Microsoft Teams Phone Review
A buyer-focused look at Microsoft Teams Phone – Microsoft’s cloud phone system that turns the Teams app into a full business PBX. It needs two things to call external numbers: a Teams Phone licence and a way onto the public phone network. For a South African business that second choice is now a real one – Microsoft Calling Plans are available locally, and Direct Routing or Operator Connect through an SA carrier is the alternative. This review is written for an SA business weighing those routes.
Is Microsoft Teams Phone worth shortlisting?
Yes, for SA businesses already standardised on Microsoft 365 with Teams as the day-to-day collaboration app. Teams Phone turns Teams into a full phone system, putting the calling features a business runs on inside the app your team already works in – and Copilot adds AI call notes. To reach external numbers you need a Teams Phone licence (Teams Phone Standard at $10/user/month, included in Microsoft 365 E5) plus a PSTN connectivity choice. For South Africa that choice is genuine: Microsoft sells Calling Plans here, or an SA carrier handles it via Direct Routing or Operator Connect. The local decision is which route fits – mostly a cost-and-compliance call.
- VendorMicrosoft Corporation · Redmond, Washington, USA
- ProductTeams Phone – cloud phone system add-on for Microsoft Teams
- SA route to buyMicrosoft 365 reseller for licences; SA carrier for Direct Routing
- Best-fit buyerSA businesses already on Microsoft 365 with Teams adopted org-wide
A phone system that lives where your staff already work – strongest for Microsoft 365 businesses, held just short of the top tier by a USD cost an SA buyer has to assemble.
Microsoft Teams Phone is Microsoft’s cloud phone system, and it is the voice layer of Microsoft Teams rather than a standalone PBX. Its real advantage is place: the calling experience runs inside the Teams client staff already keep open for chat and meetings, with Copilot adding AI call notes and recap. Two costs sit behind it – a Teams Phone licence (Teams Phone Standard at $10/user/month, or bundled into Microsoft 365 E5) and a PSTN connectivity choice. For an SA buyer that choice is real: Microsoft Calling Plans are available in South Africa, and an SA carrier can carry the calls instead through Direct Routing or Operator Connect – the route detail follows in the features section below. What keeps the score in the upper-middle band: the cost is USD-denominated and assembled from several components, so an SA total takes work to pin down. Cost the PSTN route both ways before you sign.
Is Microsoft Teams Phone likely to suit you?
Good fit: a Microsoft 365 business wanting voice inside the Teams app.
Pros and watch-outs
What works in Microsoft Teams Phone’s favour for an SA buyer, and what to weigh before signing.
- Voice lives inside the Teams client itself – calls, auto attendants and call queues in the same app as chat and meetings, with no separate softphone to roll out or train.
- A real choice of four PSTN connectivity routes – Microsoft Calling Plans (sold in South Africa), Operator Connect, Direct Routing through an SA carrier, and Teams Phone Mobile – so cost and data residency can both be tuned.
- Copilot in Teams Phone adds AI call notes and recap – voice AI inside the Microsoft 365 experience rather than a separate product.
- A 99.999% financially-backed uptime guarantee covering Teams Phone, Calling Plans and Audio Conferencing on Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure – among the strongest reliability commitments in this market.
- Deep Microsoft 365 integration – Outlook, SharePoint, Entra ID identity and Microsoft Purview compliance recording – plus a wide ecosystem of certified IP handsets.
- The cost is a stack, not a single rate – a Microsoft 365 base licence, a Teams Phone licence ($10/user/month, or included in E5), and a PSTN connectivity charge. Add all three before comparing against an SA per-extension provider.
- Teams Phone licensing is USD-denominated, so a weak rand raises the effective cost over a multi-year term. An SA carrier billing in rand on the Direct Routing side removes that exposure on part of the bill.
- A contact centre is not built in – inbound call-centre capability is added through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center or a certified add-on, quoted separately. Scope it as its own line if you need queuing and agent supervision.
- On Direct Routing or Operator Connect, day-to-day SA voice support comes from your carrier rather than Microsoft – vet that partner’s support desk and SLAs as carefully as the platform itself.
Score breakdown
Four categories that decide whether Microsoft Teams Phone is the right fit for your organisation – weighted to the buying evidence a South African business actually uses.
