Microsoft Teams Phone

Microsoft Teams Phone is the business voice-over-IP (VoIP) component of Redmond's all-encompassing team messaging suite, Microsoft Teams. We previously reviewed this voice calling add-on when it was known as Microsoft 365 Business Voice, but Microsoft has since moved its voice and video calling offerings for small businesses and enterprises under a single brand. Teams Phone remains a full-featured VoIP solution with excellent integrations with both Teams and Microsoft 365, making it a no-brainer choice for dedicated Microsoft shops. However, Teams Phone lacks the advanced features found in Intermedia Unite and RingCentral MVP, our Editors' Choice picks for VoIP services.

Microsoft Teams Phone Pricing and Plans

The first thing to understand about Microsoft Teams Phone is that you must be a Microsoft Teams customer to use it. There's no standalone version that runs independently of the other Microsoft Teams components. 

However, Teams Phone’s pricing isn’t out of line with the competing services we’ve reviewed. It currently costs $15 per user per month, plus the cost of any Microsoft 365 plan that includes Teams. At the entry level, you can purchase Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $5.00 per user per month, so your full cost for access to Teams Phone would be $20 per user per month. In addition to Teams, this tier gives each user access to web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

This service tier comes bundled with a Calling Plan that lets you make calls to numbers on the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The one drawback to Microsoft's approach is the number of minutes, which is fixed at 3,000 per month. That works out to 50 hours per month, although minutes are rolled up for the total user count. That should cover even the most talk-happy customers.

On the higher end, you can purchase Microsoft 365 E5 licenses for $57 per user per month, which includes Teams Phone, Windows 11, and the full suite of Microsoft Office products. This enterprise-focused tier offers additional ways to connect to the PSTN. You can purchase Microsoft's Calling Plan, or you can also create direct connections to your local phone operator or to your on-premises phone system. 

Deep Integration With Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Phone works seamlessly within the Microsoft Teams environment to add VoIP softphone features to your communications suite. Once you've integrated the add-on, Teams users will see a Calls menu in the left-hand menu of the app that lets them place calls. It fully integrates with their Outlook contact list, too.

The Microsoft Teams mobile client for Android and iOS has the same features as the desktop client. We tested the Teams Phone apps on an Android phone and an iPad Pro. Both devices delivered the Teams Phone experience you would expect from a mobile platform in a consistent way. The key here is making it possible to continue your work communications in a BYOD scenario.

Teams Phone uses the concept of "channels" as a way for groups to hold meetings, conduct multi-party conversations, and collaborate on files. New is the ability to assign a call queue to a channel, which lets any channel member answer incoming calls to a team number.

Desktop Phone Dialing

Although Teams Phone is foremost a component of the broader Teams software suite, Microsoft has done a good job of making it usable with traditional desktop VoIP phones, too. It supports a wide variety of devices for personal and group communications. 

For this review, Microsoft provided us with a Yealink WH67, which comes with an earpiece and a base that functions as a charging station and a speakerphone. Setup was quick, and it connected to our test Teams account with no issues. 

The full-size desktop phone integrates tightly with Microsoft Teams displaying Calls, Calendar, People, and Voicemail tiles on the large color touchscreen display. Touching any of the tiles takes you to a new screen for further actions. The Calendar tile brings up your current calendar from your Microsoft 365 account, with daily events in a scrollable window on the left side and details about the selected event on the right. 

Also from the traditional-calling department, Microsoft improved the breadth of its PSTN calling plans with local operators. Since we last tested the product, it has expanded the local calling plans to nearly twice the number of global markets as before. Just over a year ago, there were 18 markets; as of this review, there are 33 markets, with more in the works. This includes both standard PSTN functionality and operator-assisted calling.

Teams Phone Administration

The primary way to administer Teams Phone is through the standard Teams web UI. You can handle most normal administrative tasks, such as adding and removing users, from the extensive list of available functions. 

You can also programmatically perform a number of administrative tasks using Microsoft PowerShell. This is useful for tasks involving a large number of user accounts, such as using policies to assign 25 users to a team all at once. However, doing so does take some programming and Microsoft administration savvy. Organizations that lack such expertise may be be frustrated to discover that there's no equivalent way to perform these tasks with the web UI.

In its favor, Teams Phone delivers deep insight into your call quality and overall usage with analytics and reports. In addition to basic usage reporting, the Call Quality Dashboard provides a comprehensive look at underlying metrics to determine how your system has been performing. In fact, these reports are the best of any product we’ve reviewed. The Quality Drill Down reports show overall audio quality and reliability as a monthly trend. A Failure Drill Down report breaks down call failures by media, drop, setup, and failed sessions to give an even more granular look at why failures occur.  

Unfortunately, Microsoft Teams Phone only supports some call center features found in Dialpad and RingCentral MVP. For example, you can implement interactive voice response, but the service doesn't let callers hang up and get a call-back once an agent is available, rather than waiting on hold. Similarly, Microsoft Teams lacks call center supervisory features, such as call monitoring, the ability to break into a call, or deploying a virtual receptionist.

Be aware, however, that Teams Phone is not the only way to deploy a business VoIP experience on top of Microsoft Teams. Most of the other VoIP systems in this year's batch of reviews also offer prebuilt Teams integrations. There's no denying that getting both your business messaging tools and your VoIP service from a single vendor has its advantages, but this convenience shouldn't dissuade organizations with needs that aren't served by Teams Phone from investigating other options. 

Microsoft Shops, Take Notice

If you're a dedicated Microsoft customer, the Teams Phone add-on has a lot to offer, especially if you're already using Microsoft 365 and Teams. We should reiterate, though, that this service doesn't quite match up to Dialpad or RingCentral MVP’s enterprise-class voice services when it comes to call center functionality. Teams Phone makes sense for companies currently using Microsoft Teams that are looking to add integrated voice in lieu of a separate phone contract. 

As Microsoft Teams continues to improve—especially as it broadens the number of local operator partners—it may become even more difficult to choose something else, especially if basic voice calling is your primary requirement. If you're looking for a full suite of advanced features, consider Intermedia Unite, our Editors' Choice award winner for call reliability, and RingCentral MVP, which earns the Editors' Choice award for its high volume of calls. Even better, both services offer Teams integrations.