Simpleclass vs Microsoft Teams for Education

Understanding the Differences

Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration platform designed for business communication. It integrates deeply with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, making it a natural choice for organizations already using Outlook, SharePoint, and other Microsoft products. For general meetings and team chat, it works well.

However, Teams was built for corporate workflows, not classroom dynamics. Its breakout rooms feature, while functional, treats each room as a separate meeting space. A teacher hosting breakout rooms can visit each one, but there's no way to monitor multiple rooms simultaneously. When students are split across groups, the teacher is effectively blind to what's happening in rooms they're not currently in.

This creates real problems for tutoring centers. A student might be stuck on a problem, or a group might have finished early and started chatting about other things, or someone might have a technical issue. The teacher won't know unless they manually cycle through each room—which disrupts the groups they visit.

Simpleclass approaches this differently. The teacher's dashboard shows live video thumbnails and audio levels from all rooms at once. If a student raises their hand, the teacher sees it immediately. If a room goes quiet, that's visible too. Teachers can join any room silently to observe, or visibly to participate.

There are also compliance considerations. While Microsoft offers data residency options, the configuration can be complex, and some Teams features may still route data through US servers. Simpleclass keeps all data in the EU by default, with no configuration required.

Teams remains a good choice for schools already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem who primarily need a general-purpose meeting tool. But for institutions whose core business is small-group tutoring, a purpose-built platform typically offers a better experience for both teachers and students.