications.
With Skype’s retirement, now is the perfect time for businesses to upgrade to Microsoft Teams Paid to ensure reliable, secure and scalable communication for the future.