The short version
Microsoft Teams is the communication layer of Microsoft 365. If your organisation already runs on Office, Exchange and SharePoint, Teams is where your people already are, and it scales to meeting sizes we do not aim at.
HOLOH Workspaces is built around the meeting itself. A call is a room you enter and move around in, not a wall of video tiles, and the chat and calendar around it live in the same window. It is also built to run alongside Teams: the two share a media foundation, and a HOLOH participant can join a Teams meeting.
How a call feels
This is the actual difference, and it is worth being plain about. In Teams, everyone is a tile in a grid. In HOLOH, everyone is somewhere in a room: you look around, walk over and take an open seat, and you can switch to a flat 2D grid whenever the room is not what you want.
- Sketch together on a shared whiteboard inside the room
- Switch between the 3D room and a flat 2D grid at any time
- Guests join from a browser with no install
- Every channel has its own room, so the next call starts in the same place
Meetings and limits
Teams publishes its limits, so this table quotes them rather than characterising them. HOLOH is in early access, and where a figure is not set yet the row says so instead of guessing.
| Topic | HOLOH Workspaces | Microsoft Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting participants | Built for team-sized meetings; no published ceiling yet | 300 on Teams Essentials and the Business plans, 1,000 on E3, E5, A3, A5, G3 and G5 |
| Meeting length | No scheduled end: a call runs while anyone is in it | 30 hours per meeting on the Business plans |
| Members per team | No plan limits during early access | 25,000 per team, and a user can belong to 1,000 teams |
| Joining without an install | Yes, the browser is the default and guests join from the meeting link | Yes, via the web client |
| Spatial room | Yes, with a flat 2D view as an option | No |
| Joining a Teams meeting | Yes, as an external participant, once your Teams administrator has enabled it | Native |
What each one costs
Two things make a straight price comparison misleading, so they are stated instead of hidden. Teams prices are per user per month on an annual commitment and usually arrive inside a Microsoft 365 bundle that also covers Word, Excel and Outlook. HOLOH has no price yet: it is free during early access and nothing is charged.
| Topic | HOLOH Workspaces | Microsoft Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Early access, free while we build it | A free version exists; the paid plans below are the business track |
| Entry paid plan | Not set yet | Teams Essentials at $4.00 per user per month, annual commitment |
| With the office apps | Not part of what we sell | Business Basic at $7.00, Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50, both per user per month on an annual commitment |
| Enterprise | Custom, scoped with you | Included in the E-series Microsoft 365 plans |
Running both
HOLOH does not ask anyone to leave Teams. It is built to run alongside it, and the organisation decides how far and how fast it goes.
- Same media plane: HOLOH calls run on Microsoft's own media plane, the foundation it shares with Teams
- A HOLOH participant can join a Teams meeting as an external participant, once your Teams administrator has enabled it
- Teams stays on Teams, early adopters move into the spatial workspace, and the organisation sets the pace
- Large meetings stay where they are: Teams publishes 300 or 1,000 participants depending on plan, and HOLOH is built for team-sized meetings
What HOLOH adds next to Teams: meetings that feel like a room rather than a grid of boxes, in the same window as the team's channels and agents.