The ultimate guide to Microsoft Dynamics 365 pricing

Last year saw the highly-anticipated release of Microsoft Dynamics 365; a new, cloud-based platform that rolls together Microsoft’s previous CRM and ERP functions, alongside new cloud-exclusive functionalities.

With this release came a brand-new, extensive licensing model. If you’re thinking about implementing Dynamics 365, we’ve put together a comprehensive Dynamics 365 pricing and licensing guide to show you how to get the most out of this ground-breaking solution.

Microsoft has regularly amended the licensing structure for Dynamics 365 since its initial launch, so we’re working to keep this post up to date. As of June 2019, all licensing and pricing information below is accurate.

What apps are available with Dynamics 365?

Much like its operating system cousin Windows 10, Dynamics 365’s functionalities are broken down into individual apps, each covering a specific business process. Based on solutions from Microsoft’s existing Dynamics suite, the apps work together within Dynamics 365, allowing businesses to manage all their operations within one comprehensive, accessible solution.

Core apps

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Formerly Dynamics AX): This ERP app offers capabilities for managing business-critical processes, and boasts features allowing businesses to manage and plan their finances, inventory and warehousing, and transportation operations.

Dynamics 365 Business Central (Formerly Dynamics NAV): A NAV-based ERP built for small-to-midsized businesses, Business Central contains all the tools an organization needs to manage their accounting and back-end operations, including manufacturing, warehousing, and supply chain management.

Dynamics 365 for Sales (Formerly Dynamics CRM Online): The CRM arm of Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Sales provides a sales and management system that offers insight into customer relationships and helps generate leads and conversions.

Dynamics 365 for Customer Service (Formerly Dynamics CRM Online): Dynamics 365 for Customer Service allows users to assist customers and drive engagement. With customer service features including scripting information, recommendations, and easy access to knowledge bases, this app allows customer service agents to aid customers faster and in a more personalized way.

Dynamics 365 for Field Service: Dynamics 365 for Field Service enables teams to get access to the information and resources they need, in real time, wherever they are in the world.

Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation: Offering planning, scheduling, and collaboration capabilities, this Project Service Automation app help project-orientated businesses manage projects and maintain profitability.

Dynamics 365 for Retail: Built specifically with retail businesses in mind, this app allows users to create immersive customer experiences, deliver outstanding service and optimize their operations. Covering both front and back-end operations, Dynamics 365 for Retail delivers unifies digital, in-store, and behind the scenes processes.

Dynamics 365 for Talent: Fully integrated with LinkedIn, Dynamics 365 for Talent aims to help organizations find the right people, and streamline their hiring and on-boarding process from start to finish while also bolstering employee engagement, growth, and satisfaction. Includes Attract, Onboard, and Core HR modules.

Dynamics 365 for Talent: Onboard

Encompassing all your necessary onboarding functions within one web-based app, Dynamics 365 for Talent: Onboard can be licensed as a standalone platform. The app allows hiring managers to build personalized onboarding guides, trackable workflows and to-do lists mapped out by day, ensuring your new team member knows exactly what they’re doing from the get-go.

Dynamics 365 for Marketing: Built to replace Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Dynamics 365 for Marketing contains all the features a growing business needs to plan and execute their marketing strategy, including email campaigns, landing page management, and events management. The app also features a number of marketing automation tools to help businesses market to their customers more intelligently.

Auxiliary apps and add-ons

Dynamics 365 Sales Insights This AI-powered reporting app aims to help sales teams do more by providing data-driven insights, suggestions, and prompts. Dynamics 365 Sales Insights is available as an add-on to Dynamics 365 for Sales Enterprise, Customer Engagement Plan, and Microsoft Relationship Sales.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Unifying data from across numerous sources, this app gives users a single view of customers, helps boost engagement, and unearths insights to help businesses produce personalized experiences.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights Using machine learning, this app enables businesses to offer better customer service by measuring performance across channels, using data analysis to highlight areas for improvement, and help customer services agents be more productive with the use of innovative AI capabilities and features.

Microsoft Relationship Sales: Not so much a separate app, Relationship Sales is more of an add-on. Not included in any of the current plans as standard, it can only be purchased as a bolt-on to your existing Dynamics 365 plan, and combines LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 for Sales, unifying social and sales data to help pinpoint leads, and reel them in through personalized engagement.

