Office 365 vs Skype for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Office 365 and Skype for Business based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Content Collaboration Platforms solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Office 365 vs. Skype for Business Report (Updated: March 2020).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is quite intuitive and easy to use.""I love all of the applications being interlinked. I do not have to separately work on an independent system when it comes to file storage, email, and other tools.""The most valuable feature is Microsoft Exchange.""We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints.""Using Office 365 has allowed us to go digital and onboard people seamlessly for working at home during the COVID pandemic.""Reliable without any glitches.""There's a lot there in terms of apps and features.""I like that it is cloud-based, wherefrom any computer I can access my documents and continue working."

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"We chose Skype for Business after other colleagues suggested that we give it a try. It has served us well.""The quality of the meetings is very good.""The solution is scalable and is capable of working on every appliance on every operating system.""Our employees use this solution for a communal space to collaborate for organizational decision making.""The deployment is very fast.""We like the easy provisioning of Skype for Business Conferencing.""We really like the screen sharing tool. The user experience is smooth, and user-friendly.""The product helps me make international calls."

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Cons
"It could be more user-friendly for inexperienced people.""We have found that, with Teams, if you are including one more person who is not in the company ecosystem, supposedly I'm inviting them as a guest in the chat. However, when I do that, I can't share files.""A need that a company like ours has is that we want to be able to have data flow into one tool, for example, for all the management of tasks through the company and workflow of who is doing what and so on. There are no real solutions for this at the moment in Office 365. It would be nice if they could implement this in the next release, so we can have one solution from one company giving us the whole data and flow of data into the company.""Office 365 could be easier to use at first. Tutorials are needed to know how to use the solution.""Using Office 365 is not that flexible on some mobile devices, like Android.""In the next release, I would like to have a more intuitive tutorial.""The one big problem with the solution is if you are presenting in Teams and someone puts their hand up, you don't get a notification. If you are running a meeting and just presenting you don't know that people have their hands up and want to ask a question.""There are some complexities to the initial setup if you use some of the more advanced features."

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"We need a feature where you can virtually raise your hand to silently let the presenter know that you have a question.""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.""The solution isn't connected to Microsoft Teams, and I feel like there is better communication on that particular solution. The group capabilities are a bit less than Teams.""The cost of Skype for Business has room for improvement.""We would like to better customize our instructions within the Outlook plugin/invite, but we are unable to do so.""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.""Sometimes the connection crashes, which is understandable if you are traveling. But, it would be nice if this could be stabilized somehow.""The tool needs to have a dynamic file updating feature, so people you share a file with could update the file dynamically, all at once, all at the same time."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
  • "Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
  • "​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
  • "The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
  • "The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
  • "The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
  • "I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
  • "Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
  • More Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We have been able to save money by moving our conferencing solution to Skype for Business Conferencing."
  • "We negotiated a fair price with Microsoft. It is definitely worthwhile to negotiate with them for the best price for your solution."
  • "The pricing is really good. It is quite affordable because it came with our Office 365. It is on a per-user license, which is nice. I quite like that they have made it very granular with all of their licensing."
  • "It may be considered costly for certain markets, such as in India."
  • "It may be slightly costly, but the features are awesome."
  • "To realize value from the purchase of Skype Business, you need to take advantage of all the important functions of the program."
  • "The cost of Skype for Business is incorporated into our Office 365 licenses."
  • "We purchased an open license."
  • More Skype for Business Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Office 365 is automatic saving. If something happens on the computer your work is saved.
    Top Answer:I’m not sure of the exact cost. In the past, it might have been free. However, now, people do need to pay in order to use it. I would put the pricing around two out of five. It's not the cheapest… more »
    Top Answer:Office 365 could be easier to use at first. Tutorials are needed to know how to use the solution.
    Top Answer:Desktop sharing is a valuable feature.
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer:The video conferencing quality can be improved. The video conferencing quality can be temperamental with internet access and bandwidth availability for a geographically dispersed team environment.
    Ranking
    Views
    3,269
    Comparisons
    1,682
    Reviews
    14
    Average Words per Review
    444
    Rating
    8.1
    4th
    out of 62 in Virtual Meetings
    Views
    2,952
    Comparisons
    1,128
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    340
    Rating
    7.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
    Skype for Business Plan 1, Skype for Business Plan 2, Lync Server
    Learn More
    Overview

    Office 365 is more than just Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It provides powerful services like business-class email, online storage, and teamwork solutions that you can access from anywhere. Bring teams and resources together with solutions like Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business that make working together more productive and enjoyable regardless of where participants are located. Easily implement security and privacy controls to help protect business data and devices against malicious threats and help you meet your compliance obligations. Automatic updates ensure your employees will always have the latest features and security updates.

    Skype for Business offers features including presence, IM, voice and video calls, online meetings, conferencing, and telephony solutions that support enterprise-level collaboration requirements. Skype for Business Record meetings, share your screen, and annotate PowerPoint for real-time collaboration with up to 250 people and use whiteboard, polls, Q&A, and built-in IM during your business meetings to make them more productive. Skype for Business provides new client experience, Skype for Business Server provides several new features to improve manageability of on-premises servers and hybrid solutions. Skype for Business also supports the Lync client experience so that you can choose a phased upgrade approach to the new client experience for users. Skype for Business is also an integral part of Microsoft Office 365, providing PSTN Conferencing, Cloud PBX, PSTN Calling, and Skype Meeting Broadcast capabilities to Office 365 users.
    Sample Customers
    Me & the Bees Lemonade
    EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services,LA Fitness, MedcoEnergi International, Tampa General Hospital, and HopewellHoldings Limited.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Manufacturing Company19%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Non Tech Company3%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization75%
    Computer Software Company4%
    Financial Services Firm3%
    Government2%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    University8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization87%
    Computer Software Company2%
    Government2%
    Financial Services Firm2%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business7%
    Midsize Enterprise78%
    Large Enterprise15%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business4%
    Midsize Enterprise89%
    Large Enterprise8%
    Buyer's Guide
    Office 365 vs. Skype for Business
    March 2020
    Find out what your peers are saying about Office 365 vs. Skype for Business and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Office 365 is ranked 3rd in Content Collaboration Platforms with 54 reviews while Skype for Business is ranked 4th in Virtual Meetings with 59 reviews. Office 365 is rated 8.4, while Skype for Business is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Office 365 writes "Excellent technical support, easy to install, but the price, while affordable, could be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Skype for Business writes "Reliable, useful for remote work, and great but isn't as robust as Microsoft Teams". Office 365 is most compared with Atlassian Confluence, Amazon WorkDocs, Citrix ShareFile, Box and Dropbox, whereas Skype for Business is most compared with Webex, Zoom, TeamViewer, Cisco Meeting Server and GoToMeeting. See our Office 365 vs. Skype for Business report.

    We monitor all Content Collaboration Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.