Pricing & licensing of Microsoft Dynamics 365

How much do Microsoft's ERP and CRM systems cost?

What licenses are available and what options do I have?

To use a workspace on the Dynamics 365 platform, you need a license for it. If you only need a single workspace for a user, the question of licensing is usually very simple: you need a basic license for the desired workspace.

However, as the workspaces are very closely interlinked in terms of licensing, there are price advantages if you license several workspaces for one user.

Before we go into more detail, here is an overview of the most important workspaces available to you with Dynamics 365.

Working areas Customer Engagement (CRM applications)

• Customer Service
• Field Service
• Sales
• Marketing*

Working areas Unified Operations (ERP applications)

• Finance
• Supply Chain Management
• Commerce
• Human Resources
• Project Operations
• Business Central*

As you can see, there are two licenses for almost every application (with the exception of Sales Premium) - a basic license and an additional license, which differ considerably in price. However, both are exactly the same full version. What exactly the basic and additional licenses are all about is described in the next section. This is the core of Microsoft's pricing and licensing model.

• Users who only require one workspace only need one license. This is always the more expensive basic license.
• Users who require several workspaces need a license for each space, i.e. an expensive basic license and additional licenses are sufficient for the rest.
• The basic license and all other additional licenses are always full versions or full-user licenses. They differ only in price, but are completely identical in their range of functions.
• The Device User, Activity User and Team Member license types have a more limited range of functions and are therefore cheaper. You can read more about this in point 4.
• You can obtain both license types in a monthly, annual or three-year subscription. We will go into this in point 5.

And so that you don't turn the cheapest license into a basic license and the most expensive licenses into additional licenses, here is another important rule: the basic license must always be the license for the most expensive workspace.​​​​​​​

Example 1: Supply chain management and human resources

• Possible: € 168.50 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as a basic license, € 28.10 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources as an additional license.

• Not possible: 112.30 € for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources as a basic license and 28.10 € for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as an additional license.

Users who require licenses for ERP (Finance, Supply Chain Management) and Human Resources therefore pay €196.60 per user per month instead of €140.40. The most expensive license - Supply Chain Management in this example - must be purchased as a basic license.

Example 2: Supply Chain Management, Finance and Sales Enterprise

• The following is possible: € 168.50 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as a basic license, € 28.10 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance as an additional license and € 18.70 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise as an additional license.
• Not possible: € 88.90 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise as a basic license, € 28.10 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and € 28.10 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as an additional license.

Users who require licenses for ERP (Finance, Supply Chain Management) and CRM (Sales) therefore pay €215.30 per user per month instead of €145.10. The most expensive license - in this example Finance or Supply Chain Management - must be purchased as a basic license.

Sales Premium is not available as an additional license. If you purchase the high-end version of Sales, you always pay the cost of the basic license. This means that you may have to provide two basic licenses for users who need Sales Premium AND Finance, for example.

Sales Premium as a basic license and the cheaper Customer Service, Field Service, Human Resources or Project Operations license as an additional license is also possible.

So far in this blog post, we have “only” dealt with the licenses for full users - whether as a basic or additional license. Since not every user needs full user rights (sometimes read rights are completely sufficient), there are cheaper licenses with a slightly smaller range of functions in the price and license model for all the work areas shown here. These license types are called:

• Device User
• Activity User
• Team Member
• Human Resources Self-Service

We start with a note: Not all of the user types listed above are available for every workspace. In addition, there are two types of device user.

• A device user for all customer engagement applications (CRM applications)
• One device user for all unified operations applications (ERP applications)

Prices are per month and per license.

Here is a brief example of which user types you can use and what they cost per month.

Let's assume an IT service provider with 250 employees that needs the ERP system Finance & Supply Chain Management together with the Human Resources department.

It is never possible to give a blanket answer as to exactly what such a company needs. For the service sector with 250 employees, the licenses selected in the example are a realistic combination. 

So far, we have always assumed two things throughout this article and in the presentation of all prices:

• Users pay their license costs per month
• Users have an annual or three-year subscription

This is also the rule. However, according to Microsoft's current pricing and licensing model, there are also other options for the duration of the subscription, which result in different prices.

Conversion from legacy CSP to NCE

Since 10.03.2022 - the changeover from the old Legacy CSP model to NCE (New Commerce Experience) - there have been three subscription variants for all licenses and license types described so far. These are:

• Monthly subscription (pay monthly, cancel monthly)
• Annual subscription (pay monthly or annually, cancel annually)
• Three-year subscription (pay monthly, annually or once, cancel on a key date every three years)

Let's start with the exceptions to Sales. These are essentially limited to the fact that

• Sales exists in three versions - Professional, Enterprise, Premium
• And Premium is not available as an additional license
• There are also a few exceptions to the usual licensing rules in the frequently used combination of Sales and Business Central. We go into these in more detail in 6.3 Business Central.

If you are specifically interested in Dynamics 365 Sales, all exceptions and possibilities, please also read our blog post Pricing & Licensing of Dynamics 365 Sales.

The most important points of the Business Central price and license model at a glance

• Business Central is available in Essential and Premium versions
• Business Central Essential costs €65.50 per user / month (at least an annual license)
• Business Central Premium costs €93.60 per user / month (at least an annual license)
• In addition to the license for a full user, Business Central only offers the Team Member license. This costs €7.50 per user/month (at least an annual license).
• Activity users, device users and the Human Resource Self-Service are not available with Business Central.
• For Business Central itself, there is only the basic license and no additional licenses

And even with Business Central, all the licenses mentioned are around 20% more expensive if you choose a term that can be terminated monthly.

These are the prices for a monthly subscription:

• Business Central Essential 78,60 € per user / month 
• Business Central Premium 112,32€ per user / month 
• Business Central Team Member 9,00 € per month 

There are also links between Business Central and the pricing and license model described above. Although Business Central is not available as an additional license, Business Central users can still use the work areas

• Sales Professional
• Customer Service Professional

as (inexpensive) additional licenses. Both products are also perfectly coordinated with Business Central and can be optimally integrated into the ERP system. It does not matter whether you use BC Essential or BC Premium.

Important: this combination only works for the Professional Edition of Sales and Customer Service. If you prefer Enterprise or Premium together with Business Central, you will need a second basic license.