Introducing a free version of Microsoft Teams
Published Jul 12 2018 11:10 AM 434K Views
Microsoft

Beginning today, Microsoft Teams is available in a free version worldwide in 40 languages. This offer was designed for small businesses and groups of coworkers that don’t have commercial Office 365 subscriptions. Now with this great introductory experience, any group can use Teams as their hub for teamwork and discover the value of Office 365 as they grow and scale.Teams Composite .png

 

 

Whether you’re a freelancer, a small business owner, or part of a team inside a larger organization, you can start using Teams today. The free version includes the following for up to 300 people:

  • Unlimited chat messages and search.
  • Built-in audio and video calling for individuals, groups, and full team meetups.
  • 10 GB of team file storage plus additional 2 GB per person for personal storage.
  • Integrated, real-time content creation with Office Online apps, including built-in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
  • Unlimited app integrations with 140+ business apps to choose from—including Adobe, Evernote, and Trello.
  • Ability to communicate and collaborate with anyone inside or outside your organization, backed by Microsoft’s secure, global infrastructure.

Check out the latest Microsoft Mechanics video to learn more about this free version of Teams.


When you’re managing a new project or creating your own business, it helps to have your team behind you to brainstorm ideas, tackle the work together, and have some fun along the way. Take your teamwork to the next level and start using Teams today.

FAQ
What features are available in the free version of Microsoft Teams?
The free version includes the following for up to 300 people.
Unlimited chat messages and search.
Built-in audio and video calling for individuals, groups, and full team meetups.
10 GB of team file storage plus additional 2 GB per person for personal storage.
Integrated, real-time content creation with Office Online apps, including built-in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Unlimited app integrations with 140+ business apps to choose from—including Adobe, Evernote, and Trello.
Ability to communicate and collaborate with anyone inside or outside your organization, backed by Microsoft’s secure, global infrastructure.

Who’s eligible for the free version of Microsoft Teams?
Any person with any corporate or consumer email address can sign up for Teams today. People who don’t already have a paid Office 365 commercial subscription will have access to the free version of Teams. If an existing Office 365 commercial customer tried to sign up for free, they will be routed into a managed experience for their existing tenant. Existing customers who don’t have a Teams license as part of their Office 365 or Microsoft plan will soon be eligible for a 1 year free trial.

Where can I go to learn more?
For a full list of what’s available in Microsoft Teams for free, visit Office.com/TeamsFree

113 Comments
Deleted
Not applicable

Awesome, question. Will this fix all the guest access problems with teams and users with hosted office 365 email or tenants that don’t have teams enabled to be able to now join Teams as a guest? 

 

Been dealing with with this consistently where someone unknowingly has their email somehow tied to a office 365 work account and Teams isn’t enabled so they can’t join as a guest to another tenant as the client wants to log in to their teams by default when using that login.  

Brass Contributor

The feature description for "Premium" is very misleading -- "Phone calls and audio conferencing" is listed as an add on -- but that's not true.

 

The "add on" link says explicitly; "with the Office Business Premium subscription ... you can’t add cloud voice calling features. So, we recommend that you evaluate an Enterprise E5 (or Enterprise E3) plan to see if it is more cost effective."

Copper Contributor

Will this free version support meeting/call recording?

Microsoft

@Corey Leichty meeting/call recording is backed by Microsoft Stream which is not available in the free version of Teams. 

Copper Contributor

 Hi @Raanah Amjadi

 

I have a questions, if i have Office 365 Business in my tenant, how can activate Microsoft Teams free?

Because when I try to activate the free account, I get the following error message: "/licenseError?errorCode=AdminUserLicenseNotPresentForbidden"...

 

My user is not assigned an Office 365 Business license.

Thanks,

Copper Contributor

If you were too hasty when signing up and entered the organization name incorrectly, it looks like there's no way to change it. Can I completely delete Teams data from my account and start over? Deleting the team itself isn't enough, the tenant (and wrong name) still exists...

Copper Contributor

How do I enable this if I am already using the Office 365 Business plan?

Microsoft

@Jacob Hodges, the free version of Teams isn't available to users with an existing Office 365 commercial account. Only consumer email addresses and non-Office 365 (AAD) corporate domains.

