Moving app to production when the app has been developed with the developer plan.

[Anonymous]

We have developed a solution with developer plan and would like to move this solution into production. We have created 3 environments, developer and testing (which are of environment type: developer), and production, which is of environment type production.

Is it as straight forward that we can just move the solution to the production environment (export from testing and importing in production), get the licenses for the users (the users will use per apps licenses) and share the app with the correct user (there is one app per specific user in the solution)? Do we, as developers, need some kind of license also in order to just deploy the app, or is the developer plan enough? (I have read that it is not enough but I'm a bit confused)

Thank you for your answers, much appreciated! 

[Pstork1]

It should be as easy as you describe. YOu shouldn't need a license to deploy the solution to production. You will need a license to run it in production if it uses any Premium connectors. Otherwise, the only license production users will need is an Office 365 license.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. The solution uses dataverse as the database, so I think this is a premium connector? So can I still publish this with just my developer plan license if I don't need to run it, just have my users running it? (given that they have the license) The users are external to the organization, so I think we need to get them the per app license so they can run the app.

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

Correct, you can import the solution to the production environment without an additional license.  Users will need Premium licenses, but those licenses can either be Premium licenses in your tenant, in their tenant, or per app licenses assigned to your production environment.

[Anonymous]

Ok, great. I was just confused because it says on the microsoft site that "A paid plan is required to deploy or run solutions in a production environment for production use." but I guess that the site might not have been updated recently.

About the Power Apps Developer Plan - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

[Pstork1]

Let me clarify. You will need access to Power Apps or Power Automate to deploy a solution in production. But it can be the "seeded" license that comes with Office 365. You only need the Premium license to run the app in the production environment.  So yes, you will need a license of some type to deploy the solution. But any license should be good enough to deploy the solution. You only need a Premium license to run the app with a Premium connection.