Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing & Pricing

Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing

Let’s deal with those of you who may be looking to buy a completely new Dynamics 365 Business Central licence, as this is probably the simpler model to start with! There are basically two options, both of which are based on a named user basis:

Subscription

You pay a per user, per month fee. This also includes the annual maintenance fee levied by Microsoft, giving you access to future versions. This option provides flexibility in terms of increasing and reducing numbers of users, which is particularly helpful if you have any seasonal impact on the number of people using the system.

Perpetual

You have bought the Dynamics 365 Business Central licence, it’s yours forever and, as long as you pay the annual maintenance fee (known as BREP in the Microsoft world), you are also entitled to access to the latest versions. 

With a perpetual licence you have a set number of users, which of course you can add to, but if you ever choose to remove users then you would have to re-buy them in the future if needed.

One point to note: if you stop paying the annual maintenance fee you are also prevented from amending your Dynamics 365 Business Central licence, i.e. adding more users.

Hosting

After getting your Dynamics 365 Business Central licence, the last thing that may influence which route you take is where to host your system. Both options can be deployed on-premise, in your Private Cloud or on a Managed Service (such as the one we offer), but the subscription route offers one more option – Microsoft’s SaaS.

The SaaS option (or Public Cloud as it’s known), offers great value for money, as the hosting cost is included in the user subscription price. There are some limitations, however, such as no access to SQL and being limited to any developments being done as extensions, but if these aren’t barriers for you and you’re happy to be on a shared platform then this route should definitely be seriously considered.

Options for existing Dynamics NAV users

• If you are on a pre-2009 version, then the latest Dynamics NAV licence that you can obtain is 2009R2.
• If you want to go beyond that then your only option is to move to Dynamics 365 Business Central.
• If you are on Dynamics NAV 2013 or later then you can still cut a licence up to NAV 2018.

(P.S. If you’re not interested in moving to Dynamics 365 Business Central, but want to get the most out of your Dynamics NAV, why not take our free Dynamics NAV Health Check? We’ll get to the root of any issues and help you to optimise your platform).

Anyhow, whether you are the former or the latter, by staying on Dynamics NAV you stay on the same licence model you have today, i.e. concurrent users, but if you move to Dynamics 365 Business Central then your licence model changes. Here’s what happens:

Moving to Dynamics 365 Business Central

If you are on Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) or one of the older subscription style models, then it’s straightforward. When you are ready to upgrade, you stop one and start a new Dynamics 365 Business Central subscription, there are no incentives other than the subscription being cheaper than the older models.

For those customers who have a concurrent licence then you have two options when upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central licence:

1. Remain on a concurrent licence: You continue to pay your annual maintenance (BREP) at the same rate as your old licence, don’t worry, you don’t get penalised because you have more users!
2. Move to a subscription licence: Public Cloud subscription has hosting costs built into the subscription price which makes it compelling commercially.

The hosting options are exactly the same as those detailed earlier for people buying a new licence, and it is worth noting that if you choose the SaaS route and later decide you want to move to a Private or Managed Cloud then it’s easy to do so (and vice versa).

Dynamics 365 Business Central Pricing

Dynamics 365 Business Central can be purchased on two levels – Essentials and Premium (Premium simply gives an additional layer of functionality for manufacturing and service order management). For more on ERP pricing, check out our guide here. Please see the Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing below:

• Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials is charged from £52.80 per user per month
• Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium is charged from £75.40 per user per month

As well as the Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing, there are two types of users – ‘full’ and ‘additional’. 

Full Users

These users are those whose work requires use of the feature-rich business applications present in Dynamics 365 Business Central. Examples of full users are salespeople, customer service representatives, finance employees, controllers and supply chain managers. These users have also been referred to in the past as 'Pro' users or 'Power’ users.

Additional Users

These users often represent a significant percentage of users in an organisation and may consume data or reports from a line of business systems, complete light tasks like time or expense entry and HR record updates or be heavier users of the system, but not require full user capabilities.

Also, if you want to find out more about Dynamics NAV & Dynamics 365 Business Central, download our 'Ultimate Guide' by clicking here.

Please note: That’s all of the information on Dynamics 365 Business Central licensing and pricing.  This information is correct at the time of publishing (February 2020) and could be subject to change.