Auto Attendant vs Microsoft Teams Phone

The two products in one sentence

Microsoft Teams Phone: Teams Phone puts phone identities, devices and call queues inside Microsoft Teams, governed in that environment.

What the vendor publishes

Menu-plan price: No public menu-tier price.

Is an installed app required to take calls? Not if you use a Teams-certified device.1

Microsoft lists Teams Phone Standard at $10/user/month paid yearly and Teams Phone with US pay-as-you-go calling at $13/user/month paid yearly; both require a separate Teams licence.1

Microsoft documents auto attendants, call queues, Teams-certified devices and multiple PSTN connection choices.1

Microsoft says Teams Calling Plans provide external telephone connectivity, with alternatives through operators or Direct Routing.2

Microsoft documents that an auto attendant is reached through a resource account, recommends setting an operator, and follows 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM business hours unless changed; menu destinations include people, other voice apps, external phone numbers and voicemail.3

What one, three, five and seven people cost

The displayed Teams Phone price excludes the required Teams licence, and PSTN choices differ. Adding $10 or $13 per person alone would understate the complete solution, so no total is shown.

The Auto Attendant price is $29/month for the whole company, billed monthly, with no per-person charge: up to seven menu options, each ringing up to three phones in turn. See exactly what is included.

How a call reaches your team: Microsoft Teams Phone and Auto Attendant

The practical difference is where the work happens. With Auto Attendant, a caller dials one business number, hears a spoken menu, presses a key and the call rings the chosen person's own mobile (or up to three phones in turn) as an ordinary incoming call showing the business number; nobody installs an app, and the team keeps its existing mobile plans. How it works shows the whole path, and the auto attendant and IVR glossary entries separate a simple keypad menu from a full interactive voice response system.

• Who answers: on whether Microsoft Teams Phone needs an installed app to take calls, the cited source says: not if you use a Teams-certified device.1 Auto Attendant rings the phones people already carry.
• How it is billed: Microsoft Teams Phone did not publish a plan-level price we could tie to a phone menu, so the cost of putting a menu in front of a team has to be quoted. Auto Attendant is one $29 monthly charge for the company.
• What the menu can do: compare the routing options in the facts above with the call routing Auto Attendant offers; Microsoft Teams Phone's tools may be broader, and the question is whether you will configure and pay for the extra breadth.
• What Auto Attendant leaves out: it handles incoming calls only, so it does not place outgoing calls, send or receive texts, record conversations, ring several phones at once or provide queues; those belong to full platforms such as Microsoft Teams Phone, compared in general on auto attendant vs VoIP platforms.

Questions to ask Microsoft Teams Phone before you buy

Plan names and entitlements change often, so treat the page you read as a snapshot and put these questions to Microsoft Teams Phone before you sign. The answers decide whether the comparison on this page still holds.

• Which plan includes the phone menu, and is the quote for that plan? The displayed Teams Phone price excludes the required Teams licence, and PSTN choices differ. Adding $10 or $13 per person alone would understate the complete solution, so no total is shown.
• Does every person who answers a call need a paid seat? Ask how the plan counts users, extensions and shared numbers, because that count drives the bill.
• What is the billing basis? Ask for the monthly-billing price, the term and the renewal rule. Taxes, regulatory fees and any usage charges are normally extra.
• What happens when nobody answers? Test the fallback: a menu option that rings a mobile in a no-signal area should fall through to voicemail, not to a busy tone. The no-answer timeout and overflow entries define the terms, and the call queue and ring group guide shows an all-busy test.
• How is the existing number moved? Ask for the porting steps, the information you must supply and the expected interval; the rules below set the minimum for ordinary numbers.6 Our porting guide lists what to collect first.
• How is each user's emergency address set? See the checks below and our emergency calling page before putting any phone service in front of staff.

Emergency calling and number porting checks

Two federal rules apply to any phone service you buy, so ask Microsoft Teams Phone how it meets them. First, emergency calls. Kari's Law requires a multi-line telephone system to be configured so that a user can dial 911 directly, without a prefix such as the digit 9, and to provide on-site notification of the call where the system can be configured to do so.4 The FCC's definition of a multi-line telephone system covers network and premises-based systems, including Centrex, VoIP and PBX, and defines a dispatchable location as the validated street address of the calling party plus the suite or similar detail needed to identify where they are.5 A hosted phone with several users is therefore a system to check for these points, whichever vendor it comes from. See the E911, MLTS and dispatchable location glossary entries.

Second, porting. Carriers required to port numbers must complete a simple wireline-to-wireline or intermodal port within one business day, and a non-simple port within four business days, unless the new provider or the customer asks for longer; ports involving interconnected VoIP service count as intermodal.6 That is a ceiling on carrier delay for ordinary numbers, not a promise about Microsoft Teams Phone's own onboarding, so ask for the vendor's expected date in writing. Read the local number portability and letter of authorization definitions, and the porting-time article for realistic intervals.

What the flat $29 line gives you

A company that wants a business menu on top of its current mobile phones needs no Teams or Teams Phone licence for it. Calls ring as ordinary incoming calls; people use their own mobile plan and dialler, and nobody needs a seat or an app. You pick the number, write the menu in English, French or Spanish (or up to all three) and set business hours online in the app. Voicemails arrive by email with the MP3 attached, and the transcript follows in a second email, in the voicemail's own language. See the complete call path and the $29 plan.