Power Automate

Power Automate is Microsoft's answer to Zapier. You build a flow (Microsoft's name for an automation): when something happens, like an email arriving in Outlook or a form being filled in, it does the next steps for you, like saving the attachment to OneDrive, posting in Teams and adding a row to Excel. Copilot is built into the editor, so you can describe the flow in a sentence and it drafts the steps for you to check.

It goes further than most automation tools in two ways. It has approvals built in, so a leave request or invoice can wait for a manager to click Approve in Teams or Outlook before the flow carries on. And Power Automate for desktop records and replays clicks and typing on a Windows PC, so it can work old software that has no way to connect to anything. That second kind is called RPA (robotic process automation).

The catch is that it's built for Microsoft offices. Flows that only use standard apps like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel come with most Microsoft 365 business plans. Anything outside that, like Salesforce or a custom web request, is a premium connector and needs the $15 a month Premium licence per person. The editor is also busier than Zapier's, and Microsoft's licensing takes some reading.

• Office managers
• Ops teams
• IT teams
• Finance teams
• Large companies

Offices that already run on Microsoft 365 and want approvals, email handling and file admin to happen on their own.

• Cloud flows

  Start a flow from an email, a form, a file change or a schedule, then do the next steps across Microsoft 365 and 1,000+ other apps.

• Copilot

  Describe what you want in your own words and Copilot drafts the flow, then helps you edit or fix it.

• Approvals

  Send a request to a manager in Teams or Outlook, and the flow waits for Approve or Reject before it carries on.

• Desktop flows

  Record clicks and typing on a Windows PC and replay them, so the flow can work apps that can't connect any other way.

• Templates

  Hundreds of ready-made flows, like saving Outlook attachments to OneDrive or getting a Teams alert for new Forms responses.

• Mobile app

  Check runs, approve requests and start a flow with a button from your phone.

• Included with Microsoft 365

  Included in most business plans

  Offices that only need flows between Microsoft apps.

  • Cloud flows with standard connectors like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel
  • Approvals and templates
  • Power Automate for desktop on Windows for your own PC
  • A 30-day trial of Premium features
• Our pick

  Premium

  $15 per user/mo, billed yearly

  People who need flows that reach apps outside Microsoft.

  • Premium and custom connectors, like Salesforce and web requests
  • Desktop flows that run while you're at your PC
  • Process mining to spot slow steps
  • 250 MB of Dataverse database storage

• Process

  $150 per bot/mo, billed yearly

  Businesses running one key process all day without a person watching.

  • Unattended desktop flows on your own machine
  • One flow run at a time per bot
  • Cloud flows for that process

• Hosted Process

  $215 per bot/mo, billed yearly

  Teams that want the bot on a virtual machine Microsoft manages.

  • Everything in Process
  • A Windows virtual machine hosted by Microsoft on Azure

Prices in USD unless noted, checked 3 November 2026. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on their site before you buy.

Ways Power Automate can slot into your week.

1. 1

   File every invoice email

   When an email with "invoice" in the subject lands in a shared inbox, save the PDF to a SharePoint folder and add a line to an Excel tracker.

2. 2

   Leave and expense approvals

   A Microsoft Forms request goes to the manager in Teams. Once they approve, the flow updates the spreadsheet and emails the staff member.

3. 3

   New client setup

   When a deal is marked won, create the client folder in SharePoint, a channel in Teams and a welcome email in Outlook.

4. 4

   Old software data entry

   A desktop flow copies orders from a spreadsheet into an old accounting program on Windows, row by row, so nobody has to.

If your business lives in Outlook, Teams and SharePoint, Power Automate is the automation layer you already own. Pair it with Microsoft 365 Copilot for writing and summaries, and keep Zapier or Make only if your main apps sit outside Microsoft.

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