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Avaya Spaces vs Skype for Business comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Avaya Spaces
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (15th)
Skype for Business
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Meetings (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Avaya Spaces is designed for Enterprise Social Software and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 1.2% compared to last year.
Skype for Business, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Meetings, holds 3.8% mindshare, down 11.6% since last year.
Enterprise Social Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Avaya Spaces1.9%
Slack Business - Enterprise10.5%
Microsoft Teams7.4%
Other80.2%
Enterprise Social Software
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Skype for Business3.8%
Zoom Workplace Business7.0%
Webex5.1%
Other84.1%
Virtual Meetings
 

Featured Reviews

TM
Channel Director at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Video meetings and presentation sharing impress but user-friendliness and pricing need attention
I don't have experience with how Avaya Spaces handles integration with other software tools, but perhaps my partners have experience regarding integration with different vendors. If Avaya can integrate Spaces with other media solutions, such as WhatsApp or WeChat, it will be more friendly and useful for customers or partners.
MD
Assistant Information Technology Officer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Internal communication has become more efficient while mobile usage still needs improvement
The honest answer is that the product has not really evolved in some time. Microsoft has been pushing everyone towards Teams and Skype for Business has been in maintenance mode for a while. The mobile experience is also not great. Staff who try to use it on their phones find it less reliable than the desktop version, calls drop more, and the interface is clunky. For a modern workforce that expects everything to work on mobile, that is a gap. Despite the initial setup challenges and mobile issues, we have noticed positive outcomes for our organization since adopting Skype for Business. I rate Skype for Business seven out of ten. I think that Skype for Business has served us well for what it is. A government office has different expectations from a fast-moving private company. We value stability and security over the newest features. On those terms, Skype for Business has delivered.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Stability for Avaya Spaces is quite good, and I would rate it a 9."
"The microphone's noise cancellation and static feature that record a human's voice are some of the most valuable features."
"We use the solution for document sharing, video conferencing, instant messaging, and file sharing."
"The calling features are the most valuable, especially now as we are working remotely because of this pandemic."
"We have noticed positive outcomes for our organization since adopting Skype for Business, including improvements in efficiency and reduced costs."
"CCE is an interesting proposal to realize an hybrid voice deployment (Cloud services and local telco) with little effort."
"What is most valuable about Skype for Business is that almost everyone knows about it and almost everyone has it. You will be able to reach a large number of people."
"You can do meetings of up to two hundred people in a single conversation."
"The performance is pretty good, this is a mature application with no bugs, and I have no complaints."
"I use the chat feature to communicate with my staff, which is very helpful."
"The public telephony feature reduces hard phone costs and RGS is like a call centre feature."
 

Cons

"The audio calling service needs to improve its quality."
"There were some additional features coming up, as they informed us through email. But we didn't get any update on them."
"The initial setup for Avaya Spaces is very good for me, but for sharing with other users, the setup is a little bit complex compared to other solutions I have used, such as Zoom or Teams, as the installation is more complex."
"This is not a solution I would recommend."
"Our user base has struggled for adoption, as using Skype audio is not a very consistent experience due to the diverse networks that they are on (home office, corporate office, and branch office networks)."
"We are looking for a more collaborative tool, not only in terms of virtual meetings but also for teams to collaborate, share a document, work together, and all those types of things."
"The solution's functionality needs to be moved to Microsoft Teams. Its technology is outdated."
"We have found that there is a lag because it cannot integrate with the internal landline."
"It would be ideal if the solution could make instant messages more permanent. Currently, if you close the conversation, you lose the instant messages that you shared during the meeting. If those could last beyond the meeting, that would be a great addition, due to the fact that frequently, people give each other key details, important information, or email addresses, etc., during the meeting. If you don't write it down during the meeting, after the meeting closes, it's gone forever. That can be quite frustrating."
"I feel bored with the look and feel of the tool, so it should be changed."
"The ease of configuration or the lack of decent tooling to pinpoint your problems is probably its biggest issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license grants you a subscription and costs about $120. I am not aware of additional costs."
"The cost of Skype for Business is incorporated into our Office 365 licenses."
"We had a license for every one of our users to use Skype for Business. The license we used was part of an overall Microsoft license package."
"I use the product's open-source version."
"Our company pays for a license for us to use the solution."
"A license is required to use the solution."
"The solution is priced fairly."
"To realize value from the purchase of Skype Business, you need to take advantage of all the important functions of the program."
"When it comes to the pricing of the solution, I rate it as a five out of ten. It falls somewhere in the middle between being cheap and expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise28
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Avaya Spaces?
I don't have experience with how Avaya Spaces handles integration with other software tools, but perhaps my partners have experience regarding integration with different vendors. If Avaya can integ...
What is your primary use case for Avaya Spaces?
Most of the time, I use Avaya Spaces to hold meetings with Avaya and with partners, which fulfills our collaboration needs.
What advice do you have for others considering Avaya Spaces?
I can share my opinion about Avaya Spaces and recommend it for small or medium company users, as most of them are small users. I am currently working with Azure for our cloud needs. Overall, I woul...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skype for Business?
If I think back, my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing involves accessing it through our Microsoft Enterprise Agreement which covers the whole Office suite including Skype for Busin...
What needs improvement with Skype for Business?
The honest answer is that the product has not really evolved in some time. Microsoft has been pushing everyone towards Teams and Skype for Business has been in maintenance mode for a while. The mob...
What is your primary use case for Skype for Business?
My main use case for Skype for Business is internal communication across departments and between different government offices. We have staff spread across multiple locations in Malacca, and before ...
 

Also Known As

Avaya Cloud Application Link
Skype for Business Plan 1, Skype for Business Plan 2, Lync Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Stop Soldier Suicide, British Columbia Ski Resort, Helse Vest, Spital Limmattal, Conduit Global
EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services,LA Fitness, MedcoEnergi International, Tampa General Hospital, and HopewellHoldings Limited.
Find out what your peers are saying about Slack, Microsoft, Atlassian and others in Enterprise Social Software. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.