With Office 365 Business, you will be eligible for a 1yr free trial of Teams that is on its way soon! More info here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/i-d-like-to-sign-up-for-teams-free-but-i-can-t-why-b77286e2...

Silver Contributor

What an awesome announcement! Microsoft have been investing heavily into Teams to make it the product to collaborate in. Now that it's freeview they open that door to letting the world in to experience the product and to realise its benefits.

 

A very exciting announcement in my opinion with wide reaching implications for businesses, not for profits, and many small organisations!

 

Good job Microsoft!

 

@Jacob Hodgestry using your personal Microsoft account if you want to tap into the free version of Teams. Or just add the product to your licence as Raanah has suggested (or the trial when it's available).

 

Steel Contributor

Nice, and Can I change from free to paid?
Scenario, I want to change from free version of Microsoft Teams to paid version of Microsoft Teams within Office 365 with same e-mail address.

Regards,
Yoshihiro Kawabata

Copper Contributor

Nice, and Can I change current paid version to free?

since MS teams has too many bugs and anti-human design for now and really slow performance, if it is possible we can change it to free version? we dont want to waste money on MS Teams again until it has huge progress.


Silver Contributor

@Deleted very likely just an upgrade to your licence to make that happen. Take a look at your admin portal.

Steel Contributor

Thank you @Damien Rosario, for quick reply,

I will share Microsoft Teams free edition with friends, customers with easy way upgrade from free to paid, so let's start.

I'm using Microsoft Teams and Office 365 E3.

Silver Contributor

@善博 河端, no trouble at all. Teams has a lot of potential. Once you get into it, let your imagination take flight! We use it quite heavily in my day job and I feel disconnected without it!

Iron Contributor

 

 
 
 
 

You can navigate to the azure portal with the account you made the signup with. https://portal.azure.com

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Steel Contributor

As usual great announcement, but the sign up process is broken, not just me we keep getting caught in a loop asking for our details. it resets stage 2 every time. I can confirm I am using my own individual non 365 subscribed account to login. Just my regular hotmail account.    

 

Not the first time for a product has this happened on a launch. 

Really off putting, since if your first experience is not being able to sign up.  What are the chances that the product is any good? 

Microsoft

Hi @Philip Worrell thanks for reporting the issue, we're looking into it now. Do you see an error message on stage 2 or does it just reset with no error?

Copper Contributor

I'm excited to give the new free tier of Teams a try but I'm also having trouble with the sign-up.  My Microsoft Live ID was previously associated with O365, and while I'm no longer subscribed to a plan the Teams registration tells me I cannot go any further.


Steps

1. Went to the /microsoft-teams/free page and clicked 'Sign Up For Free' under the 'Free' plan.

2. Entered the address associated with my Live ID and clicked 'Set up account'

3. Get a message that reads 'You already have an Office 365 work or school account.  If your organization is already using Teams, just sign in'

4. Click 'Sign in'

5. Open the web app or download the Windows binary

6. Receive message 'You're not on Teams yet, but you can set it up for your organization.'.  Click on the 'Sign up for Teams' button

7. System takes me back to Step 1.

 

Steel Contributor

I got complete reset once and a duplicate message on the next run. Gave up after that. I will try again in a few days

Copper Contributor

Technical details for contacting support: 
CV: roDOVym2uUeBD1/2.0.3 
SID: 3ae6c1f5-36ef-4cc1-a0b2-effea635e3e3 
CID: 55a879e5-27ac-44c1-b83d-7468e93775d7 
Error Code: DuplicateRequest

 

Not working since yesterday, unable to sign up

Copper Contributor

It's disappointing that Team isn't available to existing Office 365 commercial customers. Can you please consider changing this?

Microsoft

@Jacob Hodges the full-featured version of Teams is already available to Office 365 commercial customers in Business, Enterprise, Non-Profit, and Education plans (see here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/How-do-I-get-access-to-Microsoft-Teams-fc7f1634-abd3-4f26-a... you're a Office 365 commercial subscriber with one of these plans but don't have access to Teams, you could speak with your IT department about getting a license. Hope that helps!

Microsoft

@Troy Forsythe thanks for documenting those steps. Tagging my teammate @Albert Chen for tracking your comment as well.

