Before we delve straight into the reasons as to why your business should consider using a customised Microsoft Azure web portal, let’s just do a little explaining as to what one is and how can they help your business.
Put simply, web portals enable businesses to provide stakeholders with access to business data and processes within a highly secured platform. So, what does this mean? Basically, it means that you can easily finish tasks and view certain datasets without the need for a Dynamics 365 environment.
So, what is the difference between Power Apps Portals & Customised Azure Portals?
Essentially, Microsoft gives you the templates required for Power Apps Portals. Each one has been created to cater for a certain audience and comprehensively covers all the most important processes in each one.
On the other hand, customised Azure portals are built from scratch. Advantage can help you to construct these custom portals on the Azure platform thus allowing you to still retain access to all the functionality included with Power Apps Portals.
So, what are the main reasons why your business should consider customised Azure Portals?
1) Costs
In the vast majority of cases when we speak to our customers and leads, the first thing that comes up when discussing portal implementation is the ongoing costs associated with a Power Apps portal. This is down to the fact that Power Apps portals are priced per login in a 24-hour period, which might not seem a good idea for those businesses that have hundreds of visitors on a daily or weekly basis. This means that for a well-used portal you could incur very heavy monthly costs which could hit SMBs or charities that have lower budgets.
In these instances, we often suggest creating a customised Azure Portal because by doing this you remove the login costs. Granted the costs associated with customised portals initially are high however this can be offset by the lower ongoing monthly costs.
2) Better Flexibility
Another reason for customers deciding to go with a higher initial development cost associated with a customised Azure Portal is the fact that the system is much more flexible. Through the use of this approach, here at Advantage, we’ve had the chance to give clients exactly what they need in terms of functionality that wouldn’t have been easy with a Power Apps Portal template.
Starting from scratch enables you to develop and design your portal to work in the way that your business wants it to with a much more streamlined user experience.
3) Easily Scalable
If you decide to use a custom portal in Azure, you are easily able to control costs. When you are experiencing a lull in sales you can simply scale down your App usage and when sales are rocketing you can upscale it again.
This can have particular significance for those businesses that experience seasonal trends but can be applicable to those that are looking to scale up as their business grows. You will find that Power Apps Portal licensing costs can grow if more users access the portal whereas Custom Portals can offer something more manageable in terms of monthly costs.
For the portal projects that we work on, we find that it is often tricky to build on top of a Power Apps Portal template as customised code needs to be used, therefore this means that the portal isn’t in the best possible position as it should be.
This can cause problems further down the line when further development is needed once the portal is live: creating new features can be more complicated and needs extra resources to complete.
Next Steps?
If you are a business that is looking for a partner to build you a customised Microsoft Azure portal or even looking to make use of the Microsoft Power Platform in the form of a customised Power Apps Portal then please get in touch with one of our team of experts today to discuss how we can help your business.
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