Last updated: October 14, 2026
By ZapAI Team
TL;DR: A Power Pages customer portal is a secure external website built on Dataverse, the same data behind Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft lists it at $200 a month per 100 authenticated users per site and $75 per 500 anonymous users, with pay-as-you-go as an option. Choose it when outsiders sign in and work with records. Choose SharePoint for file sharing with a few guests. Build custom when the portal is the product.
Power Pages is Microsoft’s low-code platform for external business websites built on Dataverse. A customer portal starts at $200 per month for 100 authenticated users per site, at US list price.
Most portal projects start with the same complaint. Customers email for order status, partners mail spreadsheets back and forth, and a support rep retypes a warranty form into Dynamics 365 for the fourth time that day. Someone says portal, and three options land on the table.
Power Pages. SharePoint with guest access. Or a custom build.
Each can work, and each fails expensively when picked for the wrong job. Bias disclosed. We sell Power Pages implementation, and we’ll still tell you when SharePoint is enough.
What Is Power Pages, and What Replaced Dynamics 365 Portals?
Power Pages is the current name for what began as Dynamics 365 Portals and then Power Apps portals. It’s a hosted, low-code platform for external websites that read and write Dataverse data under strict permissions.
Microsoft relaunched portals as Power Pages in late 2022, and per its Power Platform licensing FAQ, new customers couldn’t buy the old login and page view SKUs after March 31, 2023. A proposal still quoting portal logins is quoting a dead license.
The real change was counting. Old portals counted daily logins, so one user signing in every day burned 30 logins a month. Power Pages counts unique users per site per month. Huge difference for busy portals.
What Kinds of Portals Can You Build With Power Pages?
Anything where outsiders sign in, see their own records, and submit structured data back to Dataverse. Five patterns cover most requests we scope.
- Customer self-service. Cases, knowledge articles, order or warranty status. It pairs with the case tools in our Dynamics 365 Customer Service guide.
- Partner portals, where resellers register deals and pick up leads scoped to their own account.
- Supplier onboarding? Vendors upload W-9s and insurance certificates instead of emailing PDFs.
- Application and permit sites with multistep forms, document upload, and a status page.
- Event registration, mixing anonymous browsing with a signed-in step to register.
The thread is Dataverse. If customer, case, and order data already live there, a site is mostly configuration. If it sits in an ERP Dataverse can’t see, integration comes first, and our Dataverse services team usually starts there.
When Is Power Pages vs SharePoint the Right Call for External Users?
SharePoint suits sharing files with a small, known group of guests. Power Pages suits large external audiences who self-register, see only their own records, and submit structured data.
SharePoint sharing changed this year. Per Microsoft’s Entra B2B integration article for SharePoint, Entra B2B integration was switched on for new external sharing in commercial tenants between May and July 2026 and can’t be disabled, and SharePoint’s own one-time passcode sign-in retires starting October 2026. Every outside person you share with becomes a guest account in your directory.
Fine for 40 outside accountants. A mess for 4,000 customers. Guests work at the file and site level, not the record level, and guests on a shared folder can see each other’s names in the Manage Access panel. Your customers shouldn’t know each other exist.
Power Pages flips it. External users are Dataverse contacts, and table permissions decide which rows each person sees. Want an Ohio distributor to see only Ohio orders? That’s a permission, not a folder structure.
When Should You Choose a Custom-Built Portal Over Power Pages?
When the portal is your product, when anonymous traffic is enormous, or when your data lives outside Dataverse. Power Pages wins when the portal is a window into Dynamics 365 or Power Platform data.
A React and .NET build on Azure gives you every pixel and no per-user Microsoft license. It also hands you hosting, patching, sign-in, a firewall, a CDN, and the logic stopping one customer from reading another’s invoices. Power Pages includes CDN and WAF at no extra license cost, per the same FAQ.
