New PowerApps and Flow Licensing coming October 1, 2019

[Pstork1]

If you haven't seen the announcement yet about the Licensing changes that are coming to PowerApps and Flow starting on October 1, 2019 you really need to read the following Blog. This announcement was originally made at Inspire this year, but has undergone a number of significant changes.  Make sure you read this and understand what it means to you and your organization.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

[MagnusGöransson]

I am still trying to get all the facts so I can give my customers proper advice.

I have one app in pilot-stage for the moment. It connects to Azure SQL. How many API-calls would be measured in the following cases:

- I use Filter() on the Items property in a gallery. The database-table holds 2000 rows, but through the filter i request 100 rows

- I use Patch() to update five columns for one item (row) i the database-table.

- I use Filter() on the Items property in a gallery. The database-table holds 2000 rows, but through the filter i request 500 rows. The filter statement is fully delegated. The end user scrolls down 10 times in the gallery to see all the rows.

It would be quite handy to be able to see the API-calls for each PowerApp in the Analytics view. Do anyone know if that is possible?

/Magnus

[sscarcella]

I cannot agree more.  Its not enough to have us all using O365, Windows Desktop & Azure SQL Server.  Now they want more money to be able to collaborate and automate using the tools we are already paying for.

[sscarcella]

I agree, I feel like the past 2 years developing apps in PowerApps has been a total waste of time.  All our apps rely on SQL Server and this will just kill it.  There is no way we can afford an additional $40 per user per month on top of the $20 per user for O365 and $10 per user for PowerBI.

[Pstork1]

I agree its tough at this point to calculate API calls based on actions.  But in general what you describe is probably one API call each.  Batching things will cut down on the number of API calls.

[JohnP]

This new license change is confusing to me. We have one canvas app on a customer tenant that utilizes CDS. The app consumers/users have an E5 license, so there is no extra cost associated with using the app besides the E5 license. How will this change on October 1?

[Eickhel]

According to the documentation, if using CDS, every user must have a minimum of PowerApps per app plan:

PowerApps per app plan which allows individual users to run applications (2 apps and a single portal) for a specific business scenario based on the full capabilities of PowerApps for $10/user/app/month. This plan provides an easy way for customers to get started with the platform before broader scale adoption.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-flow-licensing-faq

The E5 license won't suffice

[JohnP]

@Eickhel, @Pstork1 

Wow. This is horrible. How to explain this increased cost to the customer? With the E5 licenses our customer could consume the app with no additional cost until now. And now they have to pay an additional $120 per user per year? And without no prior notice?

Edit:

The existing P1 and P2 plans for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow will be transitioning to the new PowerApps per app and per user plans, as well as the Microsoft Flow per user and per Microsoft Flow plans.

E5 licenses have P1 ... does that not mean that they already have a "PowerApps per app" plan?

[Pstork1]

One Correction.  Office 365 E5 licenses contain the standard PowerApps license, not the P1 license.  The P1 license is going away Oct 1, unless you are grandfathered in for a year.  Choices in the future will be the "seeded" license included with E5, PerApp license at $10/user/app/month, or standalone $40/per user per month.

And I agree that a lot of customers are going to have sticker shock.  But to be clear.  You can continue to use PowerApps and Flow to enhance SharePoint and OneDrive without additional cost. Developing using SQL and Azure, which I do like a lot, is what will get massively more expensive for Office users.

[digiservice]

For us this is going to most likely pull the plug on all PowerApps development. 

We don't want to silo data into sharepoint lists but cannot justify the cost for 1500 staff members to access apps connected to SQL.

Really quite outrageous, we will be forced to use a competitor product.

Such a shame, Microsoft, please rethink this.

[Pstork1]

I agree with the sentiment.  My only advice would be to make sure to price out the thrid party options before you pull the plug.  Most of the people I know who work with them suggest that the cost is comparable to the new pricing in PowerApps and Flow.  That's one of the reasons MS thinks they can get away with this.