Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft TeamsFormerly Lync
Overview
What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Great Software!
How could I work without Skype/Microsoft Teams?
"Reliable communication application, offers seamless integrations, and has numerous features."
Skype is budget friendly, easy to use and reliable software.
"Skype for Business is a remarkable communication tool that has widespread adoption."
Skype is great for meetings
Great communication tool overall.
Skype Review
The First video conference tool I have ever used
Skype keeps employees connected!
Skype for Business - Review
"Great Communication Tool At The Click Of A Button."
Skype Business = Microsoft Teams = Power play!
Meeting and a collaborative Tool
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Desktop sharing (190)8.888%
- High quality audio (189)8.080%
- High quality video (184)7.777%
- Low bandwidth requirements (181)6.666%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
10 people also want pricing
Alternatives Pricing
What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.
What is GoTo Connect?
GoToConnect, from GoTo, is a cloud-based business phone system with built-in web-based video conferencing solutions. It includes features such as call analytics, call recording, softphone, fax to email, voicemail to email, and desktop integration.
Features
Performance & Compatibility of Online Events Software
Features related to the performance, reliability & compatibility of web conferencing and webinar (online events) software.
- 8High quality audio(189) Ratings
High quality audio connection is consistently available, with few or no interruptions.
- 7.7High quality video(184) Ratings
High quality video connection is consistently available, with few or no interruptions.
- 6.6Low bandwidth requirements(181) Ratings
Software is optimized so that meetings do not require a huge amount of bandwidth.
- 7.9Mobile support(145) Ratings
Attendees can access meetings/webinars from mobile devices.
Screen Sharing
Features related to remote screen sharing capabilities.
- 8.8Desktop sharing(190) Ratings
Presenters can remotely share a view of their desktop with attendees.
- 8.3Whiteboards(119) Ratings
Presenters or attendees can share notes or annotations they’ve made on a whiteboard/meeting space within the web conferencing UI.
Online Meetings / Events
Features related to hosting and attending meetings and events online.
- 8Calendar integration(173) Ratings
Scheduling capabilities integrate with users’ Calendars.
- 8.1Meeting initiation(181) Ratings
Meetings can be easily initiated, whether they are scheduled or on the fly.
- 7.7Integrates with social media(83) Ratings
Integrates with social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to promote meetings and webinars.
- 7.6Record meetings / events(142) Ratings
Meetings and webinars can be recorded for playback.
- 7.7Slideshows(114) Ratings
Presenters can present slideshows during the meeting within the web conferencing platform.
Online Events Collaboration
Features related to collaboration between attendees during web conferences, webinars, and other online events.
- 9.1Live chat(170) Ratings
Participants can use one-on-one and group instant messaging to communicate privately or selectively during meetings.
- 8.4Audience polling(93) Ratings
Presenters can ask for audience input.
- 8.1Q&A(93) Ratings
Attendees can ask questions during the presentation.
Online Events Security
Features related to the security of meetings and other events held via web conferencing/webinar software.
- 8.1User authentication(141) Ratings
Administrators can require users to authenticate their identities before joining a meeting.
- 7.9Participant roles & permissions(147) Ratings
Administrators can grant users different levels of access to conferences, as moderators, presenters, attendees, or participants. Permissions can be set for individual users, or based on user role/group.
- 8Confidential attendee list(109) Ratings
Presenters, moderators, or admins can see a confidential list of attendees that is not visible to all attendees.
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams?
Skype for Business was a unified communications tool superseded by Microsoft Teams.
For personal use, Skype Desktop and Mobile apps are still available for download, but for business functionality the vendor now fully supports Microsoft Teams as the replacement for Skype for Business.
Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(2587)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 96)Beyond expectation
- Communication is free of cost
- File and screen sharing facilities
- Video conferencing
- Skype for business
- Translator
- Security and privacy concerns
- Depends on internet connection
- Lack of advanced features
- Large meeting may sometimes disrupt based on connectivity
- Missing of end to end encryption
How could I work without Skype/Microsoft Teams?
- Instantaneous messaging.
- Emojis
- Video calls.
- Activity records.
- Notifications (email and app notifications).
- Customization of user's display (colors, photo, quick links etc).
- Export chat records.
- No video recording expiration.
- Voice -to-text for chat messages.
- Better meeting/call schedule experience.
Skype is great for meetings
- Screen sharing.
- Chat function.
- File sharing.
- Status setting.
- Offline email messages.
- Launch time of desktop application.
- It displays one user name multiple times with all the conversations, I would like to see it as one chat window.
- Overall performance should be made fast.
Great communication tool overall.
- Easy Communication.
- Simple to use when set up.
- Good user interface.
- Good integration with other Microsoft product like Outlook.
- Connection issues can be hard to diagnose when they come up(as some knowledge of server information may be needed to reestablish as the connection troubleshooting options on the sky are not as user-friendly as the rest of the platform.
