Power Platform: How to Use Power Pages to Create Professional Websites

Post co-written by Madeleine de Place and Coralie Martinez

Do you need to make a website quickly for your clients or coworkers but lack development expertise? Microsoft has found a solution to your problem with Power Pages, one of the tools in its low-code/no-code Power Platform solution.

In reality, Power Pages isn’t exactly new. This solution already existed under a different name: Power Apps Portal (it was the Power Apps site creation portal then). In 2022, Microsoft announced that this portal would be rebranded with Power Pages emerging as a fully-fledged product.

Power Pages Presentation

Power Pages is a solution in the Power Platform suite that lets you create professional websites without development expertise. With this tool, you no longer need to know how to code to create, host, and manage data-driven websites that are 100% responsive.

Unlike Power Apps, which can only be used internally, Power Pages is used to create external sites (which can then be accessed from outside or by people who do not work in the company, for example, suppliers or customers).

The tool’s many options (multilingual sites, security, personalized access, etc.) make it an easy-to-use solution that business teams like because they can create and manage multiple sites quickly, easily, and independently.

Examples of Sites You Can Create With Power Pages

Power Pages is ideal for businesses that want to share information with a specific group of people. Here are just a few ways you can use Power Pages:

• A site for members of a mutual insurance scheme
• A site for members of an association
• A site for school parents
• A town hall website for local residents
• A site for a company’s suppliers
• An Intranet for employees
• Etc.

What Features Does Power Pages Have?

Power Pages is a comprehensive tool that makes creating and managing one or more websites easy. It has a wide range of features, giving users access to a huge number of options:

• Website creation: Power Pages has numerous templates and quick-start models to help you with the graphic design for your website.
• A design studio that lets you create pages, styles, workspaces, and settings for modern, attractive websites without having to write a single line of code.
• Site management: Power Pages lets you manage several sites at the same time independently.
• Multilingual option: You can create websites with Power Pages in up to 40 languages. An advantage that makes a website accessible from anywhere in the world.
• Built-in security: the security is one of the main strengths of Power Pages. Users can be sure that their site is highly secure in terms of hosting, authentication, access, etc.
• Monitoring: with Microsoft tools like Azure Applications Insight, users can analyze how their websites are performing in real time.
• Real-time data sharing, in particular with Power BI.
• Add chatbots with Power Virtual Agents.
• Etc.

To learn more about the features of Power Pages, please see the Microsoft documentation.

Choosing a Template – Source: Microsoft

Power Pages: 4 Workspaces

There are four workspaces in Power Pages:

1. The Pages workspaceis where you can create, design and organize pages
2. The Styling workspaceis where you can customize pages and configure site themes
3. The Data workspaceis where you can manage and store the data associated with Power Pages
4. The Set up workspace is where you can set up and manage the site

Note that the tool is simple and easy to use. Even if you don’t know how to code or have technical skills, creating pages, organizing them, and improving content visually is easy.

Power Pages is a new way to design secure websites. It also gives you access to existing data in Dataverse, which is a very powerful accelerator.

Coralie Martinez – Power Platform Domain Director at Cellenza

What Power Pages Can Do for You

Power Pages has a lot of benefits and uses:

• Customizable authentication: authentication that can be done using Azure or other systems, like LinkedIn or Facebook.
• Extending your existing websites: if you already have a website and want to add a Power Pages section (e.g., create a Careers area, etc.).
• Template creation: to save time, you can create page templates that other members of your organization can use. This ensures that websites created by other teams are standardized and adhere to the corporate graphic charter.
• Code component integration: would you like to go one step further and incorporate code components into your low-code/no-code site? Power Pages lets you do that.

How Much Does Power Pages Cost?

Microsoft offers different pricing plans for Power Pages.

Depending on your needs and the number of visitors to your site, you can choose between:

• A subscription plan with two options for companies that want to control costs:
  • Pricing based on the number of authenticated users per website
  • Pricing based on the number of anonymous site visitors
• A pay-per-use plan with two options for companies that only want to pay for actual visitors:
  • Pricing based on the number of authenticated users per website
  • Pricing based on the number of anonymous site visitors

Power Pages: Key Takeaways

Power Pages is an easy and cost-effective way to create professional websites without the need for development expertise. Any business user can use this low-code/no-code solution to create websites that are aesthetically pleasing, widely accessible, and highly secure.

Want to learn more about Power Platform? Here are the rest of the posts in this series:

• Power Apps for creating business applications
• Power Automate for process automation
• Power Virtual Agents for creating chatbots
• Power BI for data-driven decision-making

And if you’d like to talk to a Power Platform expert or get help with your low-code/no-code projects, get in touch!