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Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

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Daniel (Australia) on 22 Mar 2017 20:57:43

Power BI Team,

Your recent changes/fixes to PRO licensing pricing has caused widespread concern and discussion amongst the community. This is due to Microsoft no longer allowing end users/consumers to access Power BI workgroup reports & dashboards. Reports were suddenly inaccessible in organisations that had built Power BI frameworks over the past 2 years. Your new structure now forces these companies to purchase PRO licenses for ALL users regardless of whether they use it or not.

Unfortunately, Power BI is now the most expensive BI product for large organisations, whom I believe are your primary customers.

The community has not received any feedback despite the topic being the most discussed topic in the Community Forum:
(Please read the feedback to get a better understanding of the issues we face)

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Fixes-to-Power-BI-Pro-License-Required-Dialogs/m-p/131787#M19897

All we ask for is a response which we have yet to receive. Are you going to review & revisit the Licensing Structure soon due to the feedback ? Or are you sticking firmly to the changes ? Your response will help large organisations plan their BI strategy rollout.

Administrator on 02 Feb 2024 02:27:21

No changes to the pricing are planned

Comments (11)
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Jon Fortner on 05 Jul 2020 23:30:16

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

For us, Power BI has the best ROI when compared to other Gartner Recognized BI tools. Once you hit 600 Pro user, strongly consider a Premium Sharing Server Node where content consumers don't need a Pro license. You really have to examine the cost profile across the major BI tools before deciding this is expensive, trust me, it's not too bad. And, no, I do not work for them.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:09:17

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

This pricing structure seems to fly in the face of basic business practice & I just cant understand where Microsoft is coming from. In all BI solutions a basic free or nominal cost for a pure view option is a must.

Everyone on a pro licence just to be able to view Dashboards is the most insane solution ever !!

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Cor CEC on 05 Jul 2020 23:06:30

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

I totally agree with this licensing issue. It is a total nonsense from Microsoft and a magnificent punch to their SMB customers.
Microsoft, If you wanted to make money out of this product (which works very well by the way, congrats on that), this was not the way to go.

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Chris Dodgson on 05 Jul 2020 23:00:16

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

Agreed - the pricing changes have blown business cases here out of the water. Love the tool - but need a better pricing structure for consumers of content.

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Jeff on 05 Jul 2020 22:50:34

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

Echo the same licensing message. Our organization is an Office 365 customer - and it is hard to pitch a move to Azure and PowerBI with this licensing. Consumers have to have the ability to integrate with Excel without being Pro users.

"We are willing to pay more for the Pro licenses than what we are currently paying, but will not pay for consumers to have paid licenses. No matter what. If we hear nothing in the next month we will have to pick a different platform. Our organization is otherwise deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, so this will be a real blow. "

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 22:49:18

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

for us the premium costs 3,000% more than pbie, so it's totally cost prohibitive for use with our customers. We need the licensing model to dial this down a ton. Using it internally isn't anywhere near as much as for our external customers especially at 5K a month in premium. That can buy a lot of PowerBI pro licenses, at our discounted rate.

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Hein Mulder on 05 Jul 2020 22:48:15

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

Thank you Daniel for posting this.

This structure is keeping us from going full ahead with this product.
It keeps us in trial licensing mode....

Our company needs one or two PRO licenses to build the reports and dashboards and 10 or more user licenses to read them. That should be the structure!

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:06

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

Yes, we prefer to pay more for Pro licens than let our user to own Pro licens! In many cases it is not possble.

With Power BI, MS have a very good BI tool. We enjoy this tool very much. I hope MS would continueing the strive.

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Annie on 05 Jul 2020 22:44:52

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

We are willing to pay more for the Pro licenses than what we are currently paying, but will not pay for consumers to have paid licenses. No matter what. If we hear nothing in the next month we will have to pick a different platform. Our organization is otherwise deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, so this will be a real blow.

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bi.support on 05 Jul 2020 22:44:35

RE: Please FIX/REVIEW your recent changes to the PRO licensing pricing structure

Thanks Daniel.I also focus on this topic for a long time from Feb to the present. Please MS give the reply how will further for this problem?