Copper Contributor

@Raanah Amjadi I suppose that's the point I'm making. My company has an Office 365 Business plan to provide staff with a copy of Office. We do not use any of the other Office 365 services. So for anyone on an Office 365 Business plan, or even a plan for a single app such as Visio, you can't get access to Teams. To switch plans would be a substantial cost increase. Please include free access to Teams for customers who already have some sort of Office 365 subscription. Otherwise we're forced to use a competitors product, which is exactly what we are doing now. 

Deleted
Not applicable

Or you can easily just sign in with an outlook.com account you setup as easy as another competitor account....

 

what would be better thou is if those other accounts you speak of could join as a guest to that outlook.com account tenant would be easier to solve the issue quickly but as it stands now they probably would be denied guest access due to not being enabled or licensed on that tenant which is a bigger issue with guest access than just free teams. 

Copper Contributor

@Jacob Hodges I am in the same boat as you.  Only a small portion of our organization has or uses Office 365 but the whole organization could potentially use teams.  It doesn't make sense financially to move to a paid version of teams since we have SFB on prem already.  It would be nice if there was an option, much like Power BI, to have unlimited free (or even 300) to give out alongside the O365 users.

Steel Contributor

Found the issue with my login. 

 

My hotmail account was registered in the UK as that is where I was when I created it. 

 

Now I live in the different country. It must be doing some sort of background check. Changed the country to UK and it worked. 

Copper Contributor

Well, that was disappointing.

 

I have an Office 365 personal subscription for several years now, went to sign up and I get this:

Sorry, that didn't work

There's a problem on our end. We're working on it, so try again later.

Technical details for contacting support: 
CV: ****** 
SID: ********* 
CID: *******
Error Code: DuplicateRequest

I tried it twice because the first time after hitting the next button it wiped everything blank and had to start over then I got that error message.

Tried it again once more but same issue.

Oh well.

 

EDIT: Just read all the comments above, it seems that a lot of other people have the same exact issue. And I have already sent a link to this team thing to so many of my colleagues and friends. Please fix it, the idea is great!

Microsoft

Sorry to hear that, @Jesus Merchan Reina, we're working on fixing that issue now. If you still have the details available, could you send the CV/SID/CID to me in a private message? Will be helpful to make sure we're addressing the issue you're seeing.

Deleted
Not applicable

Hey @Albert Chen are you guys by chance also checking into allowing people that are in tenants that don’t have a license or Teams enabled to be able to join other Teams as guests via client etc. ? It’s been a long standing problem and is probably even more apparent with more and more folks spinning up Personal Teams and trying to invite others with personal / business 365 accounts and teams not setup? Thanks! 

Copper Contributor
Hello Team, hope everything is well! One question, is the Team Collaboration offering any backend AI Smart Technologies so that I can use for my business custom front end solutions? Respectfully, Irwin
Steel Contributor

Can each email only be a member of one Team?  I was thinking about setting up a Team for our church but then could also use a Team for a side company I work with.  But when I sign up, it asks me for the company name and such which makes it seems like once I set that up I can't then join another team.  Is that possible?

Microsoft

@Deleted we are working on a free trial of Teams that you can add to people who are in existing tenants that don't have a license for Teams. Hope to have that available to you soon!

 

@Mike Boehm you account can be a member of multiple organizations (also known as "tenants"), and each organization can have multiple Teams. It sounds like you want to create multiple organizations for your scenario. Currently, each email can only sign-up for one Teams free organization, however you can be invited into both of them

Steel Contributor

@Albert Chen

So I can't "Create" two separate organizations but I can create one and I can have someone else create the other and invite me?

Can I leave a tenant if I'm not longer associated with it?

 

For example:

I create Org #1.

My friend creates Org #2 and invites me to his Team.

I stop being involved with Org #1.  Can I leave Org #1 and assign it to someone else and then create Org #3 or something like that?

Microsoft

@Mike Boehm that's right, you can have someone else create the other and invite me. You are also able to leave tenants. However one important point to consider - there is no current way to transfer ownership of a tenant to someone else

Deleted
Not applicable

Hey @Albert Chen that is good and all but still doesn’t solve the bigger issue. It’s been a major pain inviting external people to our tenants for awhile now since so many people have their email addresses somehow hosted in office 365 and they have no admin or know what to do with their tenants or may not even have the option to fix it. One example I can think of is godaddy hosted emails. 