- Some issues setting up camera/sound could use more info on troubleshooting options with playback sound, video, etc.
- Statuses sometimes are unreliable and do not display correctly .
The First video conference tool I have ever used
- conference calls
- messaging with notification
- syncing with outlook calendar
- status settings
- organization of contacts
- conversation history
- connection to corporate directory
- organization charts
- file sharing
- task tracking as a group
- multi screen sharing
- Multiple presenters
- connection with other productivity applications
Skype keeps employees connected!
- Communication with coworkers.
- Multiple channels of communication.
- Ability to see coworkers status easily.
- Chat rooms could be better integrated.
- Sending attachments could be more seamless.
- Integrate better with email systems.
No longer the simple team player it used to be
- Keeping Teams Chat front and center helps with workflow--especially the one-and-done answer or even chatting back and forth if necessary
- Power users can use Teams in Chats and Channels; Channels are especially good for group projects
- Teams Chat saves your chat history in the event you need to view the conversation in the future to refresh your memory
- It requires more memory because of all the other features in Teams, so it takes a little more time to load than Skype did.
- The layout of the new Teams chat is not as user friendly as Skype was. More features are not always better for simple use.
Enterprise large scale collaboration tool - although it's slowly getting to be a dinosaur
- Instant messaging to anyone who we know only by name/email. Even if they're offline, they get the message in missed convos and a notification automatically goes to them via Outlook mail. All conversations are saved and accessible via Outlook.
- Video and voice calls are a norm in the WFH scenario, and an average employee has around 4-5 calls a day. Skype gives notifications for upcoming meetings, allows easy scheduling via outlook calendar, and its audio/video quality [is] reasonably good compared to the amount of data it consumes.
- Status availabilities - in the WFH scenario, you could be off for lunch, out of office, busy, sharing screens - and might not want to be disturbed. Skype allows you to do that, and in case you're off, ensures that you know that you have missed messages.
- Screen sharing - we have to share screens at least once or twice a day with a coworker when working on some issues/features, and Skype easily lets us do that. One of the best things about Skype is that the screen can be shared without being on a video/voice call - which is of immense advantage because oftentimes, you could prefer sharing the screen, while it [is] too noisy to talk.
- Skype's UI leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering newer platforms like Zoom, Teams, Slack, Meet, and so on. It's slow and lacks many features that are now de facto in the newer communication apps.
- Skype calendar also is often buggy - meeting times do not get updated on the calendar even if the correct time does come up on the Outlook calendar.
- It does not give you the option to mute chats - oftentimes, you want to keep some group chats on mute without leaving them entirely.
- Closing off a chat before it's saved will remove it from Skype history. You'd need to go search for it on Outlook mail.
Stay Connected with Skype for Business
- The application on windows 10 is lightweight. No CPU/Memory hogging
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Can be deployed in Cloud/Hybrid/on-prem
- Skype for business messages on Apple watch
- ability to mask/disable sending sensitive messages containing credit card numbers.
- Would be nice to get the option of using WebUI
Minimal UI and easy to use application
- Integration with outlook
- Alerts and missed conversation notification
- Saves conversation in mail
- Ability to configure time for online availablity
- Great for video calls
- No dark mode
- Updates are not regular
- No noise cancellation feature in calls
- Cluttered chat windows
- Cant send large files
- No stickers or GIFs support in chat
Skype 4 life
- See users status before contacting them
- Have a good idea that the will respond before you reach out to them
- Good quality of voice
- Easy to use
- Easy to escalate to higher forms of communication
- Integration to other platforms
- Presence shared between Skype and ms teams
- Faster upgrades to clients
Great option for Microsoft Office users
- Integration across other Microsoft products is great feature.
- All communication is well organized within individual Teams and each team can have multiple channels for different topics.
- Integration with third party apps also helps improve workflow.
- Doesn't seem to work well with low bandwidth internet connections.
- Automatic transcription of audio would be a nice feature to have.
- More emoticons to react to messages would be nice.
members and with the clients. It is used for having quick chats and long meetings.
Sharing the contents while the meeting is going is an effortless and a very useful feature.
So basically it is used for communicating across an organization. Just search a name and you are right away connected to the colleague.
- Meeting scheduling
- Calendar integration helps in looking at schedules of team members
- Screen sharing, Desktop sharing helps quickly share the work we are working on
- Integration with Other market tools helps SHARE work being done on them
- [I feel it] Must have feature to grab the screen shot and share right away while meeting is in progress
- More stability on low bandwidth connections
- An appstore to connect with market tools such as DevOps etc
We were looking for a conference feature for connecting with colleagues or adding additional colleagues while we are on call with one colleague. Earlier this was not possible. Skype's update helped us a lot in this.
Earlier there was no feature of sharing specific screen due to which entire desktop were shared and hence compromised privacy. But Skype update added that great feature.
