Dynamics 365 vs RapidStart Apps: The Showdown

An Overview of the Dynamics 365 Landscape

Dynamics 365 is a Microsoft brand name for a family of Business Applications, including solutions for the following:

• Sales
• Service
• Marketing
• Commerce
• Finance
• Supply Chain

These products fall into two large buckets, either CRM or ERP. We will be focusing on the core CRM Sales and Service capabilities.

The Cost Comparison

The main comparison everybody wants to know before digging any deeper is cost.

Dynamics 365 Enterprise pricing targets the largest customers. If you are not a thousand-plus user organization, these apps will probably be too big for you. Dynamics 365 sellers are financially motivated to sell these higher-priced licenses and will definitely start with these offers regardless of who they are talking to.

The SMB pricing makes more sense: Sales Professional is $65/PUPM. Customer Service Professional is $50/PUPM. You can combine them for an additional $20/PUPM. So, Sales AND Service costs $85/PUPM.

Since RapidStart Apps includes both Sales AND Service, we will compare it to Dynamics 365 Sales Professional with Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional added.

Features: Dynamics 365 vs RapidStart Apps

You might assume that for significantly more money, Dynamics 365 Professional would provide much more than RapidStart Apps. The answer is: Not really! Unless you think more complexity is "more".

The Basics — It's a Tie

Both paths provide for managing prospective clients (called Leads in Dynamics 365 and Prospects in RapidStart Apps). They both have a guided sales process and a Qualify capability to convert them into customers.

Both allow you to manage existing Accounts and Contacts in the same ways. Both allow you to create and track Opportunities for Accounts and Contacts, with a guided sales process and a method for marking Won or Lost. Both allow you to create and track Cases for Accounts and Contacts, with a guided resolution process.

Both include a Settings app to perform essential administrative functions, Dashboards for Sales and Service metrics and activities, and the same AI feature capacity. Both are Power Apps built atop Microsoft's Dataverse, and both work the same with Power Automate and its 650+ Connectors, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents, Power Apps, and Power Pages.

User Interface — RapidStart Apps Wins

Both Dynamics 365 Professional and RapidStart Apps utilize the same model-driven app user interface over Dataverse. However, RapidStart Apps has simplified the UI to make things much easier for users to understand. Both allow for using the Outlook App and being embedded in Microsoft Teams.

Customization — RapidStart Apps Wins

RapidStart Apps is fully unlocked to customizations and extensions. The Dynamics 365 Professional apps have limited customization capabilities. To reach the same level of customization available to RapidStart Apps, you would need the Dynamics 365 "Enterprise" licensing at $115/PUPM.

For Dynamics 365 Professional, the following are not included: Competitor tracking, Customization or extending out-of-the-box reports, charts and dashboards, Knowledge base, Embedded AI, Forecasting, Sales Goals, Product families/hierarchies, Product relationships, Business card scanning, Sales Literature, Territories, Sales Teams, Email Engagement, Predictive Forecasting, and Relationship analytics.

Dynamics 365 Professional also has tight limitations, including a maximum of 15 custom tables, 5 Business Processes, 5 custom reports or charts or dashboards, and 2 custom forms or views. RapidStart Apps does not have any of these restrictions.

Unique Features — Tie

RapidStart Apps includes a unique Record Hashtagging system and the Quick Steps feature. Dynamics 365 Professional includes a Product Catalog, Quotes, Orders, and Invoices. Most RapidStart Apps customers use other systems for these items. However, since RapidStart Apps is entirely customizable, these things could be created and still utilize the lower-cost license.

Add-ons: RapidStart Apps Wins

Since both RapidStart Apps and Dynamics 365 Professional are built on Dataverse, each has many addon solutions available directly or in AppSource to extend their capabilities.

Project Management

Microsoft offers "Project Operations" for Project Management. If it works together with Dynamics 365 Professional, the license cost for Sales Professional, Service Professional, and Project Operations combined would cost $180/PUPM.

RapidStart Apps offers the Project Management Addon for RapidStart Apps at a fraction of that cost. This addon shares many features with the same goals as Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Field Service

Microsoft offers "Field Service" for Field Service Management. If it works together with Dynamics 365 Professional, the license cost for Sales Professional, Service Professional, and Field Service combined would cost $135/PUPM.

RapidStart Apps offers the Field Service Addon for RapidStart Apps at a fraction of that cost. This addon shares many features with the same goals as Dynamics 365 Field Service.

Industry Accelerators

Microsoft has created several Industry Accelerators available on GitHub. Most of these Accelerators will work the same with Dynamics 365 Professional and RapidStart Apps.

Summary

We feel we have made a pretty strong case for RapidStart Apps over Dynamics 365 Professional in this showdown. Dynamics 365 Professional is obviously not better than RapidStart Apps — it just costs significantly more, is not as customizable, and any extra capability add-ons are going to dramatically increase the cost of Dynamics 365 Professional. Over 90,000 users have also agreed with this assessment!