Zoom Phone vs Microsoft Teams Phone: The Complete Breakdown

When comparing Zoom Phone vs Microsoft Teams Phone, there are rather a few differences between the two.

Unlike VoIP packages of old, both vendors provide integrative phone solutions in their own collaboration apps.

Of course, there’s a lot more to both Zoom and Teams than just cloud calling…

Click here for a full comparison of Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Or read on for the differences between Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams Phone.

Microsoft Teams telephony options

Microsoft provides several telephony options from its own technology stack. These all enable both VoIP and PSTN calling.

1 – Microsoft Teams Phone System

The enterprise-grade phone system supports calling through Microsoft’s cloud. There’s support for dial-in numbers, new phone numbers, and PSTN connections too.

With seemingly interchangeable names in the Teams community, you might have seen this named Business Voice or Phone in recent times.

With Microsoft Teams Phone System, you can access a full calling environment within your Teams interface.

Below, you can see your saved contacts, access to history, voicemail, and a dialpad.

You can unify your calendar, collaboration app, phone, and productivity tools in one platform.

Pricing starts at $96 per user per year ($8 per user per month) without a calling plan.

Add $7 per user per month for a standard calling plan or turn on Microsoft Teams Phone via your Microsoft 365 E5 license.

Microsoft lists its full Phone feature list (as of August 2022) as:

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Calling plans in Microsoft Teams

There are a number of options for Microsoft Teams’ own calling plans. These are the calling minutes on top of the telephony license.

When opting for a telephony package from Microsoft, you must also buy a calling plan otherwise you can’t make PSTN calls—only on-net calls within your organization.

The most recent addition is the pay-as-you-go PSTN calling plan.

This is in addition to the Domestic Calling Plan and Internal Calling Plan as shown in the screenshot below.

2 – Microsoft Direct Routing

Companies using Microsoft Teams can also use direct routing for telephony. This involves using a third-party provider to add phone capabilities to Microsoft Teams.

With direct routing, companies can keep their existing phone service provider, and use SIP trunks and session border controllers (SBCs) to connect to Teams.

You can find a list of Microsoft Teams Direct Routing partners here.

3 – Operator Connect

Microsoft says that, with Operator Connect, “if your existing operator is a participant in the Microsoft Operator Connect Program, they can manage the service for bringing PSTN calling to Teams.”

This, in theory, makes it easier for you to start using your existing provider’s phone and calling plan without a complex migration.

Check here to see if your operator meets Microsoft’s requirements.

You take away the need for a business to manage its own direct routing and let the operator do the hard work.

There are both benefits and disadvantages here as some customers will want complete control over their technology. For businesses who want to sit back and have their telephony estate looked after, Operator Connect is a welcomed addition.

Zoom telephony options

Zoom has one unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) option: Zoom Phone.

If you’re a user of Zoom’s meetings and collaboration platform, you can add Zoom Phone to enable a dialpad, call history, contacts, and voicemail settings within your current interface.

Zoom Phone pricing generally has three options, though there are differences between geographical regions.

The entry-level package is £$120 per user (working out at $10 per user per month) without a calling plan. You “pay as you go” when it comes to minutes or upgrade to the next pricing tier that includes unlimited calling without your region.

International calling, additional phone numbers, call queues and reporting, toll-free numbers, and premium support can all be added as optional extras.

As of August 2022, Zoom lists its Phone features as:

• Mobile and phone apps
• Desk phone support
• Call transfer
• Call forwarding
• Voicemail
• Call recording
• Salesforce integration
• Call blocking
• Call delegation
• Call hold
• Elevate to meeting
• Listen (monitor)
• Whisper/barge/takeover
• Call park
• Presence
• Shared line
• Shared line groups
• Native Zoom integrations
• Slack integration

Like Microsoft’s options to plug in your own carrier (Direct Routing or Operator Connect), you can redirect existing voice circuits/trunks to the Zoom Phone cloud or port your numbers over for Zoom to be your number provider.

