Microsoft Power Apps vs a Custom App

Where Power Apps is the right tool

Power Apps sits inside the Microsoft ecosystem most companies already license. Canvas apps let a business analyst lay out screens and write logic in Power Fx, an Excel style formula language. Model driven apps generate forms and views from tables in Dataverse. Power Automate handles approvals and background flows, apps can be pinned in Microsoft Teams, and sign in runs through Entra ID with no extra accounts. For a vacation request form, an equipment checkout log or an expense approval routed to a manager, Tepia usually advises clients to start there.

Power Apps is a good fit when:

• Every user is an employee with a Microsoft 365 account.
• The data already sits in SharePoint lists, Dataverse, Excel or SQL Server.
• The app is a form, an approval or a simple tracker used at a desk or in Teams.
• IT has set up environments and data loss prevention policies so citizen builders stay inside guardrails.

Limits teams run into with Power Apps

The same tight Microsoft integration that makes Power Apps quick also shapes where it struggles. Tepia sees these issues in companies whose Power Apps footprint has grown for a few years:

• Delegation limits on large lists. When a query cannot be passed to the data source, canvas apps work with only the first 500 rows by default, up to 2,000, so searches and counts on big SharePoint lists can silently miss records.
• Complex canvas apps get slow. Dozens of screens, nested galleries and heavy formulas lead to long load times on older phones and tablets.
• External users. Customers, patients or dealers do not have Microsoft 365 accounts. Power Pages covers some portal needs, but a branded mobile app in the stores is a different product.
• Field conditions. Offline support is available but takes careful design, and continuous barcode scanning, Bluetooth devices and background location are easier to do well natively.
• Ownership. A critical app built by one analyst in a personal environment becomes a risk when that person changes roles.
• Release discipline. Moving solutions between development, test and production environments works, but many organizations never set it up, so changes go straight to live users.

A common case Tepia sees: a facilities team builds a canvas app for building inspections on a SharePoint list. It works well for two years, then the list passes a few thousand rows, inspectors start working in basements with no signal, and the analyst who built it moves to finance. Nothing about Power Apps failed, but the app now needs an owner, a real database and an offline design.

Power Apps vs a custom app, criterion by criterion

Tepia uses this comparison with IT leaders deciding where a particular app should live. Neither column is better in general; each wins for a different kind of app.

Governing citizen built apps before they become critical

Gartner expects most low code builders to sit outside IT, and that matches what Tepia sees inside Microsoft 365 companies. The healthy response is not to ban citizen apps but to sort them. Tepia helps IT teams inventory every Power App and flow, then place each in one of three groups: personal productivity apps that can stay as they are, departmental apps that move into managed environments with a named owner, and business critical apps that warrant a rebuild with tests and a support plan.

Rebuilt apps do not have to leave Microsoft. Tepia commonly builds a React web app on Azure App Service with an Azure SQL or PostgreSQL database, Entra ID for sign in with multifactor authentication enforced, and Microsoft Graph for calendars, files and Teams notifications. The approval flows that work fine in Power Automate can stay, triggered by the new app’s API. See our single sign on and identity integration and Microsoft 365 Copilot extensions pages for related work.

How Tepia approaches Power Apps and custom app projects

The six Tepia phases stay the same; what changes is which parts of your Microsoft estate we keep.

1. Discovery: an export of your Power Platform inventory, a look at environments, connectors and data loss prevention policies, and interviews with app owners and users. Deliverables include an Investigation Summary that sorts apps into keep, govern or rebuild, an Interview Summary, and User Stories for each app chosen for a rebuild.
2. Design: a design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide and wireframes, including Teams and mobile layouts where staff will use them.
3. Development and Testing: Alpha and Beta releases on Azure, with functional, user acceptance and non functional test plans covering load times, accessibility and sign in policies.
4. Training: remote or in person sessions for end users, plus a handover for IT on monitoring and identity settings.
5. Launch: migration of SharePoint or Dataverse records, retirement of the old Power App, and support reps during the switch.
6. Support: bug tracking, quick response on issues and a channel for feature requests from departments.

Discovery is typically 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and launch about one month. Learn more about our process or talk to Tepia.

Frequently asked questions