Licenses to develop on a Sandbox environment

[bilalsh01]

Hi All,

I am new to PowerApps. I started experimenting with a Trial environment building a canvas app. The app started evolving and after moving to a few different trail environments I got tired to exporting and importing the test data every 30 days. We have decided to provision a sandbox environment for development and UAT purposes until it is ready for production. We purchased the additional Database Storage Capacity and the we created the sandbox environment and imported the solution, canvas app and test data.  Once I fired up the app, it told me that I need to purchase the per app user license.

I thought the sandbox environment was intended for development and testing. Am I missing something? I could not find any documentation on this. Any help in pointing me in the right direction is appreciated.

Why I do we need purchase additional licenses to continue development? 

Thanks

Bilalsh01

[Jeff_Thorpe]

You need to have a Power Apps Per User or Per App license.

[v-yutliu-msft]

Hi @bilalsh01 ,

The reason why you met this problem is that

1)different licenses have different permission on environments.

Who can create environments?

Your license determines whether you can create environments.

TABLE 1

License	Trial	Production
Microsoft 365 Plans	No	No
Dynamics 365 Teams Plans	No	No
Power Apps Community Plan	No	No
Dynamics 365 trial	Yes (one)	No
Dynamics 365 Plans	Yes (one)	Yes
Power Apps plan	Yes (one)	Yes
Power Apps trial	Yes (one)	Yes
Power Virtual Agents trial plan	Yes	No
Power Virtual Agents plan	No	Yes

2)different licenses have different permission on data sources

Could you tell me what data sources do you use in your solution and canvas app?

Please notice that if you use premium connector or gateway, you need to buy premium license( per app plan/ per user plan).

Per app plan and per user plan also have difference, you could choose based on your demands:

Per app plan $10 user/app/month	Per user plan $40 user/month
Run custom apps
Build and run custom apps	2 apps and 1 portal	Unlimited3
What’s included
Connect to your data	Use pre-built and custom connectors
	Use on-premises connectors and gateway
Store and manage data	Create and access custom entities
Use Common Data Service	50 MB database capacity4	250 MB database capacity4
	400 MB file capacity4	2 GB file capacity4
Execute workflows	Power Automate use rights (including premium connectors)5
	Asynchronous and custom real-time workflows

Best regards,

[bilalsh01]

Thank you very much for the info and the help.

To answer your questions:

1) I have Power Apps Plan 2 Trial through my O365 Business Standard subscription. 

2) Regarding the data sources, I am using CDS only.

But to clarify the ask here, I do not have a problem in creating environments. My question is about cost of developing apps on the PowerPlatform.

In other words, to create a Sandbox environment I will have to purchase at least 2 database storage capacity subscriptions (one for the default environment and the second for the sandbox environment), so that's at least $80 per month. Then on top of that of that I still have to purchase a Per App plan which is another $10 per month per developer.

That's $90 per month just to start developing the app. If we are 2 developers working on the project, that's $100 per month.

That's a lot!

Is my understanding correct, or am I missing something here?

Also, is there a more cost effective way to do develop on the PowerPlatform?

Thanks

Bilalsh01

[v-yutliu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @bilalsh01 ,

1)Default environment has 32G by default.

2)To create a new environment, you need at lest 1G rest of storage.

You need to buy storage based on your demands.

Except the storage, you need to buy powerapps license (per app/per user) based on your demands.

To develop app in powerapps, I'm afraid there's no better way.

Best regards,

[bilalsh01]

Ok thank you for your reply and confirmation @v-yutliu-msft.