Title-holding champ has lost its edge
- Video conferencing (very few connection problems)
- Chat has historical data
- Signed in users tracking
- Chats are broken into several threads instead of one persistent thread
- Link sharing and document sharing are a major problem
- Groups and collaboration need improvement
Skype for Business Review
- Best tool for conversation within the whole organization.
- Video conferencing is very amazing.
- Very very user-friendly.
- Sharing documents over chat is very simple.
- You can create your groups in a very proper way.
- Very simple to use.
- No additional training is required to use this tool.
- You can show your status as available, busy, away, do not disturb, In [the] meeting, etc as your convenient and work.
- We can share our screen and can take control as well of others.
- We can show only one window to the others and can do our other works in other windows at the same time.
- Sometimes if [...] you have another window, like watching any video [and] you don't touch the mouse, [...] Skype will show your status as away[...].
- Sometimes it takes [a] little more time to log in.
- Meeting creation and sending [invitations are a] little tough.
- Your status will show [as] 'away' just after 4-5 minutes if you don't touch the mouse, no matter your window is open and watching something else. It is its biggest con.
Okay app for IM
Previously it was used by whole organization but now it is limited to various teams in the organization, as another software are being used now.
Skype is used to share messages between colleagues, teammates any internal team messages. It is very easy to install and use.
- Very good instant messaging app f[o]r organi[z]ations with minimal UI.
- Easy to make video calls, phone calls.
- One can share screen with everyone you are calling, helpful in case of showing presentation or giving lectures.
- We can even make calls to particular phone number through Skype for Business.
- Can share documents and files over Skype for Business app.
- In todays scenario it is bit costly compared to other similar apps available in market.
- UI is way too old. It needs redevelopment.
- Searching old messages is problematic from [the] start of using this app. Search doesn't work good.
- Number of person able to attend meeting is limited.
Organization which just started functioning or are new comers which doesn't have big funding or budget can avoid Skype for Business as their instant messaging app and can opt for any other cheap apps.
The Hype of Skype
- Skype is a great widely used platform quick message platform.
- Office 365 Connected
- Allows Screen Sharing
- Connectivity issues. Frequent Freezing,
- It seems to require a lot of bandwidth. Our computers don't have a lot of RAM.
- Large Files take a very long time to share.
Works well, but perhaps lacking more features
- Established name
- Simple and easy to use
- Call quality is good
- Not as many features as some other software
- Great video quality.
- Excellent audio quality.
- Easy to use; great for small file sharing.
- Great chat service during live meeting.
- Large files take a longer time to share.
- Have connection issues in large group meetings.
- Interactive service (emoji, history) needs improvement.
- Instant messaging is clear, quick, and easy to use.
- Internal telephony call quality on Skype for Business is generally quite good.
- Screen sharing is easy to do including selecting specific monitors if you happen to be using more than one.
- Probably the biggest area is the video element as it has historically struggled in this area.
- The need to be forced to federate with another organisation by providing yours and enabling the other organisation settings is a bit tedious but once done, allows for simple collaboration between third-parties.
- Functionality wise, as it's an older product and being superseded by MS Teams, it feels as if it's run its course but was very good for what it does/did at the time.
Skype for Business is a great collaboration tool
- Messaging is ok.
- Voice calls of good quality.
- Meetings work fine .
- Excellent corporate directory.
- Messaging has a poor history.
- We have troubles with meetings with great number of participants.
- Sometimes communication is not stable enough but it might be network issues.
- Included with most Microsoft 365 packages.
- Integrates with Outlook and other Microsoft apps.
- Integration with Skype (consumer) is terrible.
- Interface is very old - not intuitive.
- Doesn't support advanced call handling like Teams.
What a great asset to any company!
- Shows when you are online or busy
- Has emojis to make chatting fun
- Has the ability to change you status
- the only thing is maybe register when we are on a call
Skype for Business review
- It is very easy and intuitive to use.
- You can have calls or video calls using Skype for business. Also you can share your screen which is really important for my work.
- It is integrated with other programs. For example if you have a missed call, you receive a message in outlook and you know that someone called you.
- You can change your status in Skype for Business. For example if you have a very important work to do, you can change your status to "busy," or to "not disturb". If someone is in a call you can also see that and wait till that person ends the call if you want to discuss something with him.
- You can transfer contacts that you call most to favorites, so it would be faster and easier to contact them.
- You can share your screen and give control to another person, if that person wants to add or show you something in a file that you shared.
- The quality of audio is good, but noise cancelling is not the best in Skype for Business.
- When you share your screen in a video call, your computer starts lagging and sometimes large files stop responding.
Nice tool for collaboration with colleagues
- Collaboration
- Seamless integration with Outlook
- Phone and laptop support
- Audio quality is sometimes poor
- Application takes longer to start
- Sometimes the application consumes too much memory allowing it to crash