Power Pages is a enterprise-grade software-as-a-service platform from Microsoft that provides a low-code solution for building, managing, and hosting dynamic enterprise websites. It enables citizen developers and professional developers within organizations to quickly and securely build custom external-facing web applications. These applications are tailored for use by the organization's consumers, partners, community users, and internal users. Learn more about Power Pages here.
Power Pages architecture
- The rapid shift towards digital technologies has led to a significant increase in remote work, heightened customer expectations for online applications and services, and increased use of advanced technologies across the board. Behind all of these advances is the driving force of cloud computing, which is enabling and enabling these transformative changes. Today, some IT solutions no longer require software development. Power Pages tries to address this and is part of Microsoft's Power Platform. It is built on Microsoft Azure and leverages the same security stack as Azure, which integrates with Microsoft 365 compliance tools. This screenshot shows a quick sample of a generated Power Pages site. The site can be enriched with forms and workflows.
- Power Pages offers seamless integration with a number of products and features, including Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Power BI, and Microsoft SharePoint.
- Microsoft Power Pages sites can be applied in various use cases across organizations, Here are some samples: Customer Portals, Partner Portals, Internal Dashboards, Event Registration and Management, Forms and Surveys, Training and Learning Platforms. Above all, I think it makes a lot of sense to use it as a partner portal with authentication and for anonymous event registration.
- The Power Pages core platform uses Dataverse to securely collect, store, and share business data, protected by the robust Microsoft Entra authorization. A website maker allows to build rich business websites using a click-and-drag interface. The graphic below shows the main components of the Power Pages.
Picture source: Power Pages architecture white paper - Each website created on Power Pages is linked to a specific Dataverse Environment. It consists of a standard set of tables that cater to common scenarios, while also allowing the creation of custom tables to accommodate diverse business use cases. All data within Dataverse is encrypted both during transit and when at rest.
- In Power Pages, authorization defines the resources that are accessible to website users, whether they are anonymous or authenticated. The security model is based on Role-Based Access Control mechanisms, where Web Roles are used to group users and control access. Additionally, Table Permissions and Page Permissions are utilized to safeguard and regulate access to specific business data and website content.
- Professional developers can customize these apps through custom theming and create sophisticated website interactions through Visual Studio/VS Code integration.
- Note: Microsoft is good at renaming and the "Power Apps portals" is now "Power Pages" (since October 2022, see the GA announcement).
Power Pages resources
Power Pages editors
Power Pages governance
Licensing is per user/website/month
- Power Pages licensing is capacity based and offers two types of capacities based on user type: Authenticated users per website per month and anonymous users per website per month. See more at How is Power Pages licensed?
- Authenticated users per website per month:
- Authenticated user capacity license: For the number of unique, authenticated users. For example, employees (internal) or non-employees (external) accessing a website during a month.
- Authenticated user pay-as-you-go meter: Pay-as-you-go based on the actual number of authenticated users who have accessed a website in a month. Pricing is currently $4 per active user/site/month.
- Anonymous users per website per month:
- Anonymous user monthly capacity license: For the number of unique, anonymous users accessing a website in a month.
- Anonymous user pay-as-you-go meter: Pay-as-you-go based on the actual number of anonymous users who have accessed a website in a month, currently priced $0.30 per active user/website/month.
- The Power Pages pricing informs about the subscription plans, which are currently $200 for 100 users/site/month, and $75 for 500 anonymous users/site/month (Tier 1).
- Each Power Pages authenticated users per website capacity pack subscription plan will receive 2 GB database capacity and 16 GB file capacity accrued to the tenant.
- So, the standard pricing is $2 per authenticated user and site per month. The more users are licensed, the more the price reduces (Tier 2 and Tier 3). For 10K+ users, the price in Tier 2 would be $75 per 100 users, so $0.75, etc.
- For anonymous users, this means a price of $0.15 per user and site per month in Tier 1. With 10K+ users in Tier 2, the price per user is $0.075, etc.
- The Power Pages meters webpage informs about the details using meters.
Conclusion
In summary, using Microsoft Power Pages offers numerous opportunities for organizations embarking on the digital transformation journey. With its enterprise-class, low-code SaaS platform, Power Pages enables both citizen developers and professional developers to easily build, deploy and manage custom external business web applications. Tight integration with other Microsoft products improves the overall functionality and versatility of Power Pages. By using Power Pages, companies can benefit from greater efficiency, accelerated development cycles, improved security and capability.
I hope this overview helps you understand what Power Pages is and how to plan for its use.