Forum Discussion
May 3 announcement FAQ
Today we announced changes to Power BI Pro and the free service effective June 1, as well as the availability of an extended Power BI Pro trial offer. Please refer to our free Power BI service changes board for more information.
This discussion board contains a set of frequently asked questions. Please share your comments and additional questions.
- What capabilities are being added to the free service?
Beginning June 1, the free service will have capabilities equivalent to Power BI Pro. This includes the same 1 GB workbook size limit, up to 8 daily scheduled refreshes for datasets, and maximum 1 million rows/hour streaming data rate. We’re also providing access to all data sources, including those available through the on-premises data gateway.
- Which Power BI Pro capabilities are not available with the free service?
Peer-to-peer dashboard sharing, group workspaces (now called app workspaces), and analyze in Excel with Power BI apps are capabilities limited to Power BI Pro.
- When will these changes go into effect?
Changes to the free service will go into effect on June 1.
- Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?
No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.
- How do I know if I’m eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?
Please refer to the extended Power BI Pro trial terms and conditions.
- What should I do if I’m not eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?
Sign up for a standard 60-day Power BI Pro trial.
- I’m currently taking advantage of the standard 60-day Power BI Pro trial – will I also be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial when it becomes available on June 1?
Power BI Pro trial users will be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial offer as long as they registered for the free service on or before May 2.
- How do I accept the extended Power BI Pro trial offer?
Sign in to the Power BI service any time on or after June 1 and follow the prompts to register for the extended Power BI Pro trial.
- Does the introduction of Power BI Premium change the capabilities of the free service?
Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users.
- Are any changes being made to Power BI Pro?
No changes are being made to Power BI Pro.
- Are any changes being made to Power BI Desktop?
No changes are being made to Power BI Desktop.
132 Replies
If I have a PRO license and have been sharing dashboards with Free users, will those free users no longer be able to access the dashboards that I shared with them as a PRO user? Put another way, going forward on June 1, is the only way to see a dashboard someone else created and shared is to have a PRO license?
dsynan The free users will need to sign up for the Pro Trail.
To answer the second question. There are now two ways they can see it. One, the end users have a Pro license/Trial (As mentioned above). Or, the person sharing the content has a premium license on top of the Pro license, then the end users will be able to see the dashboards as free users.
So, free users now need a Pro account to view shared dashboards.
Power BI Embedded is being merged with Power BI premium. The Premium capacity calculator shows that a single node starts at $4,995 per month. Is the existing Power BI Embedded pricing model, $5 per 100 sessions, going away too? Because if so, you may have just scared off a ton on small businesses.
I'm developing a dashboard to share with a handful of clients (external), up to 100 ideally. None of them need editing capabilties or data access. As of now I can share that with each of them and they can view it for free as long as they have a free Power BI account. That is good for me price wise, but a bit unprofessional it requires a Microsoft account and Microsoft login. So I'm willing to pay for embedded, becuase it might cost me $100-200/month to have the dash/reports embedded in my current website. Much more professional and the cost is manageable.
But now there are two issues I see. If I share the dash, they have to login through Microsoft and pay $10 per month. That is a no go. Even if I were willing to pay the cost for them, which I would be, there is no way for me to manage their accounts to do so and the whole thing would be very unprofessional. If the embedded pricing model changes, I'll have to pay $5k per month for premium so that I can embed my own webapp to share with a few clients. This would kill my business.
Please tell me I am misreading something or that the Power BI embedded pricing model will remain. Otherwise, there is simply no feasible, economic solution to share with a handful of external users. I'll have to find another BI service. Furthermore, in any case, the constant changes to pricing models creates great uncertainty about building a product with Power BI knowing that I, as a small business, could be quickly priced out.
Hi dsynan,
If you are sharing dashboards/reports with free users, beginning June 1st they will need to take advantage of the extended Pro trial to continue accessing the content. After the extended trial expires, users will need a Pro license to maintain access.
