Microsoft Power Pages is an easy-to-use low-code platform that allows businesses to create secure, data-driven websites, without the need for in-depth web development skills. Built on the Power Platform, Power Pages integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft services, making it an ideal choice for organizations that want to create sites efficiently. In this article, we'll look at what Microsoft Power Pages is, what features it offers, what advantages to obtain from its use, and what licenses are available to bring it to your company.
Citizen development is on everyone's lips and it's no wonder: giving every worker the opportunity to create low-code solutions saves time and money, while allowing IT departments within companies to focus on more complex projects. Thanks to Microsoft Power Pages, the latest addition to the Power Platform family, creating scalable and secure business websites has, in fact, never been easier.
Power Pages is a low-code platform that is part of Power Platform, designed to help companies efficiently create secure, data-based websites and that allows users to create websites without the need for advanced development skills, making it accessible to a wide range of users.
It supports integration with other Microsoft products, such as Dynamics 365 and Power BI, allowing data and processes to be linked within the organization.
Let's dive into the details of this product in the next sections.
In 2019, Microsoft introduced a solution called Power Apps Portals. This tool has allowed companies to make their databases securely accessible to external users, revolutionizing the way they access data.
While Power Apps Portals paved the way for data-driven enterprise web applications, it wasn't without limitations, especially in terms of maturity, low-code capabilities, and scalability.
Recognizing these limitations, Microsoft decided to retire Power Apps Portals and then introduce Power Pages in October 2022. Power Pages, just like Power Apps Portals, is based on the low-code paradigm, but stands out for its integration with an enterprise-level hosting platform.
It therefore represents a great step forward in the world of low-code web development, allowing companies to easily create secure, scalable and intuitive websites, while minimizing the need to write code.
Over the past few years, Microsoft has learned valuable lessons from its collaboration with numerous companies. One of the most important of these lessons concerns the need for highly scalable, robust solutions with granular control, especially in the case of external platforms with a corporate brand.
For this reason, Microsoft is committed to ensuring that its next-generation platform offers enterprise-level functionality for creating websites, including elastic scalability, high availability, and integrated features for authentication, authorization, and platform security.
Let's see some of the key features below.
The low-code experience is designed to enable any user to easily develop solutions that do not require enormous technical expertise, thanks to the introduction of Power Pages Maker Studio, the Templates Hub and advanced tools for modeling and visualizing data.
Accessible through the dedicated URL (make.powerpages.microsoft.com), the Power Pages home screen offers a familiar environment, similar to that of Power Apps, allowing users to conveniently manage their work environment directly from the top right corner.
This URL represents the access point to all sites in the current environment, based on the consolidated infrastructure of Power Apps Portals.
Microsoft has listened to the difficulties expressed by the community in dealing with the complexities of website frameworks. Often, users have to navigate through webinars, TechTalks, and forums to find the knowledge they need.
With the Microsoft Power Pages Learning Hub, the learning process is greatly simplified. A wide range of resources dedicated to Power Pages can now be accessed directly on the Power Platform.
Although the Learning Hub offers links to Microsoft Docs for more information, the main learning resources are already all within the platform.
The Power Pages template hub is a valuable feature, designed to improve the user experience with a wide range of interface options and ready-to-use templates.
It can be seen as a kind of Power Apps library, but designed specifically for Power Pages.
Microsoft has chosen to expand the selection of preconfigured scenarios, thus encouraging the use of this new product in different contexts. The templates are carefully designed, and some even include API-based functionality for greater flexibility.
The goal is to transform this hub into a vast collection, with hundreds of models designed to meet any need professionals and companies may have. To achieve this goal, the company is actively collecting feedback from the community, relying on users to identify and prioritize the most requested use cases.
In addition, Microsoft has created a 'Template Community', where Power Pages users can share their customized templates within the organization, thus promoting collaboration and innovation.
Originally based on its low-code capabilities, Power Apps Portals had some limitations in terms of flexibility in design.
In 2019, Microsoft began a journey to offer users low-code graphic customization options, and with Power Pages this functionality has evolved significantly, and now this tool allows customers to prototype, design, develop and publish websites with unprecedented ease. In addition, Microsoft has revisited the navigation within the 'Pages Workspace' work environment, further improving the user experience.
A particularly important aspect is that, now, even pages that in the past could not be modified (such as 404 error pages) are customizable.
The Styling Workspace offers a versatile platform for customizing the visual elements of your content, such as headers, buttons, footers, forms, and lists.
This tool simplifies the process of aligning the design with the visual identity of the brand and includes 13 ready-to-use templates and themes to start your graphic customization journey, also allowing you to save styles for future use.
Microsoft recommends starting with the default themes and then modifying them as needed. Each theme allows you to intervene on the color scheme, backgrounds, fonts, margins of the sections and the style of the buttons of the chosen model.
It's important to stress that the customization options don't stop at themes alone: it's also possible to use CSS code if you want a more 'personal' touch.
Recognizing the role of data exposure in portals, Microsoft developed the Data Workspace. This work environment is designed to make it easier for external users to interact with the data in Dataverse.
Microsoft has actively collaborated with the Power Apps Portals community to collect feedback and refine data functionality, with the goal of ensuring maximum user satisfaction.
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When it comes to presenting data to external users, it's essential to prioritize security.
