Business Central trials and subscriptions

Organizations across the world sign up for a free Business Central trial to explore the experience. Then, when they're ready, they talk to a reselling partner about getting a subscription. In this article, we describe how the different types of trials work, and how the admin can remove licenses from users or cancel a subscription.

Get started with a trial

Any organization in the supported markets can sign up for a free trial from the https://dynamics.microsoft.com/business-central/ page. Learn how to sign up at Sign up for a free Dynamics 365 Business Central trial.

Note

To explore the full capabilities in Business Central, change the user experience to Premium in the Company Information page. Learn more at Change Which Features are Displayed in the business functionality content.

Depending on the country or region, the trial includes the languages and functionality that the country or region requires. For more information, see Changing Language and Locale.

Note

Business Central resellers can also set up tailored demo environments.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Trial

In the Partner Center, you can find a special license type called the Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Trial license, which is a different way to give a prospect or an existing customer a trial experience using their own data. If you assigned the Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Trial license to a customer's account in the Partner Center, then that also expires after 30 days. You can't extend the Premium trial, but you can add one more Premium trial license to give the customer an extra 30 days of trial. But when the second Premium trial expires, then the customer must either convert their trial to a paid subscription, or if the viral trial existed before starting the time-limited trial, it must be returned to use.

For more information, see Offer your customers trials of Microsoft products in the Partner Center documentation. If you have technical difficulties assigning this license, contact Partner Center support. For more information, see Report problems with Partner Center.

Caution

Make sure you understand the limitations of this type of trial, before you offer it to a prospect or customer. It is easy to convert this type of trial to a paid subscription, but if the prospect needs more than 30 days to decide, or if they want to add more than 25 users, then the viral trial is probably a better fit for them.

Extend trials

An organization can sign up for a free trial of Business Central. When they first sign up for Business Central, they get access to an evaluation version that does not include all capabilities in Business Central. They can then switch to the 30 day trial experience to enable all capabilities.

However, sometimes a 30 day trial is not enough to decide if they want to buy Business Central. In that case, they can extend their trial with an additional 30 days. For more information, see Need More Time to Decide Whether to Subscribe? in the business functionality content for Business Central.

Note

If you are a reselling partner, we recommend that you set up demo environments for prospects that need longer time to decide if they want to buy Business Central. You can also use demo environments to help customers train their employees, for example. Using the 30 days trials for training should be limited to just that short period. However, demo environments cannot be used for production. For more information, see Preparing Demonstration Environments.

If the prospect wants to extend the trial further than those 30 days, they must contact a partner. The partner can extend it another 30 days if the delegated administrator signs into the prospect's Business Central and runs the Extend Trial Period guide.

After those additional 30 days, the prospect must either purchase Business Central or abandon Business Central. At this point, they will have had up to 90 days with the trial experience.

Tip

As a reselling partner, you can suggest your prospects sign up for a trial, but you can also help set up a customized demonstration environment based on a sandbox environment or a trial environment. In both cases, you can easily add or remove functionality based on your prospects' expectations. For more information, see Preparing Demonstration Environments.

User access policies and data retention periods after a subscription ends depend on the subscription type that existed on the tenant and the manner in which the subscription ended. These policies are shared across Microsoft's online offerings; learn more about suscription lifecycle states in Partner Center documentation and Microsoft 365 documentation.

Add your own data to an empty trial company

To try out Business Central with production data, you can switch to a free 30-day trial without sample data. The Set up my company assisted setup guide can help you specify basic information about your business. Optionally, you can import data from your existing business management solution so that you can evaluate Business Central with your own data. However, we strongly recommend that you don't use a free trial to help run your business. Contact a reselling partner to learn more about how to get started with Business Central. The partner can also help you migrate your data to Business Central online.

If 30 days aren't enough to decide, you can extend the trial. For more information, see the Extend trials section.

Set up a company in Business Central

The quick start articles can help with the first steps into setting up Business Central for an organization. Inside Business Central, the Assisted Setup page lists the assisted setup guides that can help you. For more information, see Get Ready for Doing Business.

