What is the difference between a managed and an unmanaged solution in Power Platform?
By Emil Björk · Microsoft business apps consultant, Gothenburg
An unmanaged solution is editable — the right shape for active development in a dev environment. A managed solution is a locked, deployable package — the right shape for test and production environments. Deploying unmanaged solutions to production is the single most common Power Platform ALM mistake, since it leaves production directly editable with no change tracking.
Unmanaged solutions let a maker add and edit components freely, which is exactly what you want while building — but that same editability in a production environment means changes can happen outside any release process, with no clean way to package or roll them back.
Managed solutions are exported from a development environment and imported as a locked layer in test and production; components can be customised on top (a managed layer) but the base solution itself isn't directly editable, which is what makes a clean upgrade or rollback possible.
The practical rule: build and iterate in an unmanaged solution in a dedicated dev environment, then export as managed for every environment downstream of it — never develop directly in what will become a managed target.
Go deeper
- Solution patches vs solution upgradesHow patches and upgrades differ in Power Platform solution lifecycle — what each does, when to use which, and the trade-offs across layers.
- Solution dependencies and managed layer conflictsHow solution dependencies work in the Power Platform — required components, layer stacking, conflict resolution, and the maintenance discipline.
- Power Platform ALM with managed solutionsApplication lifecycle management on the Power Platform — solutions, managed vs unmanaged, environments, pipelines, and source control.