Terms and conditions for the extended trial can be found here.
I hate to risk being pedantic but what constitutes a "share"? Are we talking about sharing in the web based Power BI or are we talking about publishing URLs for reports and dashboards? This isn't clear at all.
- Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?
No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.
All our Power BI users have E3 licenses, so we still be getting screwed out of the ability to share dashboards among our users?
Microsoft, this is absolute garbage -- taking away something that's been included in our licensing, and now we have to figure out the budget impact of pro licenses (like who needs them?) Absolute BS.
Hey jester121
Power BI is not included as part of an E3 license - see the E3 licensing page for more information and details on what is included.
If users have been using the free Power BI service, they may be eligible for the extended 12-month free trial of Power BI Pro. See terms and conditions for more information.
Hi MiguelMartinez,
Is it a 'MUST' for a whole organisation to be on PREMIUM ? Many Government Organisations have multiple Departments, but all under the same tenancy. However, each department is independent of each other. Can a single department choose to be on PREMIUM ? I'm not sure how it would work with licensing distribution.
For example, an entire State has signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement all under the same tenancy for 250,000 users. However, each Department functions independently. You have the Department of Finance, Department of Public Transport etc. Can the department of Finance go PREMIUM even though the tenancy is owned and managed by the State Government ? Or does the State Government have to go PREMIUM for the whole State ?
D
All users in our organization have O365 License.We are using Dynamics 365 (CRM) Right now all our users can able to view the Power BI Content. What will happen after June 1st should we need to buy a pro license or O365/Dynamics User license is enough for View purpose ?
Can you provide a little bit of clarification around the sharing? I understand that a "free" user will not be able to share with others.
If I am a "Pro" user, can I share my dashboards with "Free" users? In our organization, there are really two types of individuals, Report Writers and Report Consumers. It would not make sense for us to pay for Pro licenses just for the users that we would be viewing some of the reports that we are putting together since they would not be using any of the other features of a pro license.
Nick
That’s correct Anonymous, as we announced this morning Power BI Premium tackles that issue. We have a calculator that can help organizations figure out which option makes sense depending on their mix of Pro Users and readers. Depending on size and usage, the solution might be different.
We very recently started using power BI to share in a small orgnaisation (10 users). Several of the users clicked the pro trial button despite us not having made any use of the pro functions. As far as I can tell several of our users will now be inelligable for a trial, when we have to actually use the Pro features to share dashboards. This seems inhenernetly unfair to be slapped with a significant bill when we haven't even got started on whether this is a good solution. I'm sure this goes for many people who took up the pro trial, but have never needed to use it. This is a fundamental change to the relationship between free/pro so you shouldn't be inelligable for having had a trial under the old regime.
Hi Miguel, in that case would it be possible to update the Exclusions in the T&C to reflect this? It appears to be contradictory.
Massive change for free users such as small businesses which I've been refering them to use Power BI as the best option in the market. Not sure where the power bi team had their feedback from (I suspect the internal people of commercial) to do this change only in giving a month notice (poor).
MiguelMartinez wrote:Hi osoosh,
Existing users of the free Power BI service may be eligible for the extended 12 month free trial of Power BI Pro - see here for more information.
So what good does that do us if we have a new employee some time during that free year? Basically it pulls the rug out from under us.
Will Power BI embedded pricing remain in place, even though it is being merged with Premium? Becuase as a small business, we can't afford $5k for a single node each month to service a dozen or two clients (external users) who don't need editing, particularly when embedded would cost us less than 10% of that. And becuase you've removed the ability to view a shared dashboard using Free, all would have to upgrade to Pro. The issue here is not that the 10$ per month, I would cover that if I could. But it is utterly unprofessional to ask clients to go through the hassle of signing up for a paid service just to access my service and have me send them a reimbursement check. Furthermore, there's no simple way to onboard them into my account as they are all external users with thier own corporate accounts, policies, etc. The nice thing with the previous embedded is that they could login to my website, where they already had an account, to view their dashboard. Please tell me I'm misreading something. Otherwise you've squeezed out a large number of small businesses.
