Introducing a free version of Microsoft Teams

[Raanah Amjadi]

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.

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

[Bill Hickle]

I just want to be able to sign up and use Teams! Endless loop of errors with no success of trying it. Frustrating. 

[Deleted]

Is it possible for a potential user for the free version of MS Teams to have some other type of account? For example a gmail-account or something else? 

[Albert Chen]

Hi @Deleted, you'll need to use a Microsoft account to use the free version of Teams, but you can create one easily with your existing e-mail account (for example, gmail or yahoo mail). 

[Deleted]

Thank you @Albert Chen, very helpful! 

How do I connect a google account or a yahoo mail to a microsoft account?

[Albert Chen]

@Deleted if you try to sign up for Teams free at office.com/teamsfree with your yahoo or google e-mail address, it will allow you to either creating a Microsoft account for that ID, or signing into an existing one if you've already created an account in the past. 

[ed snittleman]

Is it possible to recover a deleted file in this Free version of Teams? The following support article refers to recovering via SharePoint, but SharePoint is apparently not available in the Free version. Surely there is a way to recover deleted files?! I've lost several hours of work for my non profit. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/recover-deleted-files-in-teams-a591d771-89a6-49e2-ab7e-2719...

[Deleted]

Went to try and create a Free Teams tenant on my MSA account today and discovered it's not straight forward if your MSA account is already a guest of another tenant. Decided to create a quick blog about it. Hopefully this will save some folks some time :). 

https://webbtech365.blogspot.com/2018/07/creating-free-microsoft-teams-on-msa.html

[Raanah Amjadi]

Thank you all for your questions and feedback. If you'd like to connect with our team directly, feel free to join us for Teams Tuesdays at 10-11am PDT. More information can be found here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Community-Events-List/Teams-Tuesdays/m-p/224783 (copy and paste link into browser as direct link is acting funny)

[Damien Rosario]

@Raanah Amjadi, not sure if anyone else is having a problem with your link but it doesn't appear to work (in Edge). When clicked it gives a weird set of charaters at the end of the URL %C2%A0

Removing the characters will redirect you to the correct place. 

Cheers

Damien

[Raanah Amjadi]

@Damien Rosario Thanks for flagging! Updated my comment and hopefully that works now 

[Damien Rosario]

@Raanah Amjadi, direct link seems to work better now. Not sure what the problem was!

[Forrest Hoffman]

I cannot even figure out how to get signed up using the Microsoft Teams (free) sign in portal.

I am using the same consumer Outlook.com account that Microsoft sent the invitation to. I am using a private browser session to eliminate confusion with my O365 tenant.

I have all the boxes filled in that are relevant for an Individual but the NEXT button remains grayed out.

 Nothing else is highlighted indicating required fields or why it is keeping the button Grayed out.

Anyone have any ideas, besides lying about Company info and Business phone which I do not have as and Individual Consumer?

Follow-up;

It seems all the boxes need to be filled in even if you are not a Business. As directed by @Raanah Amjadi - I put in bogus information and was able to proceed.  Would have been nice if the page indicated that you had to put something in the boxes even if N/A .

[Yves Rosius]

Hi

Just setup a new free tier Teams.

There seems to be a little bit of an issue where I can access the back-end Office 365 tenant... with full "Global administrator" permissions. Is this by design?

 @Raanah Amjadi You can DM me if you need some more information about the process I followed.

Cheers

Yves

[John Clendenning]

I have used Teams previously at another organization with E3 licensing. Was glad to hear this was released for free. Would've used it when we migrate to O365. We have been experiencing an issue where users are getting temporarily suspended and have to go through a process to unlock the account. I have worked with O365 support and don't believe they have looked at the logs of the org that I created, but did direct me to this chain. Knock on wood, the temp suspend issue has not repeated with any users.

[Thomas Heinz]

I am also curious if being a Global Admistrator is by design - that gives you the possibility to create SiteCollections etc. and use the Tenant additionally for SharePoint (showing 1 TB of Storage there).

[Sarah W]

I'm facing a problem each time I try to sign up for teams free. after putting my Microsoft account , I click join, the next page keeps trying to load and stuck there with the message "Thank you for choosing " and the loading dots.

[Carl Clark]

Hi Sarah, 

I'm an Office365 home user and land up with an upgrade your account message. This left me wondering what free means!

So I gave up! I'm a huge Microsoft fan and hope they sort it out.  But for now back to Slack. 

[Juan F Orozco]

I signed up for the free version with my personal email address. It works and now I am in Teams and created my first Team space. Then, I try to add people to one of my teams and get an error that the invitation cannot be sent and to try again later. I cannot invite anyone to that Team channel or to my Org Teams in general. Can you please help.

