Two products, similar-sounding names, and a lot of people quietly unsure which one a project belongs in. I get the question often enough that it’s worth writing down plainly: when do you build something as a SharePoint site, and when do you reach for Power Pages?
The short answer has nothing to do with which one is more powerful. It’s about who needs to open the thing.
First, clear up the name confusion
A lot of the muddle is just vocabulary. “SharePoint page” and “Power Pages” sound like the same thing and aren’t.
A SharePoint page is a single page within a SharePoint site, the news post, the landing page for a team. Power Pages (plural, capital P) is a separate Power Platform product for building external-facing websites. If someone says “should this be a page or a Power Page,” they’re usually asking the bigger question without realising it: should this live inside the wall or outside it.
The actual dividing line
SharePoint and Power Pages sit on different sides of one fence: your tenant boundary.
Every SharePoint site assumes whoever opens it has a Microsoft 365 account at your company and has signed in. Even “external sharing” doesn’t change that. When you share a SharePoint site with someone outside the company, they still have to sign in, with a Microsoft account or a one-time code, and they get added to your directory as a guest. A SharePoint site cannot be a public, anonymous website. (You can post anonymous links to individual files, but that’s a file link, not a site.)
Power Pages was built for exactly the case SharePoint won’t do: strangers. It serves anonymous visitors who never sign in. When you do want people to log in, it accepts Microsoft work or personal accounts, or Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. (The Microsoft sign-in options have official names, Entra ID and Azure AD B2C, in case a config doc lands on your desk.) None of those people need a paid seat in your tenant.
SharePoint is for the people you employ. Power Pages is for the people you serve. That one sentence resolves most of these decisions.
What’s underneath each one
The second difference is where the data lives, and it follows from the first.
A SharePoint site stores documents and lists: files, libraries, and simple tables. It’s built around content people collaborate on. Great for a policy library, a project hub, an intranet.
Power Pages reads and writes Dataverse, which is Microsoft’s proper database product, the one that ships with the Power Platform. That’s the right fit when you’re capturing structured information through a form. Think applications, registrations, support tickets, anything where the data has rules, has to be validated, and connects to other records. Where SharePoint is a document store with a site around it, Power Pages is a database with a website around it.
A side-by-side
SharePoint site
Power Pages
Tap any row to see why it matters.
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§ 01 Built for Employees and internal teams External users, customers, the public
Why it mattersAudience shapes everything that follows. Once you know who has to open it, the rest of the answers fall into line.
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§ 02 Who can open it Signed-in M365 users (outside guests must sign in too) Anonymous visitors, or signed in via Microsoft, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn
Why it mattersA SharePoint site cannot be public. If a stranger needs to read or submit something without logging in, that's the door, and only one of the two products goes through it.
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§ 03 Data behind it Documents, libraries, SharePoint lists Dataverse (Microsoft's relational database)
Why it mattersFiles and lists work for content people read. Dataverse is the answer when the data has rules, has to be validated, and connects to other records, like an application that turns into an account.
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§ 04 Best at Collaboration, intranet, document management Forms, self-service portals, public-facing sites
Why it mattersEach is good at what it was built for. Forcing one into the other's job is the most common way these projects go over budget.
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§ 05 Design control Templated, modern SharePoint look Full web design, branded pages
Why it mattersSharePoint trades flexibility for speed of setup. Power Pages trades speed for control. Pick which trade you can live with.
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§ 06 Cost Included in your Microsoft 365 plan Separate capacity licensing (~US$200 per 100 signed-in users / month)
Why it mattersThis is the surprise. Power Pages is a new monthly cost line. SharePoint isn't. That alone decides a lot of the borderline cases.
The cost difference is real
This is the part that surprises people. A SharePoint site is already paid for. It’s part of your Microsoft 365 subscription, so spinning one up costs nothing extra.
Power Pages is licensed separately. You pay per website, per month, by capacity. People who sign in are billed in packs of 100. Anonymous visitors are billed in packs of 500. List pricing sits around US$200 for a pack of 100 signed-in users, or roughly US$4 per user on pay-as-you-go. Numbers move and Canadian pricing differs, so check current figures before you budget. The dollar amount matters less than the shape: Power Pages adds a new ongoing cost line. A SharePoint site doesn’t. That on its own decides a lot of cases.
Three real scenarios
Concrete cases land better than principles. Three you’ll recognise:
- A staff handbook with policies, forms, and a few news posts. Everyone reading it works for you and has a Microsoft 365 login. Mostly documents, a bit of light navigation. SharePoint communication site. No extra cost, fastest to stand up.
- A registration page for a community workshop. Anyone on the open web should be able to find it and sign up. Sign-ups need to land in a database so you can email everyone the day before. Power Pages. SharePoint can’t be anonymous, and the data wants to live somewhere structured.
- A portal where outside contractors submit weekly safety check forms. Contractors aren’t on your M365 plan. Submissions need to be tracked as records, reviewed, and approved. Power Pages. Buying contractors M365 licences just to use SharePoint costs more than the Power Pages capacity does.
So, which one?
Build a SharePoint site when:
- The audience is your own staff, plus maybe a few signed-in guests.
- The job is documents, collaboration, news, or an intranet.
- Everyone involved already has a Microsoft 365 login.
- You don’t want to add a new licence line.
Build it in Power Pages when:
- The audience is outside your organization and shouldn’t need a work account.
- You’re collecting structured data through forms, applications, registrations, bookings, tickets.
- You need a branded, designed, public-facing site.
- The data belongs in Dataverse so Power Apps or Dynamics can act on it.
The grey zone: the employee portal
There’s one case where both look plausible: an internal portal. Here’s the simple tiebreaker.
If every person who’ll use it has a Microsoft 365 account, build it as a SharePoint communication site. It’s free, it’s faster to stand up, and it’s where your documents already are. Only reach for Power Pages if you genuinely need people without M365 licences to get in, seasonal staff, contractors, volunteers, the public, or you need form-driven data going into Dataverse rather than files sitting in a library. Don’t pay for Power Pages to rebuild something SharePoint gives you for nothing.
A related question that often comes up alongside this one: if the answer is SharePoint, should a small per-row action be a Power Automate flow or just a button in the list view? For that split, see SharePoint Quick Steps vs Power Automate.
Bottom line
Don’t start from the tool. Start from the people. Write down who has to use it and whether they already have a work login. If they’re inside the wall, it’s a SharePoint site, and you’ve already paid for it. If they’re outside it, and especially if you’re capturing structured data from them, it’s Power Pages. The names trip people up more than the decision does, once you keep that question in mind.