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Power Apps vs. Pages Access and Cost Comparison

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Posted on by Phineas

5,325 Super User 2025 Season 2

I'm in a conversation with an individual seeking a solution for the recuring onboarding of 500 seasonal independent contractors.

The independent contractors and not part of the main company nor are they in the main company's active directory. Does anyone have a recommendation for how to 'best' achieve this, and potential recuring cost. I've looked at the Power Apps/Page cost matrix.

I don't understand half of it. I've informed the individual that Power Apps is a stretch (maybe make them 'Guests', then what's that cost - they'd each need a license, yes?

I've already worked up a 'Proof of Concept' in Pages; Though, yet again, how do I determine the cost or use and application to the vendor?

What needs to be paid for?

Is there per person license and a per app fee; Is no license required for the Independent Contractors, but the main company will have to pay per person per log-in?

I'm all confused.😩

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poweractivate 11,078 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@Phineas

The objective is what's more important.

If you check here https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/
you could see if the Per user plan is the best fit for you.
You can check here if it helps as well:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/pricing-billing-skus#power-appspower-automate-for-microsoft-365
There's a link to the latest licensing guide in the above.

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poweractivate 11,078 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@Phineas

The latest licensing guide I could find is from June 2022. There may be a newer one, but I could not find it at the moment. However, usually this specific documentation page and the link that is inside of it, has the latest version of the licensing guide, to my knowledge.

I attached the actual licensing guide here for your convenience at the bottom of this post.
They still have Portals rather than Power Pages, apologize if this is confusing for you.

Here's the problem - I am unsure that Power Pages and Portals are identical. I am not sure it is just a rename or rebrand, because as you can see here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-of-microsoft-power-pages/ it is more than a rename of the product.

Let's say for now the licensing is the same (I am not sure it is though).

Notice here above, the per user plan has access to the Portal too, so you won't have to worry about that.
If there will usually be 500 users, even if they will change each month, each season, or otherwise quite frequently, I would recommend the per-user plan, as you would have access to Power Apps Canvas App, and Power Automate, and Dataverse, Model Driven Apps, and Power Pages, and this is probably best for your multi-dimensional scenarios.

If you go the route where you pay for just Power Pages and you pay per login, it's actually per 100 logins, not per 100 users or people - this might add up really fast and actually cost more, if people will log in frequently, than if you just took a per-user plan for each contractor.

Additionally, there would be no access to the full Power Platform - and this could really be a roadblock, and end up costing you more money in both the short and the long term, and for much less functionality. This only saves you money if you are absolutely sure they only need Power Pages, and you'll need to be sure they login infrequently, otherwise it'll probably do the opposite and cost more money for less functionality. From what you described so far, I am not 100% sure that your contractors only need Power Pages, and even if that were true, I am not 100% sure this option with paying per 100 logins, won't cost you more money for less functionality if the contractors login too frequently.

Also, if Power Pages is actually not enough or not the best fit by itself, you will end up not accomplishing your objective, which is not good.

So I recommend the per-user plan.

If you want the main company to be separate from the independent contractors, this is really simple.

Just ask for there to be 2 separate tenants
One for the main company.
And one just for the contractors.

I would recommend you go to this page https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/ and click one of the three buttons on the right side and follow those instructions from there to get in touch, the official team that handles this might be better able to clarify this for you.

You will want to check the volume pricing if you're interested in paying for just Portals and really only want that, and plan accordingly, and only if you are really sure it will really cost you less (I'm not sure it will, but if you're pretty sure it'll cost you less, and only if you're pretty sure the logins and the associated cost will be more infrequent than if you have a per user plan for all contractors - and that Portals is the best fit - and it might be the case, depending on your scenario - here it is) -

Here's the problem - I am unsure that Power Pages and Portals are identical. I am not sure it is just a rename or rebrand, because as you can see here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-of-microsoft-power-pages/ it is more than a rename of the product. I do not have any info I can find on Power Pages licensing specifically. I recommend you contact the Power Apps team using the instructions above and get them to explain this to you.

Check if it helps @Phineas

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poweractivate 11,078 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@Phineas

I'd like to make a note of one thing.

In both the page https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/ and the June 2022 licensing guide, only Portals is mentioned.

I am unsure however, that Power Pages and Portals are identical. I am not sure it is just a rename or re-brand, because as you can see here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-of-microsoft-power-pages/ it is more than a rename of the product.

