If you're looking for a low-code development platform for building custom applications, then you could do much worse than Microsoft PowerApps.
We found the tool to be well designed for those with custom business challenges to solve.
Microsoft PowerApps (which begins at $7 per user per month) delivered enough coding flexibility to address most business challenges, but does so in an attractive user interface (UI) that's easy to use.
This platform, which comes bundled with select Microsoft Office 365 plans, uses more than 230 built-in connectors, and also provides support for setting up your own custom connectors.
And while Microsoft PowerApps did well the first time we reviewed it in 2017, over the past year Microsoft has improved on an already-great product.
This is why Microsoft PowerApps keeps our Editors' Choice designation for low-code development platforms.
Honest, Objective Reviews
Daxdi.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
Like Google App Maker (10.00 Per User Per Month at Google App Maker) , Microsoft PowerApps is still a relatively new entry in this field, especially when compared with more established players such as Editors' Choice Appian and even Salesforce App Cloud.
When we first tested Microsoft PowerApps last year, we thought its newcomer status brought a few inherent benefits, namely, an uncluttered user experience (UX) and comfortable UI.
When it first launched, we were impressed that Microsoft was able to develop a low-code development platform that has nearly everything a power user or developer would want in terms of design, usability, and a comprehensive set of features for building intuitive business apps with little to no coding.
Appian and Google App Maker are slightly more intuitive for users with zero technical experience (although Microsoft has improved this pain point somewhat over the past year).
But proficient Microsoft Excel users and IT staff will find a lot to like in the polished power and wealth of integrations that Microsoft PowerApps supplies.
Pricing and Plans
Microsoft PowerApps pricing can be sliced a few different ways.
As a standalone product, it begins at $7 per user per month for Microsoft PowerApps Plan 1, which is targeted at business users without programming experience.
Plan 1 comes with 4,500 Microsoft Flow "runs" or automations per user per month, as well as access to Microsoft's Common Data Service.
Microsoft PowerApps Plan 2 is significantly more expensive at $40 per user per month, as this plan is geared toward developers and IT administrators with deeper programming and data modeling features along with enterprise-grade policy management.
Plan 2 allots 15,000 Flow runs per month.
Both plans come with a 90-day free trial and no limit on how many apps you can create.
The other way to get Microsoft PowerApps is through an existing Office 365 or Dynamics 365 subscription.
Though in that scenario, you only get 2,000 Flow runs per month and only one custom application programming interface (API), as opposed to unlimited APIs for Microsoft PowerApps Plan 1 and 2.
Microsoft PowerApps also comes with direct integrations to Office 365, Microsoft Power BI (Visit Site at Microsoft Power BI) , and the customer relationship management (CRM) database and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 by default.
In addition, Microsoft has also added integrations to "premium connectors" at both plan levels, such as the ability to pull in data from sources including MailChimp and Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional.
You can also connect Microsoft PowerApps apps to a number of third-party cloud apps and services, from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to GitHub, Dropbox Business, and Slack.
Building a Low-Code Business App
Low-code development platforms have value both for average business users who want to build apps without coding, and for programmers and IT managers who are looking to reduce some of the manual effort in developing basic business process apps within an organization.
As such, we tested Microsoft PowerApps from both perspectives.
To test Microsoft PowerApps from a business user perspective, we built a basic scheduling app.
The base goal was to create an app that could add a new event with fields for event name, date, time, and duration.
In terms of features, we wanted the ability to invite users to events and sort the events list in a calendar or chronological view.
Any additional functionality would be a plus.
The Microsoft PowerApps dashboard and visual designer were among the most straightforward and easy to navigate user interfaces (UIs) we tested.
While not quite as minimalist as the Google App Maker and Zoho Creator UIs, Microsoft PowerApps manages to give you quick access to all your apps, workflows, integrations, data connectors, and notifications, without inundating you in the type of cluttered UX that can make Salesforce App Cloud difficult to navigate.
When you sign up for a free trial and open the Microsoft PowerApps dashboard, the left-hand navigation puts all your Apps, Connections, Flows, Gateways, Notifications, and Common Data Service Entities front and center, along with a prominent Create New App button to start building.
On the main dashboard, Microsoft also gives you links to a number of sample apps and templates, as well as video tutorials and a Guided Learning tour through the platform.
For a business user with no programming experience, not having to search for help resources is a major plus.
After you select Create New App, Microsoft PowerApps gives you the option to start with a blank app or an existing template, or to begin with data pulled from any of five prebuilt connectors: Common Data Service, Dynamics 365, Microsoft OneDrive for Business ($5.00 Per User Per Month at Microsoft365 for Business) , Microsoft SharePoint Online, or Salesforce.
Another smart flourish in Microsoft PowerApps are buttons to choose a mobile or tablet layout from the get-go.
The visual designer has a very familiar feel, with the toolbars and function box across the top inspired by Microsoft Excel, and the drag-and-drop screen thumbnails in a left-hand side column reminiscent of managing slides in Microsoft PowerPoint.
We began by creating a blank app for our Daxdi Scheduling App, but quickly found that it was more effective to start with a data source and build the app from there, rather than trying to connect a Common Data Service database we hadn't built yet.
Microsoft PowerApps can be a bit difficult to use at first if you don't have a data source or Microsoft Excel sheet ready, and load times could use improvement.
But, after sending us back to the main dashboard to create a database for our app, we were off and running.
Before designing the app itself, you need to connect it to entities from your database.
An entity is essentially a table in a database that helps you manage the data getting pulled into your app.
