I have noticed that most customers are reluctant to pay the 9$ license cost for Power BI. Here is how you can use Power BI free of cost. I am a strong proponent of purchasing licensed software. This articles is not meant to show you how to cheat on the licensing cost. In fact, I will show you how to get tangible value by using Power BI free version so that you can easily justify the cost of the license with a strong and compelling business justification.
The idea is simple. Use Power BI just like we use Excel. Create Power BI Reports, save PBIX files on OneDrive / Teams. Share the reports with each other as links or attachments – exactly the way we do with Excel files. All users must have Power BI Desktop free version. This process does not cost any money. Power BI free version offers all the features and connectors with no time limit or restrictions.
Then the next question is – if this works for free, why pay Microsoft that 9$ per user per month license for Power BI Pro? Good question. Sharing PBIX files may seem satisfy your needs – but it has many disadvantages. Read on to find out more…