Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's enterprise communication and collaboration platform, combining persistent chat, video meetings, voice calls, and deep Microsoft 365 integration in a single workspace. It is the primary collaboration tool for the majority of Fortune 500 companies and the dominant enterprise messaging platform for organisations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Product Overview
Teams' primary competitive advantage is its deep integration with Microsoft 365: Word documents open and co-author natively inside Teams, SharePoint files appear as team channels, Outlook calendar meetings generate Teams links automatically, and Power BI dashboards embed directly in channel tabs — eliminating the context-switching that fragments workflows in Microsoft-centric organisations. Teams' Copilot integration brings AI-powered meeting summaries, action item extraction, and chat thread summarisation to every meeting and channel — reducing the note-taking burden and improving follow-through on decisions. For RevOps teams, Teams serves as the coordination hub for deal rooms (collaborative spaces with prospects), internal operations channels, and CRM notification routing from Salesforce and HubSpot.
Key Features
- Persistent Chat & Channels: Organised team channels and direct messages with threading, reactions, and file sharing — persistent chat history accessible to all members.
- Video Meetings & Webinars: HD video meetings up to 1,000 participants, live captions, breakout rooms, and webinar registration for up to 10,000 attendees.
- Microsoft 365 Integration: Native integration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook — co-author documents inside Teams channels.
- Copilot AI: AI-powered meeting summaries, action item extraction, and chat thread summarisation — available across meetings and channels.
- Apps & Integrations: 700+ app integrations and a developer platform for custom apps — embed Salesforce, Power BI, and other tools as channel tabs.
Best For
Microsoft-centric enterprises that need a single collaboration hub deeply integrated with Office 365, SharePoint, and Azure Active Directory — particularly organisations standardising on the Microsoft stack.
Pricing
Essentials: $4/user/month. Microsoft 365 Business Basic (includes Teams): $6/user/month. Business Standard: $12.50/user/month. Enterprise: custom.
Key Integrations
Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Salesforce, HubSpot, Power BI, Jira, GitHub, ServiceNow, Zoom, Zapier
Pros
- Unmatched Microsoft 365 integration — single workspace for Office users
- Most affordable enterprise collaboration tool at $6/user bundled with M365
- Copilot AI for meeting summaries and action items is natively integrated
- Enterprise-grade security and compliance with Microsoft's compliance framework
Cons
- UI and UX significantly inferior to Slack for non-enterprise users
- Feature releases are slower and more complex than Slack's iteration pace
- Call quality and reliability has historically lagged Zoom for video-heavy teams
