Microsoft Power Pages: Build External-Facing Sites on Dataverse

Power Pages (formerly Power Apps Portals) lets you build public-facing or partner-facing web sites that read and write to Dataverse. Think supplier portals, customer self-service sites, grant application forms, or employee extranets — all surfacing data from your Dataverse environment without writing backend code.

What Makes It Different from Power Apps

Power Apps targets internal users authenticated via Azure AD. Power Pages targets external users — customers, partners, citizens — who authenticate via:

• Azure AD B2C (custom branding, social login)
• Local contact records (Dataverse-stored credentials)
• Azure AD (for partner/employee extranet scenarios)
• OAuth 2.0 providers (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn)

The authentication story is the main reason you'd choose Power Pages over a canvas app.

The Data Model

Power Pages works entirely against Dataverse tables. A "contact" in your portal is a Contact record in Dataverse. A form submission creates a row in whatever table you configure. Table permissions control what each authenticated user can see and edit at the row level.

This means everything your portal stores is queryable from Power BI, accessible from Power Apps, and flows through the same Dataverse governance policies.

Building a Site

Power Pages Studio is a drag-and-drop visual editor. You work with:

• Pages — built from pre-built sections (hero, list, form, text)
• Lists — display rows from a Dataverse table with filtering and sorting
• Forms — create or edit Dataverse records, with field validation and conditional logic
• Liquid templates — a templating language for custom page logic when the visual editor isn't enough

For custom styling, you edit CSS directly or use the Theming workspace to set brand colors and fonts.

Licensing

Power Pages has its own licensing model:

• Authenticated users — licensed per monthly active user (~$200/month for 100 MAU)
• Anonymous users — licensed per page view (~$0.01/page view via pay-as-you-go)

For internal portals with few users, it's economical. For high-traffic public sites, count your page views before committing.

When to Use Power Pages

Use it when:

• You need external users to interact with Dataverse data
• You need role-based row-level security for portal users
• You want authentication handled without writing auth code

Skip it when:

• You need a public marketing site (use a proper CMS)
• You need complex custom UI that fights the Liquid templating system
• Performance is critical for high-volume anonymous traffic (the rendering layer adds overhead)

Power Pages sits between SharePoint and a fully custom web app. For the right use case, it cuts months of development time.