Last updated: October 14, 2026
By ZapAI Team
TL;DR: Dynamics 365 Marketing is now Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, one tenant license covering two apps. Journeys sends email, SMS, and push messages. Data unifies customer records into single profiles. US list price is $1,700 per tenant per month, or $1,000 with a qualifying Dynamics 365 app, with no per-user fees. Outbound marketing is gone, so every journey is now real-time.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is Microsoft’s marketing platform, combining Journeys for multichannel campaigns and Data for unified customer profiles. It costs $1,700 per tenant per month, or $1,000 as an Attach license.
Search for Dynamics 365 Marketing today and you land on a product with a different name, a different license, and a different pricing meter. Old partner decks still show per-contact pricing and an outbound marketing module. Neither exists anymore.
So what are you actually buying in October 2026? Two apps, one license, two capacity meters, and a pair of AI agents still in preview. We’ll walk through each piece, show the math on a real sizing example, and compare it fairly with HubSpot.
Bias disclosed. ZapAI implements Dynamics 365 for a living. We’ll still say when HubSpot is the better call.
What Happened to Dynamics 365 Marketing?
Microsoft merged it with the old Customer Insights CDP in September 2023. Marketing became the Journeys app, the CDP became the Data app, and both now ship under one Dynamics 365 Customer Insights license.
Microsoft’s Customer Insights license guidance, updated October 13, 2026, confirms the timeline. The rename came with new meter names too. Active contacts became interacted people. Customer profiles became unified people. Same idea, new labels. And a lot of procurement teams still searching their renewal quotes for SKUs that were retired or renamed two or three years ago, wondering why the reseller’s numbers don’t match the old ones.
Still on the old standalone Marketing license? It’s done. Microsoft’s purchase guide says the legacy Marketing standalone license stopped being available for renewals in September 2025. The apps themselves don’t change when you switch licenses, and Microsoft warns specifically against uninstalling and reinstalling them during the move. Good advice. We’d underline it twice.
Customer Insights Data vs Journeys, Which One Do You Need?
Journeys is for sending. Data is for knowing. Most mid-market teams start with Journeys alone and add Data once customer records live in three or more systems that disagree with each other.
| Customer Insights Journeys | Customer Insights Data | |
|---|---|---|
| What it was called | Dynamics 365 Marketing | Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (the CDP) |
| Core job | Segments, emails, SMS, push, forms, events, and trigger-based or segment-based journeys | Pulls data from multiple sources, matches duplicates, and builds one unified profile per person, plus measures and predictions |
| Capacity meter | Interacted People (10,000 included) | Unified People (100,000 included) |
| Typical owner | Marketing operations | Data or analytics team, usually with IT |
| Best first use | Welcome, nurture, and event journeys off Dataverse contacts and leads | Merging ecommerce, ERP, and CRM records before segmenting on them |
Here’s our honest take. Data is the more powerful app and the one teams buy too early. If your contacts already live in Dynamics 365 Sales and you have a single website, Journeys can segment directly on Dataverse tables. Unification earns its keep when the same customer shows up as a lead in Sales, a contact from last year’s trade show, a loyalty member in your POS system, and two ecommerce accounts with slightly different email addresses. That’s the moment. Not before.
Both apps come with the base license anyway. You pay for capacity, not access.
Trigger-Based vs Segment-Based Journeys, and Is Outbound Marketing Really Gone?
Yes, outbound marketing is gone. Microsoft removed the module from all environments in May 2026. What’s left are real-time journeys, which come in two types, trigger-based and segment-based.
Per Microsoft’s Journeys overview, a segment-based journey sends to a defined audience at a planned time, like a monthly newsletter or a webinar invite. A trigger-based journey reacts when something happens, like a form submission, a cart abandonment, or a case closing. Both use the same email, text message, and push channels.
The outbound shutdown took years. Microsoft’s outbound removal notes trace it from a July 2023 announcement through live-journey shutdowns in early 2026 to full removal in May 2026. Tables and data mostly survived. The usefulness didn’t. Outbound emails, journeys, forms, and segments can’t be used in real-time journeys, old Power BI reports on outbound analytics no longer work against the consolidated data, and Microsoft points teams rebuilding those reports toward Fabric. Our Microsoft Fabric team gets that call a lot.
Inherited an org that ran outbound? Assume the assets need rebuilding. Plan for it.
How Much Does Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Cost?
$1,700 per tenant per month for the base license, or $1,000 for Attach, both paid yearly. Each includes unlimited users, 10,000 Interacted People, and 100,000 Unified People. Extra capacity comes in tiered packs.
