Pro vs. Licensing question

[robarivas]

I am concerned about Pro licensing vs. Free licensing. I have a small analytics team (about 15 people) that serves many operational employees and leaders. My small team wants to use Pro for collaboration amongst the 15 of us, data refreshing, etc. However, I'm concerned that this will somehow mean that all of our clients will also need to have Pro based on some things I read but may have (hopefully) misinterpreted.

In other words, there seems to be a strange irony here such that upgrading our license will effectively reduce overall functionality. Because if we stay with the Free license then it seems all our clients can "consume" our output with their free licenses. But if we move to Pro and our clients don't then they will be out of luck.

Have I just misunderstood how the environement of mixed licensing works? I really hope so. 

[Creightonb]

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/Cannot-configure-Dataset-Gateway-This-data-set-has-been/idi-... experiencing this as well.

[Creightonb]

@Eno19 thanks for the quick response. Nope. I'm on the coast in the mid-atlantic. 

Hmm. Hadn't though about that. Looking at the datasets in my workspace (I created a new clean one that is public to make sure I wasn't missing anything) It is saying this dataset has been configured by my personal email account. Which is really weird. I'm logged in and have done everything with my company o365 account, not power bi - personal. 

That might give me something more to dig into.

[Creightonb]

@Seth_C_Bauer but yes it's saying it's set to "Use your data gateway (Power BI - personal)" and everything else is grayed out.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@robarivas You haven't mis-understood anything. If you as a report author use Pro content in the creation of a Power BI element, then the end user that is consuming that content is required to have the same level of licensing.

You mention "client" so depending on where data is stored, you could use Power BI Embedded in an application for them to access Power BI reports, and in that case, the pricing is completely different. But that would only be available in external facing applications.

[robarivas]

Ok, so it sounds like if my team's end goal is to produce reports, dashboards, etc. for very many people then our only or best option is to stick with free licensing. (The assumption here is that the organization is unwilling to purchase licensing at this time for a slew of non-analysts).

Does it strike anyone else as extremely ironic that the cause of this pricing policy/structure can result in more robust use with the free version instead of the paid version??

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@robarivas I think the vast majority of businesses would fall into using the "Pro" version pretty fast. Groups alone is a good reason so content doesn't get stuck in one persons workspace. If you can make it work without a gateway, and other Pro features - cool, but I would be suprised if the majority of people stay with Free after the initial "POC" phase of determining if Power BI is a good fit.