new power bi licensing

[dilumd]

Dear Friends,

Today I have got an e-mail from MS Power BI which says that “changes to Power BI free licensing”. Under this new licensing policy,

1. Do we have to have Power BI pro version to share our dashboards? Will it restrict the publish to Power BI service?
2. If you have Pro version for the person who creates the dashboard share that with normal users within the company should the viewers also have to have pro version or the free version?
3. Under free version are they going to extent the no of data bases that they support?
4. If you specify your wise access to dashboard these yours should also have Power BI Pro version or only the free version would serve the purpose?

Thanks

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @dilumd

Here are my answers to your questions

1. Going forward you will have to have Power BI Pro to share dashboards. If you use the Free Version you are still able to publish to the Power BI Service, but you will not be able to share it with anyone.
2. Going forward if you want to share the recipients of your dashboards will have to have the Pro or Premium licensing enabled.
3. Under free they are going to give it the same capabilites as the Pro version, with one BIG change that there will be no sharing.
4. For any access to viewing other peoples dashboards you will require the Pro or Premium licenses.

You can find more details here for the licensing

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

[mmace1]

>More than one person can log into a single Power BI account at a time ... So why not get ONE Pro account for each selected Group of your Viewers (it might be everyone so you may only need one) and share it and its password to everyone that will consume your Dashboards and Reports...

This was my first thought as well. 

I posted a question about it in the "service" forum on  Friday (I actually hadn't read your post at that point - I have to imagine a *lot* of people have had the same thought).  No response yet...

I'm also not concerned about any single user messing up the shared acount - it's not hard for people to understand to not do that.  Similar to how people (usually) don't mess up shared email accounts, etc. 

Hopefully this is a workaround, or they change their pricing yet again.  This change means Power BI rollout just went on hold at my company.  

[NAX]

You understood correctly @alexSPY.

Now a Pro account is required for every user that only needs viewing a dashboard shared by another user, which also needs a pro account, as before. 

I'm already looking for alternative platforms.

[alexSPY]

@NAX, unfortunately, everything that I've seen is much more expensive. For us, even at $10/month for around 50 users makes this solution much more cost effective than larger solutions from the likes of Tableau for example. 

I'll be bringing this up at Data Insights though next week.

[ed_mcdill]

Regarding point 2.

I think that the anwser is basically as guavaq stated:

"A Power BI Pro license is required to receive content from other users, unless the user is associated with dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium." this is from the pricing page small print. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

So if the users are within the premium capacity, they don't need to have a pro licence to receive content, but I guess that is obvious.

[mbegg]

Hi @GilbertQ,

Please confirm dashboards can be shared amongst users with Pro licences but not the Premium service? In my opinion, it is not clear from the link you provided.

My organisation has <100 users so the US$ 4,995/month fee for Premium is way too expensive.  

[dmoffat · Accepted solution]

So this means that if you have 5 people developing PBI Reports and Dashboards and 95+ who just Consume reports that refresh Daily and/or don't use any of the sexy things that apparently PBI Pro offers ( https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-power-bi-pro-content-what-is-it/ ),  you would now be paying $50 US per month but after June 1 you would have to pay $1000+ per month 🙂 ... even if you never use today's Power BI Pro features.

Simple math and kinda sucks frankly ...  Good luck selling that to management 😉

**bleep**

[ame54]

This is the case for dashbaords , but i belive if you are sharing reports directly , not a dashboard, then the consumer does not need a Pro license no ?

[nwabramson]

This sure feels like a bait and switch scam. . . 

[gmosier]

I really wish Microsoft didn't require end users to have a license to use the fruits of a developer's labor.  If there's any single thing that's going to cause us to move from Power BI to Tableau-- which is currently under consideration-- it's that. Now that Tableau has modified their pricing to a reasonable monthly cost, I think the Powers That Be will likely conclude that it makes a lot more sense (and is probably much less expensive) to buy a few $70 Pro developer licenses than try to worry about dozens of $10 licenses for all possible end users. And I pray that I won't be asked to pony up for a subscription to the C++ compiler the next time a new version of Outlook is released.

[NAX]

I feel exactly the same way.

This new licensing model has paved the way for moving my company reportying to Tableau. 

There is no way we will pay $10 a month for hundreds of potential users just to check a report for 5 minutes a week. A reasonable licensing plan would be requiring a more expensive Pro account for authoring but free accounts for viewing, as it used to be, I wouldn't mind paying a higher price, given it would be only 5 or 10 authors.

We are basically using PowerBI because it came with Office 365. If we have to pay thousands of euros a month we will just move to Tableau, that offers a truly finished product, support, and a much better user interface. 

Microsoft just lost any future BI business from us here.

[IndyKid]

While I am echoing all of the upset people on this thread I view this new PowerBI pricing model as Microsoft has got into the Ransomware game.  This is clearly a bait and switch tactic.  I think the adoption of PowerBI would have been very low if they clearly communicated that the free version was only a trial.  We have spent thousands of dollars developing a management system based on PowerBI assuming that Power BI would be free to use for staff that just needed to view that data a few times per week. 

This is legal ransomware.  Microsoft baited companies like mine to spending thousands of dollars under false pretenses and then surprise, now you need to pay thousands of dollars more every month just to view YOUR data.

I have been a big advocate of Office 365 but now I am questioning what other surprises Microsoft will have down the road.  BUYER BEWARE!!!!!  Time to slow down our commitment to Office 365 and start seriously considering Google Business.  Microsoft has lost my trust.   

[dexterz]

you not need Premium,pro is not change。

Premium is on-premises and cloud service for big crop

[perpor]

I am searching to understand if this if true, it is very important for us...

[dilumd]