Prices below come from Microsoft’s Customer Insights pricing page, checked October 14, 2026. They’re US list. Your agreement may differ.
| License or add-on | US list price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Insights | $1,700 per tenant per month | Unlimited users, 10,000 Interacted People, 100,000 Unified People |
| Customer Insights Attach | $1,000 per tenant per month | Same capacity; needs 10 or more users of Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, or Commerce |
| Interacted People, Tier 1 (10,000 to 50,000) | $250 per 5,000-person pack per month | Journeys capacity |
| Interacted People, Tier 2 (50,000 to 250,000) | $300 per 10,000-person pack per month | Journeys capacity |
| Interacted People, Tier 3 (over 250,000) | $500 per 50,000-person pack per month | Journeys capacity |
| Unified People, Tiers 1 to 3 | $2,000, $1,500, or $1,000 per 100,000-profile pack per month | Data capacity; price drops past 500,000 and 2 million |
| SMS delivery | Not included | Needs a separate provider account, such as Azure Communication Services |
| AI agents | Copilot Credits | Both Journeys agents consume credits |
How the Interacted People meter actually works
An interacted person is any contact, lead, or profile you sent at least one outbound message to in the last 12 months. Stored records you never message don’t count, and a person counts once no matter the message count. You also get a monthly allowance of 10 interactions per licensed interacted person, pooled across the tenant.
That 10x rule bites. A retailer emailing 20,000 people every day sends roughly 600,000 messages a month, which means licensing about 60,000 interacted people even though only 20,000 humans are involved. Microsoft’s own guidance is to size for your peak month, not your average one.
The other trap? Sandboxes. Quota is summed across every environment on the tenant, including sandbox, developer, and trial. A test journey that emails a copied production list counts. Ouch.
A worked sizing example
Take a B2B manufacturer with 25 sellers on Dynamics 365 Sales who emails 30,000 contacts and leads over a year, about four times a month. That’s 120,000 messages a month, well under the 300,000 allowance. It needs 30,000 Interacted People, so 20,000 beyond the included 10,000, which is four Tier 1 packs at $250.
- On Attach, $1,000 plus $1,000 in packs comes to $2,000 a month, or $24,000 a year.
- Without a qualifying app, the same capacity runs $2,700 a month.
- Seller licenses are separate, and our Dynamics 365 Sales pricing breakdown covers those tiers.
Licenses usually aren’t the biggest line, though. In our projects, configuration, contact and consent cleanup, email template builds, and the Sales handoff work tend to cost more in year one than the subscription itself, which our implementation cost guide breaks down.
How Does It Work With Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service?
Natively, because all three share Dataverse. Journeys can trigger on Sales and Customer Service events, create leads, tasks, or opportunities mid-journey, and segment on the same contact records sellers and agents use.
The sales handoff got better this year. Much better. Creating any record or activity directly from a journey reached general availability in September 2026, per Microsoft’s Journeys release notes. Before that, teams wired up Power Automate flows that broke every time someone republished a journey. Now a lead who clicks a pricing email can become a follow-up task for the account owner inside the journey itself.
Service works the other way round. A case resolved in Dynamics 365 Customer Service can start a satisfaction or renewal journey a few days later. Simple idea, and one that a separate marketing tool needs a sync job to pull off.
Which Copilot and AI Agent Features Are Available?
Two agents, both in preview. Journey Creation Agent builds journeys from a plain-language request, and Outreach Optimization Agent picks send times. Content ideas Copilot for email drafting is the longest-standing feature.
Status as of October 14, 2026.
- Journey Creation Agent reached public preview in May 2026, with North America access in the June update. It assembles journeys from your existing segments and content, doesn’t write emails for you, works in English only, and replaced the older Journey Copilot. One quirk worth knowing is that it runs on Anthropic’s models, so your tenant has to allow that subprocessor first.
- Outreach Optimization Agent entered preview in July 2026. It schedules emails at high-engagement times based on past opens and clicks, honoring quiet times and consent.
- Content ideas Copilot? It turns three to five key points into draft email copy, and in North America it’s on by default.
- Customer Insights skills in Copilot Cowork reached general availability in October 2026, which lets Microsoft 365 Copilot users check consent, look up a unified profile, or draft a journey in chat. You need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license for that one.
Both agents are managed in AI Hub, itself still in preview, and both consume Copilot Credits. Set consumption limits before anyone experiments. Preview also means Microsoft says these features aren’t meant for production use, so we’d run them on one low-stakes journey, like a webinar reminder series, and keep the hand-built version of every revenue-critical nurture until the agents reach general availability. For the Copilot features sellers and service reps use elsewhere in Dynamics 365, see our Copilot use cases roundup.
How Does Customer Insights Compare With HubSpot Marketing Hub?