I also used it and found it to be quite different.

Let's assume the licensing is the same (but this may be a flawed assumption - the licensing may have changed, and the licensing may not be the same for the new product)

You can use my response as a starting point, but I recommend you do this:

I would recommend you go to this page https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/ and click one of the three buttons on the right side and follow those instructions from there to get in touch, the official team that handles this might be better able to clarify this for you.

Based on my findings, I am not sure my response is as accurate as what you'll get if you use the steps above to get in contact with the appropriate team.

See if it helps @Phineas

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poweractivate 11,078 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@Phineas

First, here is an article about the difference between Power Pages and Power Apps portals for your reference:
What's the difference between Power Pages and Power Apps portals?

For simplicity, let's presume the licensing model for Power Pages is the same as the one for Power Apps Portals, and that the licensing is the same since June 2022 (I'd double check that with the Power Apps team though to be sure).

So now, the best way to find out if Power Pages by itself is the best fit, or if each contractor needs a per-user plan to access Canvas Apps, Model Driven Apps, Power Automate, etc. is to just try it for free.
To determine whether you think you need the rest of the Power Platform for the contractors, or just Power Pages by itself, I'd recommend you try all the functionality free for 30 days.
Explore Power Apps for free for 30 days

When weighing your decision, you should not weigh pricing as the only factor. You should weigh what accomplishes your objective. For example, there is a possibility that Canvas Apps and/or Model Driven apps are needed to be used by each contractor, in order to accomplish your objective well.

Even from just a pure pricing point of view, consider this:

If you want to use only Power Pages for contractor onboarding, keep in mind that the pricing is likely per 100 logins, and not per 100 people, you may want to look at volume pricing and plan accordingly to get a discount. Keep in mind that even with a volume discount, that login frequency of each contractor to Power Pages may be much higher than anticipated, so this may, in some scenarios, actually end up costing more than if each person just had a per-user plan. With a per-user plan, you should get access to a substantial portion of Power Platform for each contractor including Canvas Apps, Model Driven Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse and also Portals too!. So for example, if each contractor needs to use a Canvas App - they can do that - and, they can use a Portal too without you being charged at the per 100 logins rate - with just Portals, a contractor cannot use any Canvas App or Model Driven App at all!

If the price difference between Power Pages by itself and Power Apps per-user plan, is only slight, even with a volume discount, there is a chance that with just a slightly higher login frequency than expected to Power Pages in a month, the price requirement will become the same as, or even be higher than, the Power Apps per-user plan cost for each contractor. With that in mind, you may still want to go with the per-user plan anyway if that happens to be the case.

Also, for Portals, if you want no authentication at all, you'll have to pay per 100,000 page views, and I don't recommend this at all unless you need public facing pages and you want them in Power Pages, because it sounded to me like for your scenario, each contractor probably should be logging in to something.

See if it helps @Phineas

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Joseph Markovich 17 on at

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I stumbled on this thread looking for an answer to a Power Apps issue. Am way late to the party here, but for anyone else looking.

There is another option you can do. You can make a fully-functional website, portal, whatever you want to call it using WordPress and a plugin called "Dataverse Integration." This is from a company called AlexaCRM.

You enter the contractors as Contacts in Dataverse, these get linked to users in WordPress. Then you just build out the pages you want to keep behind security for whatever they need to view or add data.

Essentially you're just making a separate web front end for accessing Dataverse.

Joe

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poweractivate 11,078 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@JosephMarkovich That's a good idea however it assumes the user builds out WordPress themselves on their own sites. Or if they want to use Microsoft stack, uses Azure on their own somehow with WordPress.

Or uses something else that manages the WordPress if not self-managed.

However this requires some additional expertise depending on the scenario, and at least requires an additional element potentially outside of Power Platform. This is the "WordPress" you mention.

While WordPress may on the surface seem like something to take for granted, actually it's not: this additional element may actually end up costing even more than Portals, in time, effort, and money, depending on the scope of the project.

Whereas Power Pages is actually an in-built SaaS (Software As a Service) that does not require you have any additional services outside of Power Platform. This in-built offering may be more appealing, especially for people who don't want to worry about learning WordPress, learning about self-managed WordPress deployment and installation, worrying about having a managed service provider for WordPress if not self-managing (which by the way, may cost way more than Portals), and so forth.

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