Small businesses are getting a leg up from Microsoft with the release of Teams Essentials in a direct challenge to Zoom .

Teams Essentials costs $4 per user per month, a little less expensive than Microsoft 365 Business Basic, at $5 per month per user. “It’s the first standalone offering of Microsoft Teams designed specifically with small businesses in mind,” explains Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365. “It brings together features small businesses need to serve customers, including unlimited group video calls for up to 30 hours, group chat, file sharing and calendaring.”

Team Essentials includes unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours and 300 participants, compared with a 60-minute time limit and a maximum of 100 participants on the free plan. Users also get 10 GB of cloud storage — twice as much as those on the free tier — and integration with Outlook and Google calendars. Users can send meeting invites to someone who doesn’t have a Teams account — they just need that person’s e-mail address.