[Carl Clark]

Personal Account:

1. https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/free
2. Sign Up For Free
3. Launches Teams.
4. Presents "Sign up for Teams" button.
5. Go to 1.

Office 365 Account

1. https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/free
2. Sign Up For Free
3. Launches Teams.
4. Presents "Upgrade now"
5. Go to 1.

Microsoft? Any ideas if this is going to be fixed, or free for, um, Microsoft accounts.  Perhaps the heading needs to be revised "Microsoft Teams for Free - excluding Microsoft accounts".

[Christoph Ratavaara]

My signup and the features of Teams worked well.

What I'm wondering is how to recover deleted files as there is no recycle bin/access to SharePoint Online etc. Can anybody from the "Teams"-team clear that up? 

Also on which datacenter(s) are the free versions of Teams hosted (US, Europe West...) and will there be a possibility to choose the datacenter?

[Deleted]

You can get to the recycle bin on the associated Sharepoint site. Go to files tab and use get link and you’ll see the Sharepoint link there. UI def. could use some tweaking there but it’s possible to get to recycle bin that way. 

[admin 2]

HI

So you are retiring Skype for business Plan 1 @ £1.50 per month to replace it with Teams F1 @ £3.00 per month so double the price I know you will point out that teams to do the same as Skype does  and more but I do not require the bells and whistles of Teams and it price? I got 60 Kiosk users on mobiles that need to skype each other?

[Miłosz Engel]

Ok I have tried dozen times to register to free ms teams just to find out that my organisation beginning yesterday joined teams(i suppose by adding trial business premium licenses) and I cannot register nor see the trial licenses. I do have access to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/dashboard but this changes nothing. Users not assigned with teams licences cannot login. I also cannot register using personal live.com account as I got stuck in login loop saying that I do not use teams but can configure it - even though I'm registered.

Making long story short I cannot test it either way:using my tenant global admin account nor personal account.

We want to drive test it as we are now searching for collaboration and messenger service for our company.

[jamie madden]

Hi im not able to access my free account it simply says that my organisation isn't eligible to use Teams. this is pretty annoying i have tried 3 email addresses with no success, although I meet all the prescribed criteria as far as i can tell. Please help. 

[SCBPC]

I know for a fact we do not have Office 365, yet it seems that our domain/tenant name is already taken. I'm the IT Manager for my organisation. I've been researching and it is possible that the tenant name was taken when/if someone signed up for a trial of Teams or Power Bi(?) or perhaps other microsoft services(?). It may also be due to the fact that a while ago I signed up for the free/community powerapps account to test its capabilities but I never used it.

What I would like to know is how can I sign up for a Teams free account as the admin and be able to create teams, etc. Is there a way to delete the current tenant name in use by the trials or powerapps free account? I don't mind getting rid of all the trials and powerapps accounts. Does anyone know who or where can I contact someone to get this fixed? I would really like to setup Teams as I strongly believe this will be a gateway to the Office 365 ecosystem. Thank you.

[Milosz_Engel]

I think what you need to do is sign up for 1 year Teams Free Commercial Trial if you want to get access. That is what we did in order to test drive it. It wasn't available in our country at the beginning but now it is and works. 

[SCBPC]

Thank you @Milosz_Engel, that's what I ended up doing but it was quite a journey to get there.

I contacted support and after being bounced around I was told that once I verify that I'm the domain owner (had to add TXT record) I would then have access to admin center (even though I do not have any O365 licenses). Once I was verified and had access to admin center, support tried but they couldn't figure our how to sign me up to the Free version of Teams, so even though I'm not an Office 365 customer, which supposedly, you have to be in order to join the 1-year free trial, I was able to sign up for the 1 year free trial. 

[Milosz_Engel]

I just wonder if the Commercial Trail will eventually be converted to Teams Free as such plan is available. This would be huuuge help as for example in our company not all users need to have features included in paid version but all would need to use simple chat and online meetings features. This would be very nice step from Microsoft side.

[SCBPC]

I agree.

[Milosz_Engel]

ok, now we have to sets of "free" licenses in our tenant: 

• Microsoft Teams Commercial Cloud (user initiated) which has 500000 user limit
• Microsoft Teams - Trial Version with the same limit

Could someone explain how they differ and would the first one stay free and available to users in our tenant which have only exchange licenses but are in tenant that also have O365 Business licenses that include Teams? It would be great to allow users with exchange only license to use free version of teams.

[poojac19]

With my free account I keep getting thrown owt (signed out) from Teams app. keep asking me to log in. What can be done to sort this out, did not reset my passowrd

[DSyms]

We are on the Microsoft Teams trial version and are attempting to set up a meeting. We want to have the ability to call into the meeting from a phone, but a call-in number is not displayed. Is this feature available with the trial version?