The middle ground is wider now. Microsoft Learn documents deploying code-first single-page applications to Power Pages, so a front-end team writes React while Power Pages handles hosting and Dataverse security. Same tradeoff, internal version, in Power Apps vs traditional app development.
| Factor | Power Pages | SharePoint with guests | Custom build |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Customer, partner, supplier, and application portals on Dataverse | Document exchange with a small, known group | Portals that are the product, or data outside Microsoft |
| Who signs in | Dataverse contacts via Entra External ID, Entra ID, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0, or local accounts | Entra B2B guest accounts in your tenant | Whatever identity service you build or buy |
| Record-level security | Web roles and table permissions, built in | File, folder, and site permissions | You design, code, and test it |
| Licensing | Per unique user per site per month, or pay-as-you-go | Microsoft 365, plus Entra MAU billing for guests beyond the free tier | No per-user Microsoft license, but hosting and identity costs |
| WAF and CDN | Included | Microsoft-managed | You set up and pay for them |
| Who maintains it | Microsoft runs the platform, you own configuration | Microsoft plus your SharePoint admins | Your developers, permanently |
How Much Does Power Pages Cost?
$200 a month buys 100 authenticated users for one site, and $75 buys 500 anonymous users, at Tier 1 US list. Pay-as-you-go charges $4 per active authenticated user and $0.30 per anonymous user, per site, per month.
Prices come from Microsoft’s Power Pages pricing page and the licensing FAQ, checked October 14, 2026. Enterprise agreements change what you pay. For Power Apps and Power Automate costs, see our Power Platform licensing breakdown.
| Capacity | Pack size | Tier 1 (1+ packs) | Tier 2 | Tier 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Authenticated users per site per month | 100 users | $200 per pack | $75 per pack (100+ packs) | $50 per pack (1,000+ packs) |
| Anonymous users per site per month | 500 users | $75 per pack | $37.50 per pack (20+ packs) | $25 per pack (200+ packs) |
| Pay-as-you-go, authenticated | Per active user | $4 per user per site per month (meter labeled preview) | ||
| Pay-as-you-go, anonymous | Per active user | $0.30 per user per site per month (meter labeled preview) | ||
Run an example. A portal with 1,200 signed-in users and 8,000 anonymous visitors a month needs 12 authenticated packs ($2,400) and 16 anonymous packs ($1,200), so $3,600 a month at Tier 1, while the same traffic on pay-as-you-go runs $4,800 plus $2,400, or $7,200. Pay-as-you-go costs double the Tier 1 rate. It wins only when most purchased seats would sit idle, like seasonal sites and pilots.
Four details that move the bill, from the FAQ and Microsoft’s pay-as-you-go meter documentation.
- You license users who showed up. 100,000 registered customers with 5,000 monthly sign-ins means buying for 5,000.
- Employees with Power Apps per user or Dynamics 365 enterprise licenses aren’t counted, but only if they sign in with Entra ID in the same tenant.
- Unused capacity doesn’t roll over, and each environment needs at least 25 authenticated or 200 anonymous users assigned.
- Anonymous users are counted by browser cookie, so one person on a phone and a laptop counts twice.
Each authenticated pack also adds 2 GB of Dataverse database and 16 GB of file capacity. Still, licenses are rarely the biggest line. Build and integration are.
How Do Security and Sign-In Work in Power Pages?
Users sign in through an identity provider, map to a Dataverse contact, and get web roles. Table permissions tied to those roles decide which records they can read, create, update, or delete.
Data is locked by default. Microsoft’s table permissions documentation says Dataverse records are automatically restricted in forms, lists, Liquid, and the Web API until you grant access. Access types are Global, Contact, Account, Self, and Parent, plus a FetchXML-based Custom type in preview. Contact and Account do most of the work.
For customer sign-in, look first at Microsoft Entra External ID, Microsoft’s customer identity service. It shares technology with Azure AD B2C, runs from the Entra admin center, supports email-and-password or email one-time passcode sign-up, and bills on monthly active users with a free tier. Staff and partners with corporate accounts can use Entra ID, and OpenID Connect and SAML 2.0 providers work too.
Newer helper? The Power Pages security agent, in preview, reviews roles, permissions, sign-in settings, and headers in plain language and asks before changing anything. Use it in test first.
Which Copilot and AI Features Are in Power Pages?
Makers get Copilot for drafting sites, pages, forms, themes, and text. Visitors can get a site agent built on Copilot Studio. Several newer pieces are still in preview.
