Compare / Microsoft
Rutba vs Dynamics 365 Business Central
The default when the business already runs on Microsoft. The comparison is really about how many Microsoft licences the whole picture needs.
Checked 1 September 2026Dynamics 365 Business Central ↗
What Dynamics 365 Business Central is
Microsoft’s mid-market ERP — financials, supply chain, sales and service — generally deployed with a partner and sitting alongside Microsoft 365 for the workspace and Power Platform for extension.
Who it genuinely suits
- Businesses already committed to Microsoft 365, Entra ID and the Power Platform
- Companies with a Microsoft partner they trust
- Anyone whose reporting is built in Power BI and is staying there
Where they win
What Dynamics 365 Business Central does better than us.
Every comparison page on this site has this section and none of them is empty. If it were, you would be right to discount the rest of the page.
It is already where your identity is
If your organisation runs on Entra ID and Microsoft 365, that integration is worth real money and real friction avoided.
The Power Platform
Power BI, Power Automate and Power Apps are a serious extension story with a large skills market. We have nothing equivalent.
Procurement is easy where Microsoft is already approved
Adding to an existing enterprise agreement is a smaller decision than adding a vendor.
Where we win
What Rutba does that this does not.
Argued from how the products are built rather than from a feature list, because feature lists are the part of a comparison that goes stale first.
One vendor for the business and the day, not two
The Business Central answer is Business Central plus Microsoft 365 plus, usually, a partner. Rutba is one subscription covering both halves.
You can buy it without a partner
Business Central is overwhelmingly sold and implemented through partners. That is a strength when you want one and a cost when you do not.
Licence arithmetic
Essentials against Premium, team member licences, per-app plans, and the Microsoft 365 tier underneath — the total is a calculation. Ours is a subscription per product.
And the one that is not a feature
Microsoft will not build what you ask for. We will.
That is not a criticism of them — a vendor at their scale has to weigh your request against every other customer it touches, and schedule it behind a roadmap set a year out. Your request is a rounding error in their planning, honestly so. We are small, and the people building the product are the people you talk to: what helps everyone goes into the product at no extra charge, what is specific to you is quoted as the work it is, and when the answer is no you get the reason.
Side by side
The same six questions the hub asks of everyone.
| Question | Rutba | Dynamics 365 Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Runs the businessCRM, stock, orders, production and the ledger, from one vendor | Included | Included |
| Runs the dayMail, files, documents, chat and meetings, included rather than licensed separately | Included | Extra vendor or licence |
| One set of recordsDo the modules share the records, or integrate copies of them | Included | Included |
| Buy it yourselfCan you subscribe and start without a partner or a sales cycle | Included | Partly |
| Parts sold separatelyCan you take one piece without committing to the platform | Included | Not covered |
| Run it yourselfIs there a path to your own hardware | Partly | Partly |
On price: We do not reproduce Microsoft’s prices here. A list price is published and fair to quote, and it is stale within a quarter — which would make this page quietly wrong in a way you could not see. Read today’s number from them, and ours is on our pricing page in full, tier by tier.
Moving
What leaving Dynamics 365 Business Central actually involves.
The question that decides this is not whether you should move but whether you can. This is the honest version, including the parts that do not come across.
- 1
Financial and master data migrate through standard export and import; this is well-trodden ground.
- 2
AL extensions and any partner customisation do not port.
- 3
If Power BI reporting is load-bearing, plan for rebuilding it before you plan for anything else.
- 4
Your Microsoft 365 tenancy can stay while you evaluate — our mail and files do not require you to move on day one.
No customer has done this yet. The steps above describe the mechanism — what exports, what imports, what has to be rebuilt — rather than a migration we have run. When one has been run, this section will say whose it was.
Our actual recommendation
If you are deep in Microsoft and it is working, stay. The comparison is worth making if you are paying for Business Central and Microsoft 365 and a partner retainer, and the total has stopped looking like mid-market pricing.
If you did move
The products this comparison is about.
With their real availability labels, which apply inside a comparison exactly as they do everywhere else on this site.
Note before you compare: Rutba Mail, Rutba Drive are not generally available yet. Any row above that we win on them is a claim about what ships, not about what you can buy today.
Rutba Books
Available nowAccounting & bookkeeping software
Invoicing, bills, banking and reconciliation on one side; the ledger, tax, budgets and the financial reports on the other — fed automatically by every sale, pay run and stock movement happening elsewhere in the business.
- Two apps on one ledger - the daily bookkeeping surface and the accountant’s workbench, neither hiding anything from the other
- Sales invoices, bills, receipts, supplier payments and credit notes, with per-line tax
- Bank statements read in whatever your bank emits - CAMT.053, MT940, OFX/QFX or CSV - and matched, with reconciliation that must reach zero
Includes: Books · Accounts
From $14 per user / month
Rutba Inventory
Available nowInventory management & warehouse (WMS) software
Stock levels, multi-location transfers, stocktakes, and valuation — the single source of truth every other part of the business reserves and deducts against.
- Live stock across unlimited locations and bins
- Transfers with in-transit visibility
- Scheduled and rolling stocktakes with variance reporting
Includes: Stock · Warehouse Control
From $22 per user / month
Rutba Orders
Available nowOrder management (OMS) & delivery software
The order hub where web, counter, and phone orders all land — picked, packed, dispatched, delivered, and returned, with a rider app for the last mile.
- One queue for web, counter, and phone orders
- Pick and pack workflows with stock reserved automatically
- Delivery runs assigned to drivers, tracked live
Includes: Orders · Rider
From $19 per user / month
Rutba CRM
Available nowCRM & sales pipeline software
Track leads from first contact to signed quote, keep every conversation attached to the customer it belongs to, and run your support desk off the same contact record your sales team uses.
- Lead capture, scoring, and pipeline stages you define
- Quotes and proposals that convert straight into orders
- Shared customer timeline — calls, emails, and tickets in one thread
Includes: CRM · Helpdesk · Customer Portal · Marketplace
From $18 per user / month
Rutba Mail
Early accessBusiness email hosting
Real hosted mailboxes at your own domain — inbound delivery, storage, IMAP, and a web client — where every message can attach itself to the customer or order it concerns.
- Mailboxes at your own domain (@yourcompany.com)
- Web client, plus IMAP for Outlook, Apple Mail, or your phone
- Spam filtering and inbound delivery handled for you
Includes: Webmail · Mail Gateway
From $4 per mailbox / month
Rutba Drive
Coming soonCloud file storage & sharing
Folders, sharing, permissions, and version history for the whole organization — with attachments from your orders, tickets, and documents living in the same place as everything else.
- Folders and files with real version history
- Sharing governed by your organization roles, not stray links
- Org-wide storage quotas you control
Includes: Drive · Drive API
From $5 per user / month
Head to head
Dynamics 365 Business Central against the others.
You are comparing Dynamics 365 Business Central to something, and it may well not be us. These are written to the same standard as this page — sourced, dated, and naming where each product wins.
Weighing this against Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Tell us what you run and how you use it. We will be specific about what would improve, what would get worse, and whether the move is worth it at all.