Forum Discussion
Sharing without Pro license
It should be noted though, the use of Power BI involves Microsoft hardware performing the calculations and providing the bandwidth for all of the viewers. This isn't 2nd rate hardware and considering Premium is basically leasing your own private equivelent hardware at a rate of $5000K per month, you can start to see what the costs of hardware provisioning. It seems to me that Microsoft wants to offer service with a free component essentially paid for out of the pricing of the paid users. A line in the sand has be to placed somewhere for this cloud service. How fair is it if Free users are the majority of the user base and that cost burden is lumped on the Paid users?
Chances are, in the use case you are proposing, having 1 paid developer and many free consumers would be a system that would be a large cost burden. Microsoft isn't a charity and it is reasonable that they look to a financial model that does have some amount of return. Its also reasonable to expect that if a business is turning a profit in part due to a service they consume, that a cost is associated with that service.
I agree MS is not a charity :)
However, I don't like the fact to deliver first great service for free, get people a carrot in front of them and suddenly change this model.
And my idea contains a max of e.g. 100 free users and I also propose to increase the Pro license; that's manageable and the business case can be easier for lots of companies.
5000,- per month is a huge difference.
If the Pro user would be even 100,- per month I believe it's acceptable.
Or a model 100,- per month and above 100 free users you pay 200,- per month.
Give the choice to the customer, even better: Pro with higher license or indeed like it is now with the premium/pro.
This model is not fit for use as we can read in a lot of posts.