Choosing between Dynamics 365 Enterprise and Professional

Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service come are available at two levels: Enterprise and Professional.

Which one is more appropriate for your organization depends on the business needs and the business size.

The most visible difference in Microsoft’s marketing materials will tell you that Dynamics 365 Sales Professional and Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional are the ideal systems to get started for small and mid-size organizations (SMB/SME) at a lower price point and their Enterprise equivalents are the full blown versions with more bells and whistles.

If you or your customer is having trouble choosing, fear not: You can always start out and Professional (lower price point) and upgrade to Enterprise if and when needed.
And yes, you can also downgrade back from Enterprise to Professional!

There are primarily functional differences between the Enterprise and Professional versions. The Enterprise versions contain all possible functionality and the Professional will omit some more advance functionality that not all organizations need. The Professional versions will always contain the same core functionality as the Enterprise versions.

The functional differences depend on whether you are using Dynamics 365 Sales or Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
They both share the same base functionality of Accounts, Contacts and Activity management but, we’ll find the key differences in their respective processes.

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise vs Professional

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise is priced at US$95/user/month (€80.10) for the base app.
If you purchase Sales Enterprise as an attach, it’s US$20/user/month (€16.90)

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is priced at US$50/user/month (€54.80) for the base app.
If you purchase Sales Professional as an attach, it’s US$20/user/month (€16.90)

Please note: Prices in this post are the commercial prices available in public Microsoft materials at the time of this post, actual price will may depend on your region and distributor.

1. Create cases with limited edit capability. No case business process flow, SLAs, entitlements, or case routing. Users only licensed with Sales license cannot act as customer service agents and resolve cases.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise vs Professional

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise is priced at US$95/user/month (€80.10) for the base app.
If you purchase Customer Service Enterprise as an attach, it’s US$20/user/month (€16.90)

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional is priced at US$50/user/month (€54.80) for the base app.
If you purchase Customer Service Professional as an attach, it’s US$20/user/month (€16.90)

Please note: Prices in this post are the commercial prices available in public Microsoft materials at the time of this post, actual price will may depend on your region and distributor.

1. Create Leads with limited edit capability. Qualifying requires Sales license.

Customization limitations for Professional

For both Sales Professional and Customer Service Professional, there are some customization limitations in place. These only apply to Professional, there are no customization limitations on Enterprise.

The limitations are:

Mixing Enterprise with Professional

Each environment (instance) can only be equipped with either the Enterprise app or the Professional app. This applies to both Sales and Customer Service.
You can have multiple environments (instances) and for each environment you could choose to have either Enterprise or Professional, meaning you could have 1 environment with Sales Enterprise and another with Sales Professional.

Users with an Enterprise license are allowed to access the Professional app but, users with a Professional license are not allowed to access the Enterprise app.

If and when your organization is ready for it, you can upgrade a Professional license an Enterprise license.

Move from Professional to Enterprise (or the other way around)

Before you start your move, please make sure you have your new licenses in order.

Purchase the Enterprise licenses first and assign them to the relevant users. Make sure to also unassign the Professional license.
Considering an Enterprise license is allowed to access the Professional apps, at this point your users will not experience any down time.

After sorting the licenses, you’ll have to uninstall the Professional app and then proceed to install the Enterprise app.

Take a look at the following article for a guide through the whole process for the Dynamics 365 Sales app:
Move from Dynamics 365 Sales Professional to Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise

The procedure is the same for the Customer Service app, except you’ll use the Customer Service license and apps, instead of Sales.

If you’re looking to downgrade from Enterprise back to Professional, please refer to this article instead:
Move from Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise edition to Dynamics 365 Sales Professional