Stay ahead of the game with the latest updates to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program
February 2024 Update: At this time, we are limiting access to the Microsoft 365 developer subscription to developers and/or organizations with active subscriptions to Visual Studio Enterprise. The following Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program participants can contact their Microsoft partner to be added to an allow list to receive access to a developer subscription:
- ISV Success
- Solutions Partner
- Specialization/Expert
- Managed Partners
- Premier or Unified Support plan members
If you do not currently qualify for a developer subscription, you can purchase a single license Microsoft 365 plan and configure it for development. You also have the option to purchase a Copilot license as an add-on. Members who currently have a subscription are not affected by this change.
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The Microsoft 365 Developer Program is an excellent resource for developers looking to create solutions for the Microsoft 365 platform. The program offers a Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription, access to sandbox environments, and a range of developer tools and documentation. Additionally, members have the opportunity to provide feedback to help shape the future of the platform.
Program updates
We value your trust. As part of the Microsoft Secure Future initiative, we’ve made the following improvements to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.
Updated service plans. The Microsoft 365 developer subscription now includes service plans that were previously missing. For a complete list of the service plans that are included, see Product names and service plan identifiers for licensing.
Geographic limitations. For technical and security reasons, the Microsoft 365 Developer Program only supports a subset of countries/regions listed here: Microsoft 365 International Availability. We review our supported country list regularly. If you are unable to sign up from your country or region, then it means we do not support it at this time.
More frequent renewal checks. To offer a higher level of service to our valued customers, we are shortening the time between renewal checks. Renewal depends on meeting developer activity requirements and following our terms and conditions. This subscription should never be used for production purposes. Data can be removed, and membership suspended if we find violations of the terms and conditions.
Removal of the Microsoft Office 365 E3 Developer offer. We’re finishing the process for removal of the original Office 365 E3 developer offer. If you are one of our first developer program members and you are still using the old subscription, you must migrate to a new paid plan before April 1, 2024. Compare Microsoft 365 Plans | Microsoft 365.
Early access to new and improved services. Have you been caught off guard by a feature update or code change in your production tenant? The developer program is switching to preview mode. Coming soon, you can preview features in the Microsoft 365 Developer E5 subscription. This change will give you early access to updates and new features to test existing solutions, plus an opportunity to provide feedback to the product team to help reduce disruption before the change is generally available.
For more information about the Secure Future Initiative, see the following:
- Announcing Microsoft Secure Future Initiative to advance security engineering | Microsoft Security Blog
- Microsoft Built-In Security – Secure Platforms | Microsoft
Microsoft 365 developer research panel
We are creating a research panel of Microsoft 365 developers who can help guide us and influence the program development. By joining, you can help us determine and prioritize upcoming features, share your challenges, review design prototypes, and offer suggestions for program improvement. When you join the panel, we’ll reach out to you to share designs and a variety of studies to get your feedback.
As part of the research panel, you will receive invitations to participate in user research studies. You can decide how often you want to participate and which studies to do. You can leave the panel at any time.
Join the Microsoft 365 developer research panel today!
Follow us on X (Twitter) / @Microsoft365Dev and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest developer news and announcements.
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156 comments
We have been waiting for over a month now for an update and you said it would take 2-3 weeks in January, @Kelly? Could you please tell us when Microsoft Developer Program will be back online? We have several apprentices that need a trial tenant for education purposes and it’s soon time for them to take the exam. This is an embarrassment for one of the biggest tech companies out there. At least give us a roadmap, we need reliable information!
Unfortunately, support for universities, training schools, and self-learners going through coursework was not intended to be a supported scenario for the Microsoft 365 developer program except specifically for learning to develop on the Microsoft 365 platform. During this recent shift in program delivery, we discovered that many universities and schools of all types rely on this program to provide access to a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription for educational purposes. I have shared this need to my EDU contacts but I do not have any news to give.
Changes in the overall security landscape required us to accelerate our shift to a Zero Trust Model, resulting in a negative impact to those customers we cannot verify at this time, such as students. As we continue adapting to this model, we will continue to evaluate access to this offering and provide ongoing updates.
Kelly on this very blog post you previously linked this article, which is from the EDU Developer Blog, which describes how to setup a dev tenant using the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. Another example of this whole situation being unaligned.
EDU Development Tenant Maybe this is useful for you
In your blog article you write “If you do not currently qualify for a developer subscription, you can purchase a single license Microsoft 365 plan and configure it for development.”
Can you point me to docs/instructions on how to do that?
Any infos are appreciated.
You have different options. These two links should help you compare:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/microsoft365-plans-and-pricing?rtc=1
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products?rtc=1
There are several options for preparing your subscription depending on the workload. Here are a couple of examples:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/concepts/build-and-test/prepare-your-o365-tenant
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/set-up-your-developer-tenant
It has now been over two months, and not a single Microsoft resource can help us get a Developer tenant. We are an ISV, enrolled in the ISV Success program. We are also a Microsoft Partner and MSP.
Our ISV contact has zero idea about what an “Allow list” is. Our Partner page shows that we are entitled to the Microsoft E5 developer tenant, but when we try to sign up it tells us we don’t qualify.
I feel like I am in an echo chamber.
I will try and ask one more time:
What do we need to do to get a developer tenant?
