PowerApps Licensing Bait and Switch

[Anonymous]

This effectively kills our PowerApps development. 
Please work on revising your latest license structure (Oct 2019) to allow us to use the product again.

For us this has gone from an effective enterprise form and app solution to an overpriced nightmare that will impact unsuspecting users who created applications prior to the change.

[Anonymous]

Could you elaborate a little bit?

[vani2000]

Hi,

I am finding difficulty to create a form using HTML tags. From the community forum, i understand that it is not possible to create a form using HTML tags instead i have to use code to  create a simple button element.

For example, to create a simple button, i am writing code as below

private button: HTMLButtonElement;

this.button = document.createElement("button");

this.button.setAttribute("type", "button");

 this._container = document.createElement("div");

 this._container.appendChild(this.button);

container.appendChild(this._container); 

instead of easy one as below

<div>

<button type="button">Click me</button>

</div>

It would be handy if this feature is added to power apps component framework.

Regards

Vani

[Manager2020]

Trying to build a strategy based on the new Power platform component pricing is pretty much impossible. We have Office 365 E3 licenses, Dynamics 365 Enterprise licenses, and all of the useful bits have been pulled out and we now have to make a call on:

- User vs application

- PowerAutomate vs PowerApps (is it included? depends)

- Is that a custom connector? Do we get that with O365 E3 or D365 Enterprise? (sort of)

- How many page views on an external portal are we going to have?

- How many discrete 24 hour periods will our authenticated external portal user need?

- Plus a whole raft of others that appear to have been designed to make it impossible (like SA licensing in the past)

This is really cruel and unnecessary and is driving loyal Microsoft professionals like myself to look elsewhere for our future strategic plays.

[Joe1098]

I completely agree.  Only moved across to PowerApps as they shutdown Access Web Apps (at very short notice), I guess they were hosting too many apps for free.  

The Azure cost wasn't too much so PA seemed like a good option (if very buggy & limited). but paying somewhere in the region of $400 per month for its use is frankly shocking.

Considering Microsoft sold us PowerApps as a viable option, only to move everything worthwhile into the 'premium' section, it is pretty poor form

[PaulD1]

The new licensing only works if your PowerApps support a high value process used by a small number of users. 

High value processes are usually pretty critical though, and the issues over maintenance and buggy updates rule out PowerApps as suitable for anything critical.

Looks like PowerApps will become just a way of making SharePoint lists a bit prettier and the platform will get a bad name as IT departments get lumbered taking care of user-created Apps built on sub-optimal architecture (SharePoint lists) when the local guru (citizen dev) moves onto a new role. I foresee PowerApps becoming the new MS Access (reputation-wise).

[FredericForest]

I completly agree with @PaulD1.

We've painted ourselves in a corner. Either :

• It's a critical business process (cost is justified) but PowerApps ain't just quite there to support it yet.
• It's not critical at all (aka we're industrializing an excel spreadsheet) in which case the only option is SPO lists... with all it inferes

PowerApps should be the MS Access of Office 365 : a great added value to a key package to MS strategy. Sure it can have a premium offering, but it shouldn't become MS Visio : a great piece of software, completly overpriced, that remains marginal for all of its useful life rather than becoming a mainstream product. 

[JohnP]

Scaling is the key. Apps with a high number of users which requires a premium connector will be priced through the roof with the October 2019 change. You have to either go with SharePoint lists or abandon your project. Paying millions just because you chose to store data on Azure SQL (which you already pay for) is insane.

[DA]

We are using PowerApps for 4 years now. We have more than 2 Apps per User (120 licenses). The Apps use SQL as data source (Azure/On-premise), Azure Storage ...

All is now premium. Which means more the 40k € per year for PowerApps. We already pay for SQL in Azure and On-premise.

There is no ROI anymore. The only solution is leaving the platform. We had planned some new apps, but these projects are moved to other platforms. Without the change we normally would now have 150-180 licenses.

And it is not only PowerApp, but also Flow.

All this on a Platform that has a bunch of Bugs, no real App testing possibilities and so on.

[Langemyr]

We are going to leave the powerapps platform and go back to html psp design.. since we are dependent on some sql data in addition to sharepoint.
The price for us with 180 users became to lage.. $7200 /month just for the sql connector.

this does not seem very well thought out by microsoft. We can also then cancel 130 e3 licenses 😉
I know several in our community that going the same way. Mobil today is crustal and Powerapps that seemed to be a god solution didn't last long

Bad Microsoft

[sasigouru]

I’m in the same boat. Several of our flows and apps are heavily reliant on SQL data sources. I was informed in our internal governance meeting not to use any premium connectors moving forward. I can’t build a business case to go against that decision. Business might be interested in investing that license cost into professional solution development which will be a one off with some maintenance cost. At least it won’t be recurring. Yet to meet with the management. But, I’m confident that they won’t approve hundreds of premium licenses just for for one connector(I know there other benefits too, but they are out of scope for now)