Microsoft to put Microsoft Teams Free (Classic) into retirement

Microsoft has recently announced that it will putting Teams Free (Classic) into retirement from April 12th 2023 to help encourage businesses to make the transition to Microsoft Teams Essentials for around £3.28 per user per month if they are wishing to retain any shared files on the legacy version of Teams Free. 

As you will probably already know, Microsoft launched Teams back in 2018 before the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in direct competition with Slack over Zoom. At this stage, this application was separate from Office 365 and Microsoft 365 licensing to enable it to remain free for customers and to allow Microsoft to match its competitive rival, Slack. 

However, since then times have changed with Microsoft undergoing a shift in the way it manages both free and paid for products. 

Microsoft has revealed that there will be still a free version of Microsoft Teams with the older classic free version being retired so any files connected to the older classic version will be lost. Put simply, if you want to be able to access old Teams files, you have to upgrade to the Teams Essentials license but if you don’t need them at all you can simply sign up again for a free Teams account. 

Essentially with the free Teams account, you will be able to get unlimited group meetings for 60 minutes, up to 100 participants per meeting as well as 5GB of cloud storage per user. 

When it comes to the Teams Essential license costing £3.28 per user per month, you will gain unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours, up to 300 participants per meeting in addition to 10GB of cloud storage per user. 

However, no doubt the best value for money is to get the Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscription which starts from just £4.95 per user per month where you get Teams meeting recordings complete with a transcript, Microsoft 365 mobile and web apps including Word & Excel, Booking features as well as an unstoppable 1TB worth of cloud storage per user. 

Next Steps? 

If you are a business that is looking to upgrade your free Teams license to the Microsoft 365 licensing package which includes Teams then please talk to our team of IT experts now so, we can get the best price possible for you.  

Want to gain more insights from Advantage? You can if you are part of our exclusive mailing list.