Describe a multistep warranty claim form and Copilot drafts it in the design studio. Expect to fix it.
The visitor agent, per Microsoft’s guide to adding a site agent, answers from site content, respects web roles, can hand off to a live rep in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and starts as a trial before drawing on your environment’s Copilot Studio capacity. That’s a separate cost from page licenses, and our Copilot Studio services team sizes it.
Still preview as of October 14, 2026, per Microsoft Learn. Generative AI search, AI summaries in lists, the data summarization API, case page summarization, agents built from forms, and the security agent. Fine for pilots. Not for a launch date you’ve promised the board.
What Does a Power Pages Implementation Look Like?
Seven steps from user count to launch. As ZapAI planning guidance, not a quote, a single-purpose portal on existing Dataverse data takes about 6 to 10 weeks, and multi-audience portals with ERP integration take 3 to 6 months.
- Count your users first. Estimate monthly authenticated and anonymous users per site. That number drives licensing.
- Model the data in Dataverse. Reuse contact, account, and case where Dynamics 365 has them, and decide what syncs from the ERP.
- Pick the identity provider. Entra External ID for customers, Entra ID for corporate accounts, and decide on self-registration or invitations.
- Design web roles and table permissions. Write a matrix of role, table, access type, and privilege before anyone opens the studio.
- Build pages, forms, and flows. Templates and Copilot for drafts, Power Automate for approvals and notifications.
- Test as a hostile customer. Sign in as two contacts and try to read each other’s records, then run the security scan.
- Launch in private mode, then go public. Assign capacity, and check real user counts after month one.
Step four is where schedules slip. Permission design always takes longer than page design.
What Mistakes Should You Avoid With a Power Pages Portal?
Global access on sensitive tables, JavaScript login redirects, licensing by registered users, and forgetting that monitors count as visitors. All four are fixable in design.
The redirect one stings. Microsoft’s licensing FAQ warns that a client-side redirect to the sign-in page can leave pages available anonymously, so use page permissions tied to authenticated roles. A security bug and a licensing bug in one line of code.
Global access grants a role every row in a table. One shortcut on the case table and every customer can list every other customer’s cases. Default to Contact or Account and justify each Global permission in writing.
Uptime monitors that send a browser user agent can count as anonymous users. Point them at /_services/about.
Wrapping Up
Power Pages fits when outsiders need to sign in and work with records in Dynamics 365 or Dataverse. SharePoint fits file sharing with a small group, and custom builds fit portals that are the product. At $2 per authenticated user per site at Tier 1, licensing is predictable once you know real monthly traffic.
ZapAI is a Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Fabric, and AI consulting firm based in Irving, Texas. We help US companies decide whether a portal should exist, size its licensing, and build it with security designed first. For a user count, license estimate, and permission matrix for your portal, talk to our Power Pages consulting team.
What Buyers Ask Before Building a Power Pages Portal
Do our employees need Power Pages licenses too?
Usually not, if they hold a Power Apps per user or Dynamics 365 enterprise license and sign in with Entra ID in the same tenant. Dynamics 365 rights apply only when the site maps to that app’s context and environment.
Is pay-as-you-go cheaper than capacity packs?
Only for small or unpredictable traffic. At $4 per authenticated user it’s twice the Tier 1 pack rate.
Can Power Pages replace our SharePoint extranet?
Partly. Keep SharePoint for collaborative document work with a few known partners. Move to Power Pages when the extranet is really forms, status checks, and records, since table permissions handle per-customer data far better than folders, and you skip adding thousands of guest accounts to your directory now that SharePoint sharing runs on Entra B2B.
Realistically, how long until a customer portal goes live?
6 to 10 weeks for one audience on data already in Dataverse, per ZapAI planning guidance. ERP integration or several audiences push it to 3 to 6 months.
Which sign-in option should customers use?
Microsoft Entra External ID fits most new customer portals. It handles sign-up, passwords, and email one-time passcodes, and it bills on monthly active users with a free tier.
Does the site agent cost extra?
Eventually, yes. It starts as a trial, then draws on your environment’s Copilot Studio capacity, billed separately from Power Pages user licenses. Size it from expected conversations, not page views.