Reviews of Zoom Phone vs Teams Phone

Zoom showcases a testimonial on its website for Zoom Phone:

“At Ciena, we love Zoom – it transformed us into a video culture, but the missing piece was external phone calling. We wanted to make communications easy by consolidating into one tool, so we were excited when Zoom Phone debuted.”

Henry Ku, Director of IT Infrastructure at Ciena.

Teams Phone is in use by an SMB in the transportation industry. With 70 users in 5 locations in North America, this company chose Teams Phone for its flexibility and portability.

The video below runs through details of this case study, plus another from a legal firm now using Teams Phone.

PC Mag rates Teams Phone as four stars out of five. It cites pros of Teams Phone as:

• Cost-effective add-on to Microsoft 365
• Deep integration with Microsoft 365
• Solid mobile and desktop capability integrated with Microsoft Teams

It also suggests a con as “the tedious setup process for auto attendant.”

On the Microsoft Teams Subreddit, there are a number of reviews from people who’ve played Zoom Phone and Teams Phone off against each other.

We include a select few below:

“Just did an evaluation on both for our org, and went with Zoom Phone instead of Teams. Pricing is competitive, and Zoom Phone is a fully featured UCaaS solution. It can be confusing to have both, but ultimately the Teams Phone system didn’t have all the functionality we needed for call queues and we were worried about support from Microsoft on that.”

With regards to call queues, Microsoft has now announced a full digital contact center to provide more queuing functionality, as well as other contact center features.

“The one thing I like is Zoom’s app interface. Compared to Teams, it seems more intuitive for our users. We have a bunch of people that are too intimidated by Teams. The Zoom Phone power pack seems like a nice option for reception staff too and I like that it’s a native solution instead of having to get a third-party solution.”

Integration of Zoom Phone and Teams Phone

Choosing one over the other is usually as simple as making sure all your desired features are supported or simply picking the solution you’re already using for meetings and collaboration.

But what if you’re using both?

Or what if you’ve identified a feature in Zoom Phone that Teams Phone doesn’t have but you use Teams for everything else?

You don’t have to use Microsoft Teams Phone because you use Teams for collaboration and meetings.

You can integrate Zoom Phone with Microsoft Teams so can use Zoom Phone as your PBX inside Teams.

When integrated, you can use Zoom Phone inside Teams for external calling.

You get the Zoom dialpad, contacts, voicemail, and call history without needing to switch between applications.

Pretty neat, right?

Integrating Zoom and Microsoft Teams for messaging

When it comes to integrating Zoom and Teams, we can go one step further, too.

If half your business uses Zoom and the other uses Teams, what happens when they need to message each other?

Working asynchronously is supposed to be easy. So, why, when we go to message our colleagues who use another platform, is the process long-winded?

Either we must revert to email (even though we’re all in on Teams or Zoom) or we send a message and don’t get a reply until our colleague in other departments finally opens their less-preferred platform.

It doesn’t make sense that we have all this intuitive tech and we still can’t chat cross-platform.

Well, actually, we can.

Mio syncs the conversations your employees have on Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Once installed behind the scenes, our tech translates your Teams messages to Zoom Team Chat – and vice versa.

It grabs messages sent from Microsoft Team to Zoom users and delivers them to the other app.

By embracing message interoperability between your two favorite platforms, your users can:

• Stop switching apps to communicate: Everyone can use the messaging app they prefer. No one has to switch to new software or risk being out of the loop.
• Reduce information silos: There’s less risk of files and conversations going missing. Mio connects your conversations and people. Everyone stays on the same page.
• Browse and join any channel: Synchronize channels so you and your colleagues are always on the same page.

Mio supports more than just chat.

Your employees and external contacts can share emojis, files, and links too.

Seems crazy to think we operated any other way.

Learn more about Zoom Team Chat interop here.

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