We have been reporting about Microsoft planning a free version of Teams for a while. And today, Microsoft’s Slack clone is finally ready to compete with Slack itself. Redmond is launching a free version of Teams this week, letting anyone use the service without needing to single penny. That brings Teams in-line with everyone’s favourite service Slack, but is it good enough?

Both Slack and Teams limit free users, but as it turns out, Microsoft has managed to gain a competitive advantage over Slack. Microsoft Teams’ free version comes with unlimited chat messages and search, unlimited app integrations, 10GB of team storage, 2GB of storage per user, native audio and video calling for 1:1 conversations, groups, and the full team. Teams users will also get background blur on videos for privacy coming later this year. That’s a ton of features you are getting for free.

Slack, on the other hand, is relatively limited. First, you only get to search the most recent 10 thousand messages — which, by the way, is actually one of the most annoying and limiting parts of Slack’s free product. It’s nowhere close to Teams’ unlimited searchable messages. Slack also limits free users to 10 app integrations, 5GB file storage, and audio and video calling for 1:1 conversations only.

The version of Microsoft Teams is rolling out today, and that’ll most probably boost its growth. Microsoft says it has 200,000 organisations using Teams at this point in time, and that’s only going to increase with the new free version. Slack continues to be everyone’s favourite, though, so Microsoft still has a ton of work left to do in order to grab everyone’s attention. The free version will definitely get some traction, but it’s probably not enough.

Tagged with Microsoft Teams, Slack