 

I dont know how many times ive Invited someone and they log into their work accounts and can’t join my tenant. They don’t have admins and don’t even know they have office 365 in many instances. This isn’t just a few people either it’s like 20+% of the guest users that get invited to teams. 

 

The fix is always to setup a new outlook.com account which works but then they have another account and email to manage when it would have been nice to just allow them to login with existing Microsoft azure account instead which usually causes frustration for the user.  

 

If your willing to work with me on this I’d gladly do some ground work and reach out and try to get more examples but it’s definitely an issue I would love to get solved so we can use Teams with external partners without so many support issues! 

 

I know many other admins that have also had similar issues as well. But bottom line is there shouldn’t be a restriction by default for anyone in azuread to not be able to join and access other teams unless it’s a tenant with condition access policy or something in place preventing it. 

 

 

Copper Contributor

Free MS Teams, nice.

 

But it would be really great if MS could share its definitive plans about Linux support - yes or no. I think Linux support could be a paid feature, for example Linux client would not work for guest access. We have contractors and firmware engineers, and use of email for IM is inconvenient.

 

Copper Contributor
Brass Contributor
Useless to me because there is no connector for VSTS!
Copper Contributor

Giving Teams away for free to the public, while charging O365 subscribers for it is unacceptable. At the very least, give something that may be reduced in functionality.

 

There is a certain level of absurdity that comes with saying that if we dump our entire O365 subscription (and say go with G Suite), we could get Teams for free… yet if we continue to pay for O365, we need to pay more.

 

As an O365 Business subscriber, I feel bullied into top tier plans. This needs to be addressed.

 

Copper Contributor

So any company (Small Business 300 employees or less) that has Azure AD or AD sync maybe for onsite Exchange Server can't use free Teams. Even though they don't need any 365 Apps!!

 

Wow!! I believe the Microsoft should re-think licensing for Teams. You are loosing a lot of opportunity. Once in Teams you might have leveraged some integration benefits to move customers to the 365 suite.  

 

Well I used one of our active licenses to create a team and invited guests from our domain to the team. Seems rather ridiculous to have to use workarounds. Makes me wonder what other ridiculous workarounds I would be subjected to in 365 apps!!

Copper Contributor

@Brandur K. Holm Petersen 

Using Teams Web would work if notifications worked:

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18671746-browser-os-independen...

But they don't, and I reckon there should be come cap on the frequency of browser notifications.

Copper Contributor

 I keep being told my organization isn't eligible to use Teams. I called Microsoft and no knows why! Frustrating for sure...But its free, right?

 

Microsoft

@Bill Hickle I'll direct message you now so we can get this sorted!

Copper Contributor

Thanks, I will check my inbox.

Copper Contributor

@Jeremy StewartI'm looking at both Teams free (evaluating for my wife and her boss) and Teams in my O365 tenant. You are getting more with the paid version:

- Planner (particularly bummed about this for my wife and her boss, as well as for using Teams in a family environment)

- Sharepoint

- PowerBI

- Excel Forms

- Stream

- 1TB per user (vs. 2GB per user and 10GB shared on free)

- Scheduled meetings

- Better security

- Better support

 

 

Copper Contributor

This looked really exciting, however I am also experience the endless loop of "You're not on Teams yet, but you can set it up for your organisation."  Any fix for this yet?

Deleted
Not applicable

I had the same problem with the Store app not completing the setup so I downloaded the Windows 7 app and it installed, completed the setup and is working fine. BTW, the Store app says it is a Windows 10 S Preview app and requires Windows 10 1709 or later.

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

did anyone find a proper answer if the free version of Teams can be migrated to a paid o365 tenant?

 

We evaluate using Teams for free but as we will be using o365 later this year, it would be good to know if we can transport the data to a new or existing tenant.

 

Kind regards,

Microsoft

Hi @Hendrik Röder, there is an upgrade process that can convert the free version of Teams into a full paid O365 tenant (while keeping all of your data). There is no existing way to automatically transfer data from a free tenant into an existing tenant though

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‎Jul 19 2018 08:23 AM
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