We have tried:
-Contacting our ISV account resource. (They don’t know and blame this issue on a technical issue that he hopes Microsoft will one day fix)
-Contacted Visual Studio / Partner support. They are unsure what to do.
-Commented on this thread earlier asking for guidance.
Frustrating when the website isn’t even updated to reflect any of these changes either. If this is your experience as an ISV/MSP/Partner, then I have no hope for getting into this program at any point ever 🙁
@Chris Davis, please have your ISV account resource reach out to me directly.
Hey,
I am about to get in a new job. Currently I want to prepare a bit with a dev tenant. I am not sure which licence I need to get such a tenant. Can anybody help here?
Do I need a Visual Studio Subscription? Or is there a cheaper way? I do not want to spend a huge amount of money just to learn and prepare.
Thank you
Hi there,
I have been using the “Microsoft 365 Developer Program” sandbox tenant for quite a while now, not always very intensively but for development it is key in my daily work. I really loved this sandbox.
The following happened, and maybe there is a relationship with what I have read here:
Due to personal reasons, I was unable to use it for a couple of month, this ended with a not working sandbox subscription that was unable to deleted by the process and I was not able to recreate a new one.
After contacting multiple support departments, the only advice that I was given was to delete my profile, wait 24 hours and create it again, I had still no luck.
But suddenly, without any notice my “Microsoft 365 developer subscriptions” status changed in a “Deleted subscription”.
I received mail from Microsoft that I am a trusted developer and that my membership includes a special developer Microsoft 365 E5 subscription.
So here is/are the question(s): How can I now get my sandbox (re-)created, is there any support department that I can contact to solve this problem because all support departments I have spoken to ended up with “we don’t support this question”. Feeling a bit lost in the Microsoft maze.
PS I couldn’t sign in with my normal used Microsoft account in this devblog (Undefined error. Try again) therefor I am now posting this with a google account.
Thanks in advance for any answers.
BRGDS Eric
Email dfxipsup@microsoft.com, provide error details and the name of your existing sandbox. They *may* be able to reactivate it.
Thanks,
I will contact them.
BRGDS
Dear Kelly,
Is the mail address “dfxipsup@microsoft.com”, that you gave me, being monitored?
I have sent a mail 10 days ago but i did not receive any reply at all.
any alternative mail addresses would be helpful.
Thanks in advance for any answers.
BRGDS Eric
I have costumer that is currently using this program asking me this question, what is causing him to suddenly not qualify if he´s already a user and if I as a partner need to put him in the “Allow List” how do I that:
We have been using the Microsoft 365 Developer Program for our students and so far it has been possible to create an E5 developer tenant without any problems.
These tenants have since renewed themselves every 90 days indicating that they are in use. Now, on the other hand, almost all the tenants that students have had access to have expired, despite the fact that this is active and is being used in a teaching environment that Microsoft encourages.
Developer Program | Microsoft 365 Dev Center
On this page you can create a tenant, but now an error “Thank you for joining. You don’t currently qualify for a Microsoft 365 Developer Program sandbox subscription.”
Microsoft seems to have blocked the possibility of creating new tenants unless you, as a Partner, ask to put us on the “Allow List”
Latest updates to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program
This is what I read from this. Do you know anything more about this and is there anything that can be done to allow our users to create a developer tenant again?
and/or organizations with active subscriptions to Visual Studio Enterprise.
What does it mean? Does it mean it’s only needed one VSE subcription per tenant or every user in tenant must have VSE subscription?
You mentioned in the update that the 365 developer program is currently limited to
to developers and/or organizations with active subscriptions to Visual Studio Enterprise
Does that mean that if I purchase the $1200 Visual Studio Professional today, I still wouldn’t qualify for the sandbox?
I need a sandbox in order to continue development, but I don’t think my company can afford the $6000 visual studio enterprise just so I can get a sandbox. What is the cheapest way for me to get the sandbox?
you also mentioned that “If you do not currently qualify for a developer subscription, you can purchase a single license Microsoft 365 plan and configure it for development”
Does that mean that if I purchase a single 365 plan, I can create a sandbox?
I am also interested, will a Visual Studio Professional annual subscription be enough?
“At this time, we are limiting access to the Microsoft 365 developer subscription to developers and/or organizations with active subscriptions to Visual Studio Enterprise.” — Does that indicate that this is a temporary solution, and the subscription will be open for everyone again sooner or later? Can we get an approximate ETA? Or will it stay exclusive to VSE subscribers? Thanks for your answers in advance.
For what is worth,
Following advice from this blog i purchased one license of Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan.
Yes, i can develop apps but it is not “the sandbox” with 20 fake users like it used to be. I have one user in my “sandbox”, me.
if i want to work with more users or more devices i need to purchase more licenses. Other than that “feature”, everything i wanted is there.
It is depressing knowing that, if i wanted equivalent of what i had in the old DEV tenant i would probably have to spend more than $100 a month.
First month of M365 plan is free and it includes 25 licenses during that first month so i’d recommend to anyone who has time to signup, test, and if needed, cancel within first 30 days.
Maybe someone else can discover the way to actually convert Single subscription to DEV Subscription. I couldn’t find anything like that.
very useful information, thank you!