Why Power Pages licensing changes are so significant!!

Power pages went GA at Ignite, and amongst the slew of new features, one of the most significant is the new licensing model. The new model not only makes the product cheaper in most cases. It opens the door for new use cases with Power Pages.

Two major updates change how Power Pages/Power Apps Portals have been used in the past.

1. One of the biggest change is that Power Pages is its product, and With it being its product, It brings less dependency on Power Apps Licensing.

   Power Apps Portals have predominantly been used for use cases where users are external to your organization. Power Apps(Canvas & Model Driven ) were primarily used for Internal user use cases. Earlier, even if you built Power Pages for internal users, they would need a Power Apps license.

   With the new change, internal and external users fall under the same licensing model. Power pages are viable for many internal use cases, such as Request management/ HR use cases. Many of the HR services are used by employees only a few times a year, and building them on Power pages provides better licensing and customization support.

2. PowerApps Portals licensing used to be based on Per Login(for 24 Hours); with the new model, it’s a monthly active user. This decreases the cost for most of the use cases and makes it easier to anticipate how much you need. The new licensing model includes Dataverse Capacity and CDN; Each Power Pages authenticated users per website capacity pack subscription plan comes with 2 GB database capacity and 16 GB file capacity. The new model not only makes it viable cost wise as well as easier to plan the cost.

Lets dive deeper into Power Pages licensing:

Power Pages licensing Model continues to be Service licensing, so you don’t have to license individual users but rather add capacity to the Power page instance. The Capacity could be Prepaid(buy enough capacity as per your anticipated needs) or Pay as You Go Model.

Capacity Model: Earlier Capacity Model used to be based on Per Login(for 24 Hours), with the new model being a monthly active user. Power Pages Capacity are two types:

Monthly Anonymous Users capacity: Capacity for a user to access the portal and browse without actually signing in/logging in.

Monthly Authenticated User Capacity: is for users to sign in and do actions as authenticated users.

Pre Pay/Subscription Model

Pre Paid Capacity for Anonymous users could be bought at 75 USD for 500 Users, and for authenticated users, capacity could be bought at 200 USD for 100 users. the latest pricing could be found here :

Anonymous Users Volume Pricing

Pay-As-You -Go

In Pay as you go Model, You pay for the Power pages through an Azure subscription, for PAYG model, you need to link the environment with Azure Subscription.

Monthly Anonymous User price: $0.30 per user/site/month

Monthly Authenticated User price: $4.00 per user/site/month

Power Pages PAYG model could appear appealing or costly based on the use cases you are targeting, It’s great for use cases where Portals uses is seasonal, like Tax use cases, and HR use cases.

Please share what you think about the new Power Pages licensing model and what use case you are using Power pages for.