Microsoft publishes Teams Phone Standard openly at $10/user/month and lists the calling-plan bundles, so the vendor rate-card is transparent. The friction is structural for SA buyers: pricing is USD-denominated, the total is assembled from a licence plus a PSTN component, and the SA Calling Plan and Direct Routing figures sit a layer below the headline page.
Core calling inside the Teams client; four PSTN connectivity routes; Copilot AI call notes; deep Microsoft 365 and Entra ID integration; Purview compliance recording; a wide certified-handset ecosystem. A contact centre is an add-on rather than built in, which holds this short of the very top.
99.999% financially-backed uptime on Azure; the rubric's top band explicitly names Tier-1 cloud infrastructure as an alternative to owning an IECNS licence.
No South African support evidence exists — day-to-day voice support comes from the connecting carrier. This reflects absent signal, not poor support.
Scored on four of five dimensions. Customer Reviews could not be assessed: this product has no South African public review presence.
Pricing – a published USD rate-card, assembled from a licence plus a PSTN route
Microsoft Teams Phone pricing has two parts: the Teams Phone licence (per user, on top of a Microsoft 365 base licence) and the PSTN connectivity that lets users call external numbers. Microsoft publishes the licence pricing in USD; the South African Calling Plan and any Direct Routing carrier cost sit a layer below. The figures below are Microsoft’s published list prices and SA reference points – get a current quote for your own numbers.
| Plan / line | Reference point | What a buyer gets | Disclosure level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teams Phone Standard | $10.00 / user / month | The phone system on its own – calling, auto attendants, call queues, voicemail; PSTN connectivity added separately. Included in Microsoft 365 E5 | Published |
| Teams Phone with Calling Plan | From $22 / user / month (country zone 2) | Bundles Teams Phone Standard with a Microsoft calling plan – $22 domestic, $34 domestic + international; priced by Microsoft country zone | Published |
| Teams Phone with pay-as-you-go calling | From $13 / user / month (country zone 2) | Teams Phone Standard plus metered outbound calling; priced by Microsoft country zone | Published |
| Microsoft Calling Plans – South Africa | Domestic / International / Pay-As-You-Go | Microsoft acts as the SA carrier – domestic plans at 120 or 1,200 included minutes, with SA toll numbers | Published |
| Direct Routing via an SA carrier | Rand quote | PSTN carriage from an SA carrier – Saicom Voice, Telviva, ICTGlobe or Huge TNS – through a certified SBC, billed in rand | Carrier quote |
| Microsoft 365 E5 route | Per the E5 subscription | If you already license Microsoft 365 E5, Teams Phone Standard is included at no extra licence cost – the marginal voice cost is the PSTN route only | Published |
What real customers say
Teams Phone is the voice layer of Microsoft Teams, so it carries no clean customer-review score of its own. The useful signal sits in two places – the very large Microsoft Teams review base, and the service record of the SA carrier delivering the PSTN side.
Microsoft Teams carries one of the largest review footprints in business software – well over 17,000 reviews on G2 – and rates solidly with IT buyers. That score reflects the collaboration suite as a whole; Teams Phone rides on the same client.
Microsoft Teams holds thousands of verified IT-buyer reviews across the collaboration and meeting-solution categories and is a consistent category leader. The voice add-on inherits that platform standing rather than scoring separately.
Global review scores rate Microsoft Teams, not the SA carrier in front of Teams Phone. Installation, number porting and call quality on the PSTN side are partner-specific – a strong platform score is a green light on the software, not on the local service.
Buyer move: take the strong Microsoft Teams platform signal as a green light on Teams Phone itself, then judge the SA side on the carrier – ask each Direct Routing partner for two SA reference customers of a similar size.
The Microsoft Teams Phone line-up
What Teams Phone actually does for a buyer scoping a phone system – where the calls live, the PSTN routes, the AI, the contact-centre path and the Microsoft 365 integration.
One app for chat, meetings and calls
The defining feature. Calling, hold, transfer, voicemail, auto attendants and call queues all run inside the Teams desktop, mobile and web client – no separate softphone to deploy or train staff on.
Four ways onto the public phone network
Microsoft Calling Plans (Microsoft as the carrier), Operator Connect (a certified carrier set up in the Teams admin centre), Direct Routing (any carrier via a certified SBC), and Teams Phone Mobile (mobile-native calling through a participating operator).
Teams Phone Standard, or bundled in E5
The phone system is licensed per user as Teams Phone Standard, or bundled into Microsoft 365 E5. Calling-plan bundles fold the Microsoft PSTN minutes into a single per-user line.