Reset Business Central

If the data in a Business Central free trial, you can still start over with a fresh experience. Just create a new evaluation company, and then delete the original company. Open the Companies page and choose the New action to start the Create New Company assisted setup guide. The guide can help you set up a fresh evaluation company with sample data. You can also create a copy of your current company, sign out, and then sign into your new company.

Important

When you share Business Central with other people from your organization, you must make sure other people aren't logged in when you delete a company.

When a free trial expires

Most trials are based on people signing up at https://dynamics.microsoft.com/business-central/. These viral trials don't expire, unless the prospect switches to the 30-day trial, and provided that users access Business Central frequently.

Note

If a Business Central viral trial is left unused for 45 days, Microsoft considers the trial as expired, and the Business Central is deleted.

If the trial is converted to a paid subscription before the trial expires, the countdown to 45 days of non-usage does not apply.

Get started with a subscription

Each time a user signs in during the trial period, a notification in a blue bar at the top displays the time remaining. If an organization decides to subscribe, they must find a Business Central partner. For more information, see How do I find a reselling partner? (business users) and Trials and Sign-ups for Business Central Online (partners).

Important

Specifically for businesses who want to convert a 30-day trial company into their actual production company, the first user who signs into Business Central after the license was applied to their tenant must be a user with this license assigned. This way, the 30-day trial ends, and any trial-related notifications disappear so that users can use Business Central to do work.

If an administrator is the first person to sign in after the license was applied to the tenant and to users, then the trial will continue until it expires.

For more information about what you can do with Business Central, see Get Ready for Doing Business and Business Functionality.

Removing a subscription

If an organization decides to stop using Business Central, an administrator must remove the subscription in the Microsoft 365 admin center. An email notification is sent to all administrators of the account. Deleting the subscription blocks all users from accessing their Business Central, and deletes all data. If the administrator doesn't remove the subscription, it'll eventually expire, see Data and access when a trial and subscription ends.

Warning

The subscription is deleted immediately and can't be reactivated.

For partners cancelling a subscription on their customer's behalf, see Suspend or cancel a subscription in the Partner Center content.

Data and access when a trial or subscription ends

Trials can expire, and so can a paid subscription, such as if the organization doesn't renew the subscription, stops payments, or if they cancel the subscription.

User access policies and data retention periods after a subscription ends depend on the subscription type that existed on the tenant and the manner in which the subscription ended. These policies are shared across Microsoft's online offerings; learn more about suscription lifecycle states in Partner Center documentation and Microsoft 365 documentation.

Get started with sandboxes

Sandbox environments are a way for you to practice with Business Central. Think of a sandbox as a non-production environment that you use on top of your production instance of Business Central. For example, if you want to take the free online training from Microsoft Learn, your administrator can create a sandbox environment. This way, you and your colleagues can practice in a safe place rather than in your production environment.

If you're a developer, a sandbox lets you safely build and test extensions and develop new functionality to customize the service without affecting the data and settings of your production environment.

Right now, all customers can use a sandbox, including organizations who have signed up for a trial. For more information about how to get started with a sandbox, see Sandbox Environments for Dynamics 365 Business Central Development.

Note

Sandboxes created this way contain demonstration data for the fictitious CRONUS company. No data is copied or otherwise transferred from the production environment.

The administrator of your Business Central and your reselling partner can create more environments in the administration center. For more information, see The Business Central Administration Center.

Understanding Business Central online infrastructure

If you're migrating from an on-premises solution, understanding the infrastructure of Business Central online can help you make good choices for how to set up environments and companies. For more information and an example, see Understanding the infrastructure of Business Central online.

Related information

Sign up for a free Dynamics 365 Business Central trial
Dynamics 365 Business Central trial FAQ
Trials and Sign-ups for Business Central Online
Migrate Data
Choosing Your Dynamics 365 Business Central Development Sandbox Environment
Country/Regional Availability and Supported Translations
Get Started as a Reseller of Business Central Online
Preparing Demonstration Environments (as a partner)