It would be great if developer instances for Dynamics 365 were a little more accessible in the same way that they are for Salesforce. Currently, you can create a demo instance for 30 to 90? days which can work, but when your application development on Dynamics starts to become complex there can be significant overhead in having to setup new development environments that often. A yearly license might be easier to swallow but still seems like it could incur unnecessary overhead. This can result in using regular licensing models which may not be as feasible for developers that are new to the platform. Salesforce is a logical alternative since developers can create an instance that is limited to 2 users and very limited on data usage and processing.

Another alternative might be an on-premise installation, but currently this would only work on Server SKUs of Windows where it might not make much sense to run that on developers machines, or add the overhead of VMs and/or hardware. This would also have the drawback of not being up-to-date with the latest code updates for online Dynamics.

With Microsoft's history for developer focus, this is one area where it would be great to see some better options than what the competition offers. Please consider adding an option for more permanent developer instances that can be used to maintain and enrich complex applications intended for App Source.