AI call notes and recap
Copilot in Teams Phone produces AI call notes, real-time summaries and intelligent recap, drawing on the same Microsoft 365 AI layer as the rest of the suite rather than a bolt-on product.
Inbound call centre through extensibility
A contact centre is not built in. Inbound call-centre capability – queuing, agent supervision, reporting – comes through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center or a third-party Teams-certified solution, integrated with Teams Phone.
Outlook, Entra ID, Purview and handsets
Native ties to Outlook, SharePoint and Entra ID identity, Microsoft Purview compliance recording, and a wide range of certified IP handsets from Yealink, Poly, Cisco and AudioCodes.
You run on Microsoft 365 and want voice built into the Teams app.
- Your business already runs on Microsoft 365 and Teams is where staff spend the working day – voice folds into a tool they know.
- You want flexibility on how calls reach the network – Teams Phone lets you move between Microsoft as the carrier and an SA carrier without changing phone system.
- Automatic call summaries matter, and you would rather have them inside the Microsoft 365 experience than from a separate vendor.
- You are consolidating voice off a legacy PBX and want it inside the same Microsoft tenant as identity, email and compliance.
Your situation points to a different model – another provider will fit better.
- Microsoft 365 isn’t your platform: if you run on Google Workspace or Slack, the in-Teams advantage doesn’t apply and a standalone SA phone system fits better.
- You want one rand-billed operator owning the whole stack: Switch Telecom and similar SA specialists bill in rand and carry voice, licence and support on one account.
- A contact centre is central to your brief: Teams Phone leaves that to a separate product such as Dynamics 365 Contact Center – a platform with a built-in contact centre may cost less to assemble.
- You want a published rand price you can act on: an SA per-extension provider quotes a single rand rate rather than a USD licence plus a PSTN route.
Alternative providers to compare
Three options worth quoting alongside Microsoft Teams Phone, depending on whether you want the platform openness, an SA Direct Routing carrier, or a finished SA service.
3CX
Open-standards PBX software, also able to connect to Teams by Direct Routing, with a published per-call rate-card and an instant-quote calculator. The pick when you want platform openness and visible pricing.
Saicom Voice
A Tier 1 SA carrier that delivers Teams Phone Direct Routing on SA-domiciled infrastructure and bills in rand. The route when you want Teams Phone with local carriage and an SA support desk.
Switch Telecom
SA voice and PBX specialist billing in rand, holding local ICASA licences, with Hosted Switchboard from R26/ext effective. The pick when you want one SA operator owning carriage, licence and support without a Microsoft dependency.
South African essentials
Four SA-specific signals to verify before signing.
With Direct Routing the ICASA-licensed carrier is your SA partner – Saicom Voice holds IECNS and IECS licences, for example. With Microsoft Calling Plans, Microsoft acts as the SA carrier. Confirm which entity carries your calls and originates your numbers before you commit.
Direct Routing through an SA-domiciled carrier keeps voice carriage and call recordings on SA infrastructure. With Microsoft Calling Plans, Microsoft is the carrier and routing uses its global voice network – confirm data handling and the Microsoft 365 tenant region if data residency is a requirement.
Microsoft Calling Plans provide toll numbers for Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg and support porting your existing numbers in; a Direct Routing carrier ports and originates SA geographic numbers directly. Confirm number ranges and porting timelines with whichever route you choose.
Teams-certified IP handsets carry ICASA equipment type approval for legal use in South Africa. Teams Phone licensing is USD-denominated, so factor rand exposure into a multi-year budget – the Direct Routing carrier side is billed in rand.
Sources and disclosure
Where this review’s facts come from, and how WhichVoIP gets paid – both transparent before you act on any of it.
- microsoft.comTeams Phone product and voice-calling pricing pages used for the Teams Phone Standard $10/user/month list price and the Calling Plan bundle SKUs, the four PSTN connectivity routes, Copilot in Teams Phone, the 99.999% financially-backed uptime guarantee, and the Dynamics 365 Contact Center contact-centre path. Verified live 21 May 2026.
- Microsoft LearnTeams calling documentation and the South Africa availability page – confirmation that Microsoft Calling Plans are sold in South Africa (Domestic, International and Pay-As-You-Go), the SA toll-number cities, and inbound number porting. Open source →
- G2 and Gartner Peer InsightsUsed for the customer-review signal – Microsoft Teams carries one of the largest IT-buyer review footprints in business software, with the voice add-on riding on the same platform standing.