HubSpot is cheaper to start, especially for small lists. Customer Insights wins on unlimited users, Dataverse-native ties to Dynamics 365, and a full CDP in the base price. The meters differ, so compare on your real audience size.
| Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $1,700 per tenant per month ($1,000 Attach) | Starts at $890 per month |
| Users | Unlimited | 3 core seats included, extra seats $50 per month |
| Included audience | 10,000 Interacted People | 2,000 marketing contacts |
| Extra audience | $250 per 5,000 (Tier 1) | $250 per 5,000 (2,001 to 22,000 contacts) |
| One-time onboarding | None listed by Microsoft | $3,000, required |
| Customer data unification | Data app, 100,000 Unified People included | Not compared here |
HubSpot figures come from its product and services catalog, checked October 14, 2026. Enterprise starts at $3,600 a month with a $7,000 onboarding fee.
The meters aren’t apples to apples. HubSpot counts contacts you’ve flagged as marketing contacts. Microsoft counts people you’ve actually messaged in the past year. A company with a big, mostly dormant database can come out ahead on Microsoft’s meter, and a small list blasted daily can come out behind. Run both with your own numbers. Then run them again for year three, because the gap between a 2,000-contact plan and a 40,000-contact plan on either platform is far bigger than the gap between the two starting prices.
Our view? A 10-person marketing team with no Dynamics 365 and a 5,000-contact list should probably buy HubSpot. A company already running Sales or Customer Service on Dataverse usually shouldn’t, because a second CRM means a second contact database and an integration nobody wants to own. And if you’re weighing CRM platforms more broadly, our Dynamics 365 vs Salesforce comparison covers that fight.
What Do Implementation Steps and Timeline Look Like?
Plan 8 to 12 weeks for Journeys alone with one brand and clean Dataverse contacts. Add Data unification across several sources and three to five months is more realistic.
- Size both meters first. Count people you’ll message in 12 months and your peak monthly send volume, then divide that volume by 10.
- Set up the environment and sending domain. Authenticate your email domain and configure compliance profiles before building anything.
- Clean contacts and consent. Duplicate contacts inflate the meter, and bad consent data blocks sends.
- Build segments, then one trigger-based journey. A form-to-welcome journey proves the plumbing end to end.
- Wire the Sales handoff. Use create-record steps so engaged leads become tasks or opportunities for sellers.
- Add the Data app if records are scattered. Connect sources, tune match rules, and segment on unified profiles.
- Pilot one agent with a credit cap. Turn on Outreach Optimization for a single journey and compare open rates against your baseline.
Step three is where schedules slip. Every time.
Is Dynamics 365 Customer Insights the Right Fit?
It fits companies already on Dataverse, teams needing unlimited marketing users, and anyone with customer data scattered across systems. It’s overkill for small teams with one list and no Dynamics 365.
- Already on Dynamics 365 Sales or Customer Service with 10 or more users? Attach pricing at $1,000 makes this the default option.
- Marketing, sales, and service all touching campaigns, which is where unlimited users beat per-seat pricing.
- Regulated industries like financial services, insurance, or healthcare, where consent enforcement and Dataverse security roles matter.
- A five-person startup sending one newsletter a month. Honestly, look elsewhere.
Wrapping Up
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is the old Marketing product plus a CDP, sold per tenant with two capacity meters instead of per user. Outbound marketing is fully retired, the agents are promising but still preview, and the Interacted People math decides most of your bill.
ZapAI is a Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Fabric, and AI consulting firm based in Irving, Texas. We help US marketing and revenue teams size Customer Insights licenses, rebuild old outbound assets, and connect journeys to Sales. For a capacity estimate built on your real send volume, talk to our Customer Insights implementation team.
What Marketing Teams Ask About Customer Insights
Do we pay per marketing user?
No. Both the base and Attach licenses include unlimited users, so cost scales with Interacted People and Unified People, not headcount.
Can we buy only Journeys without the Data app?
Not as a separate SKU anymore. The current license covers both apps, and you simply use the one you need. If you only send campaigns, the 100,000 included Unified People sit unused, which is fine.
Our old outbound journeys stopped working. Can we recover them?
Mostly as reference only. Microsoft kept most outbound tables and data in Dataverse, but outbound emails, journeys, forms, and segments can’t run in real-time journeys. Marketing lists still work, but even events built in outbound have to be recreated. Expect to rebuild the rest, and treat it as a chance to drop the journeys nobody looked at.
Is $1,000 Attach pricing actually available to us?
Only with 10 or more users on a qualifying Dynamics 365 app, such as Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, or Commerce.
Do sandbox environments eat our quota?
Unfortunately, yes. Microsoft sums Interacted People across every environment on the tenant, sandbox and trial included, so mask or trim test data before running journeys outside production.
Realistically, how fast can we go live?
Eight to 12 weeks for Journeys on clean data. Data unification, multiple brands, and SMS provider setup each push that out.