Hi kbl1726,
We will be introducing additional SKUs for Power BI Premium that target embedded scenarios. While we aren’t disclosing details at this time, our approach is to add further pricing flexibility for embedded scenarios based on the needs of organizations building apps and their customers consuming them. Also, since recipients consuming content embedded in apps are licensed within Power BI Premium, they wouldn’t need to be licensed individually per user.
Thanks for this FAQ. What about reports I've uploaded to PowerBI service and then published to web? Will the embed codes cease to work after June 1?
Hey joshmwolff,
Users of the free Power BI service will continue to have the ability to use Publish to Web. That means that any reports and embedded codes will still work.
HI.. I currently provide dashboards to a number of free users within our business.. If I become a power user, will I be able to continue to share these dashboards with free users through the publish to Power BI service?
OR will anyone who wishes to see my dashboards within my business also need to have a Power BI subscription??
Or will I need to have a premium subscription which seems to be extremely expensive to service a small group of dashboard users within a single organisation!!!!!!
This change to the free service wreaks of money grabbing!!!
- What about if I've used "publish to web" to share content (i.e. embedded the report in a webpage). What's the impact on how this now works for both free and pro licenced users?
Hi shanemr18,
Like I told joshmwolff, users of the free Power BI service will continue to have the ability to use Publish to Web. That means that any reports and embedded codes will still work.
- How will these changes impact the incoming "embed to sharepoint" (using the PowerBI Webpart)?
About Power BI Premium, I'd like a few clarifications.
- Moving forward Power BI Premium will be the way for us to get Power BI functionality embedded into our SaaS applications, right?
- I read that Power BI Premium will have support for on-premise gateway, which has been promised for months for Power BI Embedded. I am assuming that while existing Power BI Embedded deployments will keep being supported, this does not mean that will get support for on-premise data, since Microsoft would expect us to move to Power BI Premium.
- I did a calculation using the pricing calculator and the SKU for Power BI Premium starts at ALMOST 5,000 (five thousand) dollars a month -- which is a significant increase (I'd say prohibitive) when comparing to Power BI Embedded.
- So to sum up (and please correct me if I am wrong), for those of us who have been waiting over a year to get Power BI Embedded finally working with on-premise data, am I right to say that if we want such feature moving forward, we will have to get into Power BI Premium paying at least 5,000 (FIVE THOUSAND) dollars a month (give or take)?
Hello pmdci,
Yes, embedding Power BI in apps will be licensed through Power BI Premium moving forward. Support for on-premises data will be available as part of Power BI Premium. Note we will be introducing additional SKUs for Power BI Premium that target embedded scenarios. While we aren’t disclosing details at this time, our approach is to add further pricing flexibility for embedded scenarios based on the needs of organizations building apps and their customers consuming them.
MiguelMartinez wrote:Hello pmdci,
Yes, embedding Power BI in apps will be licensed through Power BI Premium moving forward. Support for on-premises data will be available as part of Power BI Premium. Note we will be introducing additional SKUs for Power BI Premium that target embedded scenarios. While we aren’t disclosing details at this time, our approach is to add further pricing flexibility for embedded scenarios based on the needs of organizations building apps and their customers consuming them.
Can I ask that the further pricing flexibility and additional SKUs for embedded are announced as soon as possible, or that some indication be given on when the announcement will take place? I don't wish to seem impatient, but so far the only thing we have in writing for embedded is that the cost will be more than £3100 per month. Whilst I appreciate that from what you are saying it will be less than that in reality, the fact that we have no idea at all what to say to our existing clients using Embedded is not helping us at the moment. We certainly have no possibility of starting any new work using Embedded until we can tell clients what the pricing will be.
This could be really good news for embedded applications, but it's got many people too worried at the moment to focus on that!
Duncan