[Chris Webb]

If it's Trial and not the free version, then you should be able to still add an Audio conferencing license to it. So you will have to procure a Audio Conferencing license (Might be a trial for it), then assign to the user creating the meeting. 

[DSyms]

Thanks for the quick response Chris. Just so I am clear. The audio call-in is only available with the Audio Conferencing license. Does this mean that it is only available with the Premium Teams license?

[Chris Webb]

There isn't a Premium Teams license, it's free, or trial  / paid. Audio Conferencing works with most 365 tenants. That's why I asked if you were using free teams or paid tenant with trial. If it's trial it's the same as the paid Teams, which you should be able to add audio conferencing, but it does in fact require a paid license to add to it. 

See Add-on licensing: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-add-on-licensing/microsoft-teams-add-on-licens...

Audio Conferencing: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/set-up-audio-conferencing-in-teams

[DSyms]

Oh sorry, it was the Office 365 premium licensing that I was looking at. 

Thanks for the clarification....

[Chris Webb]

Ahh, yeah Business Premium should work ok with Audio Conferencing. 

[jorrodsa]

I have an Office 365 Home Account.  I want to sign up for Microsoft Teams...  I'm caught in an endless loop of 'Someone has already set up Teams for your organization' and sign up for a free account...  What do I do?

[jorrodsa]

Now its stuck on ... https://teams.microsoft.com/?tenantId=%%UserDef1%%#/l/home?tenantId=%%UserDef1%%&deeplinkId=67675d1d... ...

[samihassan]

Not sure if this would be the right place to ask. 

Does the free version of teams, support sending invitation outside and people can join as guest (using web version may be)? even if they don't have outlook or o365 account?

[Chris Webb]

They must have a Microsoft account or Office 365 (Azure AD) account to join free Teams. But you can invite a gmail.com and other accounts that will be used and associated with a Microsoft Account when accepting the invite. 

[c4cqi]

Hi @Raanah Amjadi, I've just spent a very, very frustrating 4 hours reliving the circular nightmare of trying to sing into Teams. It's really sad to see this has been going on since November 2018. Not a great start to my evaluation of this software. I had two long chat sessions with MS support and one phone call, all of which resulted in no progress. In the end, I found a solution. At some point in the sign-up process, we're asked if we want to use the UK or USA site. Being in the UK, I always selected that option, but every time ended in a cycle of: Download the app, you're not signed up, sign in, download the app, etc.. 

The solution was to use the USA site. Within seconds I'm in and created my first team. There's something badly wrong with your UK site. 

Fingers crossed as I start to use it, that I won't run into any problems due to the wrong country setting.. 

Perhaps your team could take a look at this. 

Best wishes

[aryan2160]

i am new

[jorrodsa]

I am a paying customer of Microsoft 365 Home Edition.  Now everybody gets a free version of MS Teams, yet even though I am a paying customer I don’t have access to the full version???  Way to go Microsoft!  That is a great way to show appreciation to your loyal and paying customers.  BTW, I do have a full version of Teams through my other, also paid for Microsoft 365 Enterprise Account... so this is not a beggar’s prayer...  It is simply unfair!

[c4cqi]

If it's any consolation, jorrodsa, the feature set of the free version is not the same as the paid. I don't have access to some of the things I was hoping for with my free account. (I have Office 365 Home, which doesn't include Teams).

[Tim Banting]

@c4cqi I understand that Microsoft Teams will be added to Microsoft 365 for consumers. current Office 365 subscriptions for consumers will shift over to become Microsoft 365 subscriptions and include a more consumer-friendly version of Teams. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/30/introducing-new-microsoft-365-personal...

[Ross Koesters]

I am a user that has an Office 365 E3 license from my company.  Am I able to chat with someone that has a free version of Teams?

[Rocki7]

This video is supposed to be about Microsoft Teams `free' version as the title clearly states. After just 3 minutes, the free version is dismissed as useless to promote the paid version in a blatant attempt to deliberately mislead and persuade us to purchase Microsoft Teams. I have lodged a complaint and reported this outrageous deception to YouTube, demanding action to be taken against Microsoft for such blatant lies.

[Chris Webb]

@Ross Koesters @Not directly. You can invite free teams users as a guest to your tenant if it’s allowed into a Team. Then you can chat with that user when they switch to your tenant but you cannot use external chat directly to free teams users unfortunately. 

[Ross Koesters]

@Chris Webb Any chance that this would get added in the future?  It would be great if we could communicate on teams with users that have the free version.  We are already communicating with external users at a few other companies that have paid o365 licenses.