Power BI is part of the Power Platform from Microsoft. It is a powerful business analytics solution that allows visualization of your data and sharing of insights across your organization. It uses hundreds of data sources to bring your data to life with live dashboards and reports.
Power BI can merge multiple sources of data into one report.
Understanding the licensing model and options allows you to find the most cost-effective solution for your organization. Below are the SKUs that you can purchase.
- Power BI Free
- Power BI Pro
- Power BI Embedded
- Power BI Premium
Power BI is Free
Yes! Power BI is a free business intelligence app by Microsoft. Your next question would be – “What features do I get with the free Power BI account?”. With a free Power BI account, you get access to:
Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop is a tool for creating stunning and beautiful looking dashboards and reports. It is free to download and use and requires no licensing; there are no restrictions on the amount of data that you load into the program. It is best used to analyze your data; explore and try to figure out what the story is. You can see below that I decided to do an analysis of our leads coming in from webinars and documented the insights and actions directly into the dashboard.
Publishing to Power BI
You can use the same free Power BI license to publish your reports into the app. Setting up a report that will give you up to date data won’t cost you anything. You can also share the PBIX file with others so they can publish and get the same report on their Power BI service.
Power BI free account is for authoring reports with Power BI Desktop, testing it, publishing it into the service, but you are unable to share securely.
Power BI Pro
Power BI Pro account is the per-user subscription for Power BI. Power BI Pro costs USD 9.99 per user per month. The primary reason is for paying for this service is so you can share and collaborate with other users in teams, for instance, or you want to secure the report.
Say, for instance, you want to create 1 sales report that uses a parameter for a sales rep. Then you want to attach the parameter to the user so only 1 rep can see his information. This is only possible with Power BI pro.
Integration
With Power BI Pro account, you can get some integration features of Power BI as well, such as Analyze in Excel.
Power BI Premium
The Power BI Premium Service is an on-prem solution that can be integrated with the app. Power BI Premium is usually not considered for SMBs due to its high cost. However, industries that require extra security for their data may want to consider this Power BI licensing option.
Learn more about Power BI Licensing at our exclusive webinar on Februart 13 at 1:30 PM (ET). Click on the button below to register!
Patricia Cowman
Report Writing and Business Intelligence
Patricia Cowman brings over 20 years of experience in various business environments to VOX ISM. Her educational background is in Accounting and Computer Programming Analysis. Before working with VOX ISM Patricia spent 10 years doing information analysis and data verification for various clients. In the last 5 years, Patricia has turned her focus to report writing and has her Power BI Certification.