How to get 3 Business Central Cloud Sandboxes for $6 per month

In this video, I show how you can sign up for a minimal Microsoft 365 tenant and use that to get access to a trial version of Business Central, all for the low, low price of $6 per month. Check out the video:

https://youtu.be/EiT_wMJNdi4

In this video, Erik walks through the step-by-step process of getting up to three Business Central Cloud sandbox environments for just $6 USD per month. This is a follow-up to a video he made nearly three years ago about getting a free Cloud sandbox — a method that Microsoft no longer supports. While not free anymore, this is the cheapest way Erik knows of to get access to a real Business Central Cloud environment with all the bells and whistles.

Why Not Just Use Docker?

Before diving into the steps, Erik addresses a common question: “Why not just use a Docker image?” While Docker is great for many development scenarios — and with version 22, Microsoft expanded what you can do with a Cronus license in Docker without an official dev key — there are significant limitations. Docker sandboxes don’t support the integration bits with the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem. A real cloud tenant gives you SharePoint, Teams, Exchange, OneDrive, and all the other Microsoft 365 services that Business Central can integrate with.

Step 1: Create a New Microsoft 365 Tenant

The starting point is signup.microsoft.com. This is where you create a brand new Microsoft tenant. You don’t want a personal Microsoft account (the old Live or Outlook.com accounts) — you need to sign up for Microsoft 365.

You’ll see four different plan options. The cheapest one that works is Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which comes in at $6 USD per month (approximately $7.70 CAD at the time of recording). The first month is free, though you do need to provide a credit card.

Key Requirements for Signup

  1. Email address: You need to provide an email that is not already associated with an existing Microsoft tenant. It needs to be an email address that Microsoft doesn’t already know about.
  2. Phone number: Microsoft will send a verification code via text message to confirm your identity.
  3. Tenant name: You’ll choose your .onmicrosoft.com subdomain. In Erik’s case, he created something like hogaardplayground.onmicrosoft.com.
  4. Credit card: Required even for the free first month.

Once you complete the signup, you’ll have a fully functional Microsoft 365 Business Basic tenant with one user.

Step 2: Start a Business Central Trial

With your new tenant ready, navigate to trials.dynamics.com. Ignore all the other Dynamics products — the one you want is Business Central.

Sign in with your new tenant account. Microsoft will recognize you as an existing customer. Follow the prompts (skip the surveys and invitations) and Business Central will begin provisioning.

Important: The Business Central trial includes a 30-day trial-within-a-trial feature. Don’t start that — just let the standard trial run. It will essentially last indefinitely as long as your Microsoft 365 subscription remains active.

Step 3: Create Your Sandbox Environments

Once Business Central is provisioned, you’ll have a production environment ready. But as the video title promises, you can also create sandbox environments. From the Business Central admin center, create a new environment:

  • Type: Sandbox
  • Country: Your choice (Erik selected Canada)
  • Version: Select the available version (22.1 in the video)

You can create up to three sandbox environments, plus you get the production environment — so four environments total.

Step 4: Connect Visual Studio Code

While the sandbox is preparing, you can set up your AL development environment. Erik demonstrates creating a new AL project targeting the cloud sandbox. Here’s the sample app.json configuration:

{
  "id": "9a607e85-dc9f-4a35-bf01-d32c8064f07b",
  "name": "cloudsandboxfor6bucks",
  "publisher": "Default publisher",
  "version": "1.0.0.0",
  "brief": "",
  "description": "",
  "privacyStatement": "",
  "EULA": "",
  "help": "",
  "url": "",
  "logo": "",
  "dependencies": [],
  "screenshots": [],
  "platform": "1.0.0.0",
  "application": "22.0.0.0",
  "idRanges": [
    {
      "from": 50100,
      "to": 50149
    }
  ],
  "resourceExposurePolicy": {
    "allowDebugging": true,
    "allowDownloadingSource": true,
    "includeSourceInSymbolFile": true
  },
  "runtime": "11.0",
  "features": [
    "NoImplicitWith"
  ]
}

The key steps for connecting VS Code to the cloud sandbox are:

  1. Set the target to Cloud Sandbox in the AL project setup.
  2. Copy the tenant ID from the URL in the Business Central admin center.
  3. Add the tenant ID to your launch.json file.
  4. Clear the credential cache and run Download Symbols.
  5. Authenticate through the browser when prompted.

And here’s a simple AL extension to verify everything works:

pageextension 50100 CustomerListExt extends "Customer List"
{
    trigger OnOpenPage();
    begin
        Message('App published: Hello world');
    end;
}

Once the sandbox finishes preparing (it takes a few minutes), you can download symbols and start developing.

What You Get for $6/Month

This setup gives you far more than just Business Central. Because you have a real Microsoft 365 tenant, you also get:

  • Business Central — production environment plus up to three sandboxes
  • SharePoint Online — a fully functional SharePoint site
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Exchange Online — a real mailbox
  • OneDrive — with 1 TB of cloud storage
  • Office Online — Word, Excel, PowerPoint in the browser

This is what makes the cloud sandbox approach so much more valuable than Docker for integration-heavy development scenarios. All of the connections between Business Central and the broader Microsoft ecosystem are available and functional.

Summary

For just $6 USD per month (free for the first month), you can have a fully functional Business Central cloud development environment with up to three sandboxes and a production environment, backed by a complete Microsoft 365 tenant. The process takes about 10–15 minutes: sign up for Microsoft 365 Business Basic, start a Business Central trial through trials.dynamics.com, create your sandbox environments, and connect Visual Studio Code. It’s the cheapest way to get a real cloud sandbox where all the integration features work just as they would in a customer’s production environment.

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