Which Dynamics 365 Licence Type Should I Choose?

This focuses on Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, but the principles apply to Field Service also. Business Central licencing is covered in a separate blog

What’s the difference between Enterprise, Professional and Team Member licences?

Have you been considering Dynamics and thinking it might just be the right match for your business? Chances are, you’ve run into the various Dynamics 365 licence types along the way. Perhaps you’ve seen Microsoft’s sixty page licence guide (released monthly!), and are looking for a simple overview that tells you what you need to know, which is probably why you have found this.

You’ll come across these licence types in the most common Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps – Sales and Customer Service

• Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise
• Dynamics 365 Sales Professional
• Dynamics 365 Sales Premium
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional
• Dynamics 365 Team Member

As with all things licencing related, there are always exceptions, so this guide aims to get you 95% along the way, and then a Microsoft Dynamics partner can confirm which licences are best for you.

Ok, let’s get stuck in…

Which licence do I need?

Basically, the different licences for each product: Enterprise, Professional, and Team Member give you access to different parts of the system.

The system breaks down into tables – like Contacts, Invoices and Products. Your licence dictates which tables you can read or update.

Which tables can I access?

If you have any of these full licences

• Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise
• Dynamics 365 Sales Professional
• Dynamics 365 Sales Premium
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional

You can view and edit most tables (entities) in your Dynamics 365 system. These are the most regularly used ones. Look below at the full access details for Sales and Customer Service

What can I access with a Team Member licence?

Team member licences are much more restrictive

Team Member licence users can also

• Update their own employee information
• Record time, materials, and expenses
• Approve time, expenses, materials, and invoices
• User reporting and dashboards
• Participate as a consumer of Dynamics 365 services, such as responding to survey

Why the big jump between a Team Member vs Enterprise or Professional licence?

The main difference between a Team Member licence and a Full Application licence (Enterprise or Professional), is that a Team Member has only read access to the whole system, along with create or update access to the short list of entities/tables listed above.

This makes a Team Member an ideal solution for:

• Telemarketing or Telesales users who need to write emails, make calls, and book appointments, with all these activities linked to a contact, account, lead, opportunity, case record. The use of activities for Team Members is key to good system adoption and an accurate history of touchpoints with customers and prospects
• Anyone who just needs to create or update contact details such as addresses, phone numbers and email addresses at the same time
• Engineers or field based sales who need to complete short tasks with simple forms, take pictures and videos and link them to the relevant record, and grab customer signatures on the App – a perfect fit for Team Member licences

So, why the jump from Professional to Enterprise?

Dynamics 365 is tremendously powerful AND scalable.

It’s capable of helping business to be more productive and profitable, from a one-man band right up to a global corporation with hundreds of thousands of users.

The main differences between Professional and Enterprise:

• Professional is limited to 15 custom entities/tables per application
• Professional is limited to 2 custom forms per application
• Professional is limited to 5 custom reports, charts and dashboards per application
• Professional is limited to 15 queues per application

Unless your business model is very straightforward, you’ll most likely need custom forms and table

Enterprise is essentially unlimited customisations – aligned with the more complex needs of either a larger business or a high volume business.

We tend to find that companies with 10+ users go for Enterprise licences.

Mixing Dynamics 365 licence types

Enterprise and Professional licences can’t be deployed on the same instance.

For example, you cannot use Sales Enterprise and Sales Professional licences on the same instance OR even Sales Professional and Customer Service Enterprise

However, they can be used on different instances on the same tenant

Dynamics 365 Licence prices (October 2024)

How long does my subscription last?

You can choose from subscription terms of 1 month, 1 year or 3 years.

1 month commitment subscriptions are usually 20% more expensive than the base, 1 or 3 year subscription.

Buying subsequent apps

The prices above are for buying your first Dynamics app (your base app), for subsequent apps, the prices are lower. For subsequent apps you can buy a cheaper attach licence

Your choices of attach app are limited depending on your base app

Attach licence prices

Both Base and Attach licenses give you access to the same CRM features. The only difference is the pricing.

Want to know more?

Microsoft have a useful visual guide to licencing, which you can view here

If you love reading about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licencing and want to dig even deeper, take a look at the Dynamics 365 Licencing Guide PDF

Dynamics 365 Sales use rights in detail

Here are the detailed differences between Sales Enterprise, Sales Professional and Team Member licences for Dynamics 365 Sales

Dynamics 365 Customer Service use rights in detail

Here are the detailed differences between Sales Enterprise, Sales Professional and Team Member licences for Dynamics 365 Customer Service