Most small-business phone setups are one of two things: a PBX box in a closet that one retired contractor understands, or a per-seat VoIP subscription bought years ago and never revisited. Meanwhile the same office already pays Microsoft for Teams — the app where the meetings, chat and files live. Teams Phone closes that loop: it adds real phone numbers and calling to the platform staff already have open all day.
What Teams Phone is
A phone-system licence on top of Microsoft 365. With it, Teams gains a dial pad and your business numbers: calls ring on the desktop app, the mobile app, or a certified desk phone, wherever the person is. The PBX features an office actually uses come along — auto attendant menus, call queues, transfers, hold, voicemail with transcription to email, business-hours routing. The receptionist experience survives; the closet box does not.
Because calling rides your internet connection, quality is a bandwidth-and-network question — one reason this pairs naturally with a network health check before cutover, and one honest dependency to weigh.
What it costs
From Microsoft's published pricing as of August 2026 — USD, per user per month, billed annually, and each option also requires a Teams licence (included in the Microsoft 365 business plans most offices run):
- Teams Phone Standard. $10 — the phone system alone; you connect your own carrier through what Microsoft calls Direct Routing or Operator Connect. The flexible route, and the one that needs a partner to set up.
- With pay-as-you-go calling. $13 — includes a phone number, with outbound minutes metered on top. Fits low-call-volume offices.
- With a Calling Plan. $17 — includes a number and 3,000 outbound domestic minutes for the US, UK and Canada. The simplest all-Microsoft route for a typical Canadian office.
- Domestic and international. $34 — the same, plus 600 international minutes, for teams that genuinely call abroad.
Compare that against what the current phone bill plus the PBX maintenance contract actually totals — for many 10–30 person offices the arithmetic is not close. Prices are Microsoft's list; check the page for current figures before budgeting, as they change.
What the switch involves
- Inventory the numbers. Main line, direct dials, the fax nobody admits still matters, the number on the door and the ads.
- Choose the calling route. Microsoft's Calling Plan for simplicity, or your own carrier via Direct Routing where a contract or pricing argues for it.
- Build the call flow first. The auto attendant menu, queue order, business hours and voicemail routing get designed and tested before any number moves.
- Port the numbers last. The carrier transfer is the switch-flip. The old system stays live until test calls confirm every number lands where it should.
Done in that order, the office never misses a call; done backwards, the port happens first and the menu gets designed live on a Monday morning while customers hear dead air.
When it is the wrong choice
- Analog dependencies. Fax lines, door buzzers, alarm panels and elevator phones do not move to Teams — they need their own plan, and discovering them mid-port is the classic surprise.
- A real call centre. Heavy routing, wallboards, agent analytics — possible on Teams with add-ons, but a dedicated contact-centre platform may fit better.
- Weak internet. Calls ride the connection. If the internet drops weekly, the phone system now drops weekly too — fix the connection first.
Rolling this out — licences right-sized, call flows built, numbers ported without a gap — is a fixed-fee project under Microsoft 365 administration or IT consulting. Take a brief and bring last month's phone bill; the comparison takes ten minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Yes — business numbers are ported into Teams Phone through a standard carrier transfer process. The practical advice is to keep the old service running until the port completes and test numbers land correctly, so the office is never unreachable mid-switch.
On Microsoft's published pricing as of August 2026, in USD per user per month billed annually: Teams Phone Standard at $10 (you supply the carrier), pay-as-you-go calling at $13, a Calling Plan with 3,000 domestic minutes for the US, UK and Canada at $17, and a domestic-plus-international plan at $34. Each also requires a Microsoft Teams license, which most business plans already include.
Only if you want them. Calls ring in the Teams app on the computers and phones staff already use, which is the point — reception, warehouse and shared spaces can add Teams-certified desk phones, but most desks need nothing new.
Yes — auto attendants (press one for support), call queues with hold music, transfers, voicemail with transcription delivered to email, and business-hours routing are all part of Teams Phone. For a typical small office this covers everything the old PBX did.
When the building has analog dependencies — fax machines, door buzzers, alarm lines, elevator phones — those need separate treatment. A true call-centre operation with wallboards and complex routing may outgrow it. And if your internet connection is unreliable, fix that first: your phone system will only be as good as the connection under it.