- SA Direct Routing partners + prior WhichVoIP review baselinePublic pages of Saicom Voice, Telviva, ICTGlobe and Huge TNS used for the SA Direct Routing channel detail; the prior WhichVoIP review used for continuity.
- 21 May 2026Score recalibrated from 7.5 to 7.7 against the V7 4-axis rubric. The PSTN-availability picture was corrected: Microsoft Calling Plans are available in South Africa, so an SA buyer now has a genuine choice between Microsoft as the carrier and Direct Routing through an SA carrier. Teams Phone Standard pricing was updated to the current $10/user/month list, the reliability commitment to Microsoft’s 99.999% financially-backed uptime guarantee, and Copilot AI call notes surfaced. The contact-centre path was corrected to Dynamics 365 Contact Center and third-party Teams-certified solutions. The Teams Phone with Calling Plan figure was corrected against the live Microsoft pricing page to $22 domestic / $34 domestic-plus-international (country zone 2); SA Calling Plan availability re-confirmed on Microsoft Learn.
Disclosure: This review was researched and written by WhichVoIP’s editorial team using primary sources (the Microsoft website, Microsoft Learn documentation, the G2 and Gartner Peer Insights review platforms, SA Direct Routing partner pages and the prior WhichVoIP review). WhichVoIP may receive a referral fee when you request quotes through our platform. Read our full editorial policy.
How this score should be read
Scores are editorial guides, not guarantees. They combine published pricing signals, service fit, feature depth, support and reliability indicators, public customer signal and South African procurement checks.
- 25%Pricing value, including commercial transparency, contract flexibility and quote-process friction.
- 25%Feature set, including portfolio depth, integrations and admin usability.
- 20%Customer reviews, measured as a standing against other South African providers on the same review platform, adjusted for how much evidence supports it.
- 15%Reliability and uptime, weighted toward providers that own or fully control their network rather than reselling.
- 15%Support quality, weighted toward customer-review patterns rather than provider claims about SLAs.
FAQ
Short answers for the questions buyers typically ask before requesting quotes.
What is Microsoft Teams Phone?
Microsoft Teams Phone is Microsoft’s cloud phone system – the voice layer that turns Microsoft Teams into a full business PBX, with calling and call handling inside the Teams app. To call external numbers it needs a PSTN connectivity choice on top of the licence.
Is Microsoft Teams Phone available in South Africa?
Yes. Teams Phone works for any South African Microsoft 365 tenant, and Microsoft Calling Plans are sold in South Africa – Domestic, International and Pay-As-You-Go options, with SA toll numbers. You can also route through an SA carrier on Direct Routing or Operator Connect.
How much does Microsoft Teams Phone cost?
The phone system is licensed as Teams Phone Standard at $10/user/month, and is included in Microsoft 365 E5. PSTN connectivity is extra – a Microsoft calling-plan bundle, or a Direct Routing carrier billed in rand. Cost the licence and the PSTN route together for an accurate total.
What is the difference between Calling Plans, Operator Connect and Direct Routing?
All three connect Teams Phone to the public phone network. With Microsoft Calling Plans, Microsoft is your carrier. With Operator Connect, a Microsoft-certified carrier is set up from the Teams admin centre. With Direct Routing, any carrier connects through a certified SBC – the route most SA carriers use, and the one that keeps voice carriage on SA infrastructure.
Does Microsoft Teams Phone need a Microsoft 365 licence?
Yes. Teams Phone is an add-on to Microsoft Teams, so users need a Microsoft 365 plan that includes Teams, plus a Teams Phone licence. Microsoft 365 E5 includes Teams Phone Standard already; E3, E1 and Business plans add it as a separate per-user licence.
Does Microsoft Teams Phone include a contact centre?
Not as a built-in feature. Teams Phone covers core calling and basic queuing. A full inbound contact centre – agent supervision, advanced queuing, reporting – is handled by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center or a Teams-certified add-on, priced separately.
How does Microsoft Teams Phone compare to 3CX?
Both put voice on a software platform. Teams Phone’s advantage is living inside Microsoft Teams for businesses already on Microsoft 365. 3CX is open-standards, runs on any SIP hardware, publishes a per-call rate-card with an instant-quote calculator, and can itself connect to Teams by Direct Routing – the pick when platform openness and visible pricing matter more.