Meet Five: A Popular Power Apps Alternative

By 2025, 70% of newly developed applications will use low-code or no-code technology, up from less than 25% in 2020. (Gartner)

Facing this boom, the need for powerful and flexible alternatives is evident. While Microsoft Power Apps remains a popular choice, it often faces limitations in usability and customization. This is where Five emerges as one of the best Power Apps alternatives.

Five allows you to rapidly build modern data-driven applications with efficiency and without writing mountains of code.

• Microsoft Power Apps

• Five

• Pricing Comparison

  • Key Differences

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Microsoft Power Apps

It is likely you're already familiar with Power Apps but here's a quick overview:

Microsoft Power Apps is a low-code application development platform that lets you build custom business apps. It's part of the larger Microsoft Power Platform, which also includes Power BI (business intelligence), Power Automate (workflow automation), and Power Virtual Agents (chatbots).

With Power Apps, you can create apps that connect to your data, whether it's stored in the cloud or on-premises. You can also use Power Apps to automate workflows, send notifications, and collect data.

There are two main types of Power Apps: canvas apps and model-driven apps.

Canvas apps are like blank slates where you can design your app from scratch. You can add controls, such as buttons, text boxes, and lists, and then define how they interact with each other.

Model-driven apps are based on a data model that you define. This data model can be created in Power Apps or in another tool, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365. Once you have your data model, you can use Power Apps to generate forms, views, and dashboards that let you interact with your data.

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Five

Five is a rapid development environment, which allows you to build applications faster than ever.

Five doesn't have the constraints associated with complete no-code as pre-built components that can be mixed with full code practically anywhere. This ensures you have the freedom to build any business application you wish.

Five excels at building internal tools like CRM systems, membership systems, product inventory systems and any use case presented in our use-cases page. But if you're seeking to build something other than a typical internal facing application such as a Custom Restaurant Reservation App or a Property Rental Application Five can do that too.

Developers can download Five to develop and test applications locally free of charge. Only if they build an application that is production-worthy, do they have to sign up for a paid plan with Five.

Similar to Power Apps, Five gives you the ability to connect to almost any data source, including all major relational databases, such as PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, and MySQL. You're also not confined to just one data source when developing applications. Integrate your Azure-hosted Microsoft SQL Server database, incorporate a REST API, and use Five’s built-in MySQL database — all within a single application. Essentially, any data source that offers access to data can be used throughout your development process with Five.

As stated Five gives you your own MySQL database. And allows you to perform operations like SELECT, JOIN, UNION, plus other operations as you would in any database management tool. Additionally, Five provides a visual query builder for those who prefer to build their queries visually without writing SQL syntax (this visual builder is pictured below).

Five automatically creates a web interface, including forms, charts, dashboards, or PDF reports on top of your database - no front-end skills or coding skills required!

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Read this article to learn How to Create a Front End for an SQL Server Database in 4 Steps or this Excel to Web App [Quick, Easy & Free 3-Step Tutorial]

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Pricing Comparison

Let's dive into the language everyone speaks - pricing!

Note: Users in this case means end users who will be accessing and running the finished apps.

• Power Apps:

  • Per-app pricing: $5/per user/app/month

  • Per-user pricing: $20/per user/month (unlimited apps)

  • Pay-as-you-go: $10/per active user/app/month

• Five:

  • Per-app pricing: Starts at $27.49/app/month (unlimited end-users)

  • Tiered plans (Basic, Team, Business) with varying storage, compute, and developer capacity

To simplify these numbers: If you developed an app with 50 end users on PowerApps, you would have to pay:

1. Per-app Pricing: $5 per user/app/month. If each user only accesses one app, it would be 50 users x $5/user/app = $250 per month.

Or

1. Per-user Pricing: $20 per user/month for unlimited apps. This would be 50 users x $20/user = $1000 per month.

Or

1. Pay-as-you-go: $10 per active user/app/month. This cost is applicable only if users are active. If all 50 users are active, it would be 50 users x $10/user/app = $500 per month.

Whereas with Five you'll only have a fixed monthly fee of US$27.4 per month no matter how many users you have using your app!

Key Differences

• Power Apps charges per end user, while Five offers unlimited end users for all plans.

• Five offers free local development with unlimited testing, while Power Apps requires a license for development.

• Five allows deploying to the cloud when ready, while Power Apps requires further licensing for deployment.

• Five lets your commercialise your apps, i.e. you can resell them as if they are a software solution. With PowerApps, you can't really do that.

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Ready to ditch Power Apps constraints? Get Five and start building.

Download Five today for free and integrate all steps of application development: backend, frontend, and deployment.

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