Power Pages, just like Power Apps Portals, has its own security framework, designed to ensure that business data reaches only its intended recipients. To manage access to a portal created with Power Pages, several components are used:
So far, we've taken a look at the features that make Power Pages stand out, but what are the real benefits of using it?
We see them below.
Whether for a customer service manager who has never written a single line of code or an experienced developer who eats code for breakfast, with Power Pages you have in your hands a powerful and intuitive tool that allows you to transform any idea into a functional website, in a very short time.
Thanks to the low-code approach, it is possible to build attractive and dynamic interfaces without having to face the complexity of traditional programming. The visual editor guides step by step in the creation, making it easy to implement even advanced functionality. So, you can focus on the value of your project, not on the code.
Power Pages, thanks to its citizen developer-friendly approach, allows anyone, even without in-depth technical skills, to build useful and effective digital solutions.
This involves fewer steps between departments, less waiting, and above all lower costs.
In addition, professional developers can dedicate themselves to more complex projects with greater added value, leaving the most operational activities to be managed directly by those who know best the problem to be solved. A double advantage, for yourself and for your company.
We live in a world where the user experience must be perfect everywhere, and Microsoft knows this well.
Once you have built your pages using the integrated Power Pages framework, the system automatically deals with responsive optimization, adapting content and layout to any screen: whether it's an office monitor or a customer's smartphone on the move.
So we won't have to waste time with endless tests or complicated adjustments.
The result? An elegant, accessible and consistent site, on any device.
One of the strengths of Power Pages is its native integration with Microsoft Dataverse.
This means that their sites can directly access data shared with other Power Platform solutions, such as Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI.
Not only that: it is possible to create personalized experiences for users, integrating existing workflows and business apps. The result is a consistent platform perfectly aligned with internal activities, capable of offering a fluid experience to both its employees and customers.
The time has come to talk a bit about prices.
Microsoft Power Pages offers several licenses, designed to meet the most varied business needs, including both free trial versions and paid subscription plans. Let's see them better below:
Power Pages offers significant cost advantages over traditional web development that, looking at subscriptions alone, may not be immediately apparent. In the following table, we summarize the main ones by comparing them with the problems related to more “classic” approaches.
Microsoft has always been committed to the progressive democratization of the development of software solutions, and the Power Platform represents only one of the latest and most important efforts of the Redmond company in this regard.
Power Pages, like all the other pieces of the suite, is no exception and allows anyone to set up their websites in a simple, fast way and without particular sacrifices on the complexity of the solutions they want to implement.
To find out more, please consult the dedicated page on the official Microsoft website (available here) and to experience the potential of Power Pages first-hand by taking advantage of the free trial.
Microsoft Power Pages is a low-code platform from the Microsoft Power Platform suite, designed to create secure, data-driven business websites. It does not require advanced development skills and integrates perfectly with other Microsoft tools such as Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI. It is ideal for building scalable online portals that are also accessible to external users.
Power Pages is suitable both for non-technical users, such as so-called citizen developers, and for professional developers. The platform offers a guided experience and visual tools that allow even those with no programming experience to create complete web portals, while leaving room for more advanced customizations for developers.
Power Pages represents the direct evolution of Power Apps Portals, introduced in 2019. Unlike its predecessor, Power Pages is a more modern, scalable, and feature-rich platform. Microsoft decided to replace Power Apps Portals to overcome its limitations, offering an enterprise-level infrastructure and more advanced design, security and content management.
Yes, Power Pages is designed to ensure maximum security in data management, especially when accessed by external users. The platform distinguishes between anonymous and authenticated users, who can be assigned specific access roles. Thanks to an integrated security framework, it is possible to precisely define who can view or modify content and data.
Absolutely yes. Power Pages automatically generates responsive sites, that is, able to adapt to any device, from a computer screen to a smartphone. That way, there's no need to develop separate versions of the site or worry about manually optimizing the layout.
Yes, Power Pages provides dedicated tools such as the Styling Workspace, which allows you to intervene on the graphic aspect of the site, modifying themes, colors, fonts, buttons and layout. You can start from predefined templates or apply custom CSS, in order to respect the visual identity of your brand.
Power Pages natively integrates with Microsoft Dataverse, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. This integration makes it possible to build experiences connected to existing business flows and to use data already present in the organization to create intelligent, consistent and functional portals.
Yes, Power Pages offers a free 30-day trial. During the test period, you can create sites, use templates, apply corporate branding, and connect content to Dataverse, all without writing code.
Power Pages offers different plans. The plan for authenticated users costs about 200 dollars a month and includes access for 100 users per site. The plan for anonymous users, on the other hand, costs about 75 dollars per month and allows browsing to a maximum of 500 users per site. Both plans include CDN support and Dataverse storage.
Power Pages significantly reduces initial costs, eliminating the need for dedicated servers or highly specialized developers. Maintenance is managed by the Microsoft platform, making it easier and faster to manage sites over time. In addition, thanks to the scalability and low-code approach, companies can accelerate the development of digital solutions and focus on the value of the content, rather than on technical complexity.
The Modern Apps team responds swiftly to IT needs where software development is the core component, including solutions that integrate artificial intelligence. The technical staff is trained specifically in delivering software projects based on Microsoft technology stacks and has expertise in managing both agile and long-term projects.
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