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Video Conferencing

Microsoft Teams

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Microsoft Corporation · www.microsoft.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Educator

Weighted verdict

Teaches thirty people who join from whatever they have, half of them on a phone in a dead spot. Cares that the browser works without an install, that guests need no account, that breakout rooms are usable, and that nobody is excluded by bandwidth or by a missing caption.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Educator

The meeting itself

How this is scored

Whether the call works: participant capacity, video and audio quality under load, screen sharing, breakout rooms, moderation, and what happens on a bad connection.

0 — Small meetings only, no screen sharing worth the name, no moderation controls, and the call degrades without telling anyone.

3 — Standard meetings with screen sharing and mute-all, but low participant limits, no breakout rooms and no bandwidth adaptation stated.

5 — Meetings at the scale most teams need with screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, and documented behaviour on constrained connections.

8 — Large meetings and webinars with published capacity limits, per-participant moderation and waiting rooms, layout control, simulcast or adaptive bitrate stated, and reliable behaviour on mobile networks.

10 — Scale and control are engineering claims the vendor stands behind: capacity published per plan and per region, selective forwarding with adaptive quality documented, live streaming, hardware-room support, and diagnostics an admin can read after a bad call.

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The Educator

Three hundred participants and thirty-hour meetings are published for every plan, and meetings can carry apps before, during and after — the scale is real for a whole school. But we found no public information on breakout rooms, screen sharing, host moderation or what happens on a weak connection, so it cannot reach the middle band for my classroom. 2 5 6

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Encryption & meeting access

How this is scored

What is actually encrypted and against whom, plus who can get into a meeting. Judged on documented mechanism rather than on the word "encrypted".

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; meetings joinable by anyone with a link and no lobby.

3 — TLS in transit and encryption at rest, with the vendor holding all keys; access control is a passcode.

5 — The above plus a lobby or waiting room, host-controlled admission, per-meeting passcodes, and a clear statement that the vendor can technically access media.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for meetings with the trade-offs named (which features stop working), documented key handling, SSO-gated joining, and per-meeting access policies.

10 — End-to-end encryption available without surrendering the product — its cryptography documented or open source, key management explained, identity verification for participants, and the vendor stating plainly what it can and cannot see.

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The Educator

The comparison page states encryption for meetings, chats, calls and files and every plan includes Entra ID for identity, but that is a claim with no mechanism documented behind it. We found no public information on key handling, waiting rooms or per-meeting admission, and no end-to-end option appears in the captures. 2 2

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Reach & accessibility

How this is scored

Whether everyone who needs to join can: browser without an install, dial-in, low bandwidth, guests without accounts, captions and keyboard operation.

0 — A desktop client is the only way in; guests must create an account.

3 — Browser joining exists but is degraded, guests can join by link, and there is no dial-in and no accessibility statement.

5 — Full-feature browser joining without an install, guest access by link, mobile apps, and a stated accessibility posture.

8 — Telephone dial-in with numbers listed, live captions, keyboard-navigable and screen-reader-tested interface, and documented low-bandwidth behaviour.

10 — Reach is designed for: browser parity with the client, dial-in across the regions the customer operates in, live captions and translation, a published accessibility conformance report, and a usable experience on a poor mobile connection.

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The Educator

A global dial-in number as a free add-on, live captions in over thirty languages (English only on Essentials) and translation up to forty-one languages with Premium, plus web and mobile apps — that gets half a class of phones into the room. But we found no public information on joining as a guest without an account, browser parity, keyboard or screen-reader testing, or behaviour on a poor mobile connection. 2 2 6 7

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Recordings, retention & admin control

How this is scored

A recording is personal data about everyone in the room. Who may record, who is told, where it is stored, how long it lives, and what the works council can switch off.

0 — Anyone can record, storage location unstated, no retention rule, no admin policy.

3 — Host-only recording with a notification, but storage region unstated, retention manual, and no organisation-wide policy control.

5 — Admin policy over who may record, participant notification and consent prompt, stated storage region, and manual deletion that works.

8 — Automatic retention and deletion per policy, recordings encrypted at rest with access logged, transcription handled with its own retention rule, and attendance or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for a works agreement: every recording, transcript and analytics feature independently switchable and documented, retention executed and evidenced, an audit trail of who accessed which recording, and no participant-level behavioural scoring at all.

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The Educator

The only governance facts I can stand on are that all data is deleted when a subscription is cancelled and that video calling is managed from an admin center. We found no public information on who may record, whether participants are told, storage region or retention rules, and the privacy statement says data may be used to train AI models — exactly what a works council will ask about. 3 2 6

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Integrations & deployment

How this is scored

Calendar, identity and the wider stack — plus, in this category, whether the product can be run on the customer's own infrastructure at all.

0 — No calendar integration, no SSO, no API; cloud-only with no alternative.

3 — One calendar integration and basic SSO, no API worth building on, cloud-only.

5 — Calendar integration for the major suites, SAML or OIDC SSO, a documented API for scheduling, and room-system support.

8 — The above plus SCIM provisioning, embedding via SDK, webhooks for meeting events, and either a self-hosted option or a documented private-cloud deployment.

10 — Deployment is the customer's choice: a genuine on-premises or private-cloud option with the same features, open protocols or open source, embeddable SDKs, and identity integration that does not require the vendor's directory.

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The Educator

The developer pages show a genuine platform: Graph REST APIs with SDKs, bots, change notifications, PowerShell automation and a browser playground, and certified room hardware from Yealink, Crestron, Lenovo, Polycom and AudioCodes is listed. Identity rides on Entra ID in every plan, but we found no public information on SCIM provisioning or a self-hosted and private-cloud option. 2 7 8

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where media and metadata are processed, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors carry the traffic. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, media routed through unstated regions, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency for storage while media relays or metadata remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — relays, analytics, support tooling, transcription — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — Media and metadata processed in the EU on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: media never leaves the EU, every subprocessor European, certification published, and an on-premises option that removes the question entirely.

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The Educator

I weigh this heavily and it is thin: the privacy statement says personal data may be stored and processed in your region, in the United States and in any jurisdiction where Microsoft or its affiliates and service providers operate facilities, with data shared with Microsoft-controlled affiliates and vendors. The contracting entity is not confirmed on the vendor's own captured pages, we found no public information on subprocessors, and Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited appears only as a contact; the EU-US Data Privacy Framework commitments are the one safeguard stated. 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their host count — including the capacity, dial-in and recording storage they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-host headline exists, but participant caps, dial-in minutes or recording storage are unpriced or unmentioned.

5 — Per-host prices public with billing period stated and capacity limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (webinar capacity, dial-in, storage) sits in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with per-host maths, capacity limits, dial-in rates, storage allowances, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given host count, meeting size and recording volume, including overage and per-region dial-in.

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The Educator

A school office could almost compute the year: Teams Essentials at 3,50 € per user per month on annual billing with prices excluding VAT stated, a 300-participant capacity, thirty-hour meetings, 10 GB or 1 TB of storage per plan, a free dial-in add-on with dial-out to USA/CAN stated as free, and calling minutes itemised per country. It stops short of the top because a prepaid Communications Credits wallet covers pay-per-minute charges without published rates, and we found no public information on webinar capacity or recording storage pricing. 2 2 7

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (8)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product page www.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 28 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 16 Sep 2026, 11 Sep 2026, 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy statement privacy.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 31 Aug 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page www.microsoft.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 The meeting itself — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 The meeting itself — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Reach & accessibility — found from sitemap www.microsoft.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations & deployment — found from sitemap developer.microsoft.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →