Microsoft Teams Essentials arrives, is targeted at small business owners

What you need to know

• Microsoft has released a new edition of Teams, Teams Essentials.
• It's targeted at small businesses and sells at $4 per user per month.
• It supports large meeting capacities, long meetings, and additional cloud storage.

Teams Essentials has arrived to give Microsoft-inclined small business owners a version of Teams suited for their unique needs. It will cost $4 per user per month, which Microsoft claims makes it "the most affordable all-in-one solution in the market today."

Teams Essentials is currently available from Microsoft itself as well as a large host of Microsoft Cloud Partners, including Vodafone and Ingram. You can see the full list at the company's blog post on its new Teams service, which also details Essentials' enhanced operating capabilities. These include:

• Extended meeting times — With meetings that can last up to 30 hours, there's no need to worry about your Teams Essentials meeting running over its time limit, whether you're meeting one-on-one or in a group.
• Large meeting capacity — With the ability to host up to 300 people at once, Teams Essentials offers the ability to bring everyone into the same virtual room.
• Additional cloud storage — Don't worry about running out of storage or wasting time searching for documents. Easily co-author, view, edit, and store Office 365 files. Teams Essentials offers a total of 10 gigabytes (GB) file storage, which is twice the amount of storage available in the free version of Teams.

Microsoft is also angling Teams Essentials at religious organizations, schools, and nonprofits.