Phone System & Calling Plan for Teams available to small businesses?

[Nicholas Semenkovich]

We'd love to use the Phone System / Calling Plan features in Teams -- but the licensing is very expensive for small business users (<300 users).

For small businesses on the Microsoft 365 Business plan ($20/month); adding the Phone System to Teams means switching to E3 (~$37/month, a $17/month increase) + buying the phone components (~$20/month) for a total added cost of $37/month extra per each phone user -- which is way more than what other VoIP competitors charge (e.g. Dialpad).

Will the Teams calling plan features be made more widely available for small business users?

[#2]

Phone system can be added on outside of E3, you don't need to switch to get that, but the calling plans can be expensive I would agree. That's why I love the concept of Direct Routing and hope telephone companies offer that for us direct from their SBCs (I expect this will happen as a few are already on-board). I would like to see communications credits plans for domestic calling though, for users that "need" a number but almost never use it.

[#3]

"Phone system can be added on outside of E3, you don't need to switch to get that,"

 > But you need some expensive other options; the licensing is very odd, but you need both Exchange Online (Plan 2) for voicemail [an additional $8/mo] + Skype for Business Online (Plan 2) [addtl. $5.50/mo] at least -- so the price is very similar -- and it's not clear that licensing workaround is supported.

[#4]

You may want to double check that. There's seemingly a large push to make sure only E3/E5 and similar tier plans have access to this. I've seen licensing issues recently with Business Premium subscriptions.

[#5]

E3 is closer to 20/user, phone system 8/user, then your calling plan. They actually offer lower than the default 12/user 2000 minute plan, it's a 500 minute plan and about half the cost. But you also do have the Direct connect, which so far, pricing on those haven't been any cheaper that i've seen so far.

[#6]

I mean Microsoft 365 E3 (With Office Apps, EMS for Azure AD Join, etc.) not Office 365 E3.