Power Automate is excellent inside Microsoft. Most estates are not only Microsoft.
If your work lives entirely in Microsoft 365, Power Automate is already there and hard to argue with. The case for anything else begins at the edge of that estate, and at the licensing model: seats to count, and the connector you need sitting behind a premium tier at the moment you need it.
Power Automate is the natural choice for automating Microsoft 365 itself. Flomation is for the processes that cross out of it, on a plan where every connector is already included.
At a glance
Where each one is strongest depends almost entirely on how much of your estate is Microsoft.
| Flomation | Power Automate | |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing model | By execution time, on a plan you can read in one line. No per-user seats, and no premium tier for the useful connectors. | Seats and per-flow licensing, with some connectors classed as premium. |
| What's included | All 3,585 actions and AI nodes on every plan, including the free one. | The standard connectors, with premium ones requiring the appropriate licence. |
| What that changes | The process you design is the one the work needs, because nothing in the catalogue is gated. | What gets built is shaped by what the tenant is licensed for. |
| Microsoft 365 | Actions for Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams and Graph. | Unmatched. Deepest possible integration, including Dataverse and the wider Power Platform. |
| Everything else | 3,585 actions across AWS, databases, Git, payments, messaging, accounting and UK public data. | A large connector catalogue, with the depth concentrated in Microsoft services. |
| Desktop RPA | Not offered. Desktop actions drive a virtual machine over SSH, which is a different thing. | Mature. Desktop flows are a genuine strength. |
| Forms | Multi-page forms with conditional logic, payment, uploads, translation and an embed SDK for any site. | Through Microsoft Forms or Power Apps. |
| Getting started | Sign up and build. Nothing to license first. | Depends on what your tenant already includes and what your administrators allow. |
Checked against both products on 24 August 2026.
Where the two part company
The decision is rarely about features. It is about the shape of your estate and what your licence lets you do inside it.
Licensing shapes what gets built
When useful connectors sit behind a premium tier and cost is counted per user, the automation people build is the automation their licence allows, and the good idea dies at the procurement step rather than the design step. Billing on execution time with the whole catalogue included means the shape of the process is a design decision again.
Estates are rarely one vendor
The processes that hurt tend to be the ones crossing between the Microsoft side and everything else: the AWS account, the Postgres database, the supplier portal, the public register. Flomation treats those as equals rather than as the far side of a boundary, which is usually where the manual steps have collected.
People outside the tenant
Approvals in Teams work beautifully for staff. They work less well for a supplier, an applicant or a member of the public who has no account with you. Forms on their own URL, approvals by link, and agents on the channel somebody already uses cover the part of the process that reaches outside the organisation.
When Power Automate is the better choice
For a lot of organisations it is the right answer, and this page should say so plainly.
- Your estate is Microsoft 365 end to end, and the processes you want to automate live entirely inside it.
- You need desktop RPA to drive Windows applications that have no API. Power Automate is mature here and we do not compete.
- Dataverse, Power Apps or the wider Power Platform are already part of how you build.
- The licensing is already paid for, and your governance is set up to approve Microsoft services and nothing else.
- Your approvals happen in Teams and everybody involved is comfortable there.
If you do move
Most organisations run both rather than replacing one with the other, and that is a reasonable end state.
- 01Keep the flows that only touch Microsoft 365 where they are. There is no prize for moving them.
- 02Move the ones that cross the boundary first, because they are the ones fighting the premium connector tier.
- 03Anything shelved because a connector was premium is worth revisiting, since the whole catalogue is included here.
- 04Start with a process that involves somebody outside your tenant, where Teams approvals do not reach.
Other comparisons
Same approach, different product. Each one says where the other tool wins.
Start where the estate ends
Pick the process that crosses out of Microsoft and stalls. Build it here, keep everything else where it is, and see whether the split makes sense.
Start freeZapier, Make, n8n and Power Automate are trademarks of their respective owners. Flomation is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them. Everything on these pages describes how the products are built rather than what they cost, because pricing and packaging change often. Check the current details with each vendor before you decide.