Microsoft 365: When to Upgrade to a Full Power Platform Plan

• Microsoft 365 provides limited entitlements to Power Platform services.
• Many features require an upgrade to an expensive Power Apps or Power Automate plan.
• Some features and capabilities are available to Microsoft 365 license holders, but only within Teams.

Power Platform is a marketing umbrella encompassing several services, including Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power BI. Each service is licensed separately, but other licenses such as Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 provide limited rights to use them, and each service provides some rights to use the other services. (See the sidebar “Power Platform Component Overview”.)

The entitlements provided to Microsoft 365 (and Office 365) license holders permit them to use services including Power Apps and Power Automate within the boundaries of Microsoft 365. When certain limitations are hit, users need to upgrade to a full Power Apps or Power Automate plan to use some features. However, these stand-alone plans can be more expensive than Microsoft 365 licenses.