Microsoft Social Engagement: Included with the licensing of Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, or Project Service Automation, Social Engagement helps businesses engage with their customers and grow their brand through various social media channels. The app is due to be discontinued on January 16th 2020.

Microsoft Power Platform: Included with any Dynamics 365 plan, the Power Platform contains Microsoft PowerApps, which allows businesses to create useful, personalized apps based on their Dynamics 365 data, and Flow, which helps users create automated workflows and integrate apps.

Dynamics 365 licensing and pricing

There are two steps to licensing your Dynamics 365 solution:

1. Decide on a plan that best meets your needs: Are you looking for a CRM solution, an ERP solution, or both rolled into one? Or, if you only need certain functionalities, you can build your own solution by purchasing apps individually.

2. Work out how many users will need access, and to what degree. All Dynamics plans and apps feature several options in terms of user licenses, or seats.

Dynamics 365 seat types

Full User, as the name suggests, gives full access to all features. For Business Central and some sales-based apps, there are additional options (see below).

Operations Activity (applicable to Unified Operations plans only) gives access to transactional tasks with Finance and Operations or Retail applications.

Team Member is a lighter option for those users that don’t require full access to all functions, and allows users to view and analyze data within the apps, along with the ability to carry out some minor tasks such as time entries.

Dynamics 365 pricing by app

If you know exactly what functionalities you want, or only have a need for a small number of apps within the Dynamics 365 platform, you can choose to purchase apps individually and build your solution from scratch.

A few notes before we dive into app pricing. With Dynamics 365 for Business Central, the license names are slightly different. There are still Team Member licenses available, as well as Essential Users, who get access to the majority of features, and Professional Users, who can access everything available to Essential users, plus the app’s manufacturing and service order management modules. Dynamics 365 Business Central cannot be purchased directly from Microsoft, and can only be licensed via an official Microsoft Cloud Service Provider.

Licensing conventions differ for some of Dynamics 365’s CRM-focused apps too. When purchasing Dynamics 365 for Sales or Dynamics 365 for Customer Service, customers can again choose between a license that includes “core” features, or one that includes everything the app has to offer. These two options are known as Professional and Enterprise.

Dynamics 365 for Marketing is included with Customer Engagement Plan, but there are usage limitations if Marketing is licensed this way: Customer Engagement plan users can add up to 2,000 contacts to Marketing. Customers who license a customer engagement app (Dynamics 365 for Sales, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service, Dynamics 365 for Field Service, or Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation) on a standalone basis will pay $750 per user, per month, and that includes up to 10,000 contacts. As a standalone service, Dynamics 365 for Marketing is priced at $1,500 per month. This covers up to 10,000 contacts.

Extra contacts can be purchased whichever way Marketing is licensed. There’s a sliding scale depending on how many contacts you have in total, starting at $250 per month for 5,000 contacts.

Dynamics 365 pricing by plan

Dynamics 365 Plan

With the Dynamics 365 plan, users get access to every Dynamics 365 app.

Unified Operations Plan

The Unified Operations plan is essentially an ERP package, and includes all the apps needed for back-end operational management.

Customer Engagement Plan

The Customer Engagement Plan covers all the CRM and customer engagement side of things.

Dynamics 365 AI app licensing

Microsoft is hard at work baking the AI and machine learning technology it’s developed in recent years into its Dynamics apps. Three AI-powered services are already available as add-ons for Dynamics’ customer engagement apps, and there are three more in the pipelines: Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Market Insights, and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Those three are currently in preview. We’ll let you know the pricing situation when they’re made generally available. For now, here’s pricing details for the existing AI apps.

Dynamics 365 mixed reality app licensing

As well as its push to bring AI and machine learning to Dynamics 365 customers, Microsoft is also taking steps to enable users to take advantage of augmented and virtual reality technology. Two new apps, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Layout can be used with Microsoft’s Hololens 2 headset to help field workers collaborate with on-site colleagues, and visualize virtual designs in physical spaces.

Dynamics 365 device pricing

If your company uses mobile devices to carry out necessary business processes or has employees working in the field, then you might want to license Dynamics 365 for additional devices. Additional devices can be licensed under the Dynamics 365 and Unified Operations plans only at the moment, and cover access to the Finance and Operations and Retail apps. Operations devices can be licensed from $75 per device, per month.