Microsoft PowerApps has dozens of prebuilt entities for various commerce and sales use cases (contacts, leads, vendors, invoices, purchase orders, and many more), and you can choose multiple entities from which to draw data.
The app starts you with a few prebuilt screens, but the Insert tab atop the designer lets you add all kinds of tables, objects, and multimedia onto your screen.
You can add line, bar, or pie charts; various mobile app icons and menus, touch controls like a toggle, links to open your phone camera or microphone, and even barcodes.
While the designer tools and particularly the mobile-optimized visual development in Microsoft PowerApps are impressive, we quickly realized that adding and ordering elements and managing data sources all happen in the Property Editor on the right-hand side of the designer.
Adding and editing elements requires constantly connecting to different database entities, and changing property values and titles leads to errors.
Ultimately, building the basic scheduling app from scratch or from an existing template proved significantly more complicated compared with Appian and Google App Maker, where creating the basic scheduling app was more of a guided experience that takes you through a form-based wizard.
Microsoft PowerApps is not necessarily the tool for a business user without any experience, at least with Microsoft Excel—unless you're working from prebuilt templates.
The most effective way to build the scheduling app turned out to be trying out a few of the templates, then inserting UI elements such as a date picker and form drop-down to create a screen where we could add an event, choose a date and time, save that event to a table, and then invite users.
After creating our app and using the Forward button on the top right-hand side of the designer to check out the app preview, we were able to publish the app to an internal company "app store," sharing the app via email with specific co-workers or team members.
The Developer Experience
To test Microsoft PowerApps from an IT-focused perspective, our developer used the tool to build a small CRM app we called "Crowd Control." The goal with this app was to build a simple, collaborative contact and lead manager with the ability to add photos and multiple notes to each contact.
The app was to have a Contact List page, Contact Detail page, and a New Contact page.
It was also important to add new data model fields and change existing fields in the finished app to ensure the IT department would be able to update and modify the app over time.
Microsoft PowerApps compared most closely to Zoho Creator in terms of the design tools.
It was easy for our developer to create and lay out the visual elements of the app and to wire them together.
Reordering UI elements wasn't quite as intuitive as Zoho Creator, though.
Instead of doing this via the design page, users must reorder elements from within the Properties panel on the right-hand side of the Designer view.
That's a small thing, and once you adapt to that way of doing things, it's fine.
However, it felt a little unnecessary or incomplete the first few times we used it.
The Entity design tool was solid and easy to use for our developer.
There is a Picklists menu option under the Common Data Service menu.
But, as with our average user testing, this consistently brings you back to the main Microsoft PowerApps landing page until you create your database.
Picklists, which are lists of entries shown in a choice box or drop-down list box, were not as easy to create as most of the other tools, which let you create the custom pick lists while defining your entity.
However, as with most things, Microsoft PowerApps provided a huge number of prebuilt options.
It was also easy to add a new field to the data model and make changes to the existing app.
Altering a field was easy, too.
However, you couldn't change the name of an existing property.
So you could, over time, end up with legacy naming that no longer makes sense; this could lead to confusion as new developers come online to enhance or support an app.
Zoho Creator, on the other hand, handled this more gracefully.
Our developer found Microsoft PowerApps to be among the most polished and comprehensive tools we tested.
There's a high level of UX customization without having to be a designer.
In fact, for the basic app functions, there wasn't even a need to get too deep into the "low-code" or more logic-heavy portion of the tool, such as the ability to add specific automated processes by using Microsoft Flow.
Whereas everything about the Salesforce UI was busy, with a huge number of links and options all displayed at once, Microsoft PowerApps is cleaner and presents a consistent design throughout.
The contact-based app was easy to build.
There were only two issues found.
One was a lack of an "image" data type, making it difficult to attach a photo to a contact.
The other was difficulty trying to add multiple, distinct "notes" for each contact, because Microsoft PowerApps seemed during testing to only provide one-to-one relationships between entities.
There are template apps that seem to support one-to-many relationships, but something about the tool wouldn't allow for drilling into that relationship to see how it could be done.
This was actually a problem in several tools; Zoho Creator was by far the easiest to incorporate a multiple-notes feature in Crowd Control.
App Checker
Since our original review, Microsoft has been regularly adding new functionalities that help alleviate some of the pains involved in app development.
The biggest new development might be the App Checker, which is designed to help customers track down errors and solve problems.
There are two ways to make use of the App Checker.
You can either click the stethoscope button on the Microsoft PowerApps studio screen, or you can double click on the error indicator that now shows up when Microsoft PowerApps detects a problem.
The App Checker breaks down problems by either formula or accessibility issues.
It marks errors with a red dot and warnings with a yellow triangle to warn users about potential data loss.
Blue dots offer suggestions to improve your formula.
The accessibility checking functionality works in a similar fashion, but it is designed to help you make your app more accessible for disabled users by spotting keyboard and screen-reader issues.
For example, if you have an video or audio control in your app that does not have an accompanying closed captions URL, then you will get an alert.
After all, without captions that file is useless to someone who his hearing impaired, and all developers should try their best to make sure everyone can use what they create.
If you have ever tried to build an app (either through a low-code solution or traditional, good old-fashioned programming), then you know that finding errors and trying to be accessible are two large pain points in the development process.
Proactive alerts about formula and accessibility issues will likely help you build a better app, and Microsoft PowerApps is a better product because of it.
A Power User's Dream
Microsoft PowerApps is still a young low-code development platform.
However, from an IT and power user perspective, it offered the most polished UX in any platform we tested.
Whether it was the data-modeling tool,...
