Power Automate vs Zapier vs Make: which suits a small business?

If your business runs on Microsoft 365 and most of what you want to automate happens in Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and Excel, start with Power Automate: most Microsoft 365 business plans already include it. Zapier is the quickest way to connect lots of non-Microsoft apps. Make suits more complex workflows with lots of branches and data handling. They charge in different ways, so the cheapest one depends on how much your automations run.

What each one is good at

Power Automate is Microsoft’s automation tool. It works with the same sign-in, the same admin centre and the same Microsoft 365 data you already have. Microsoft’s own apps, including Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Excel, Forms, Planner and Approvals, are “standard” connectors, which Microsoft 365 business plans can use at no extra cost.

Zapier is built for connecting apps quickly. It lists more than 9,000 apps, and in our experience its step-by-step editor is the easiest of the three for someone who’s never automated anything. A Zapier automation is called a Zap: something happens in one app, and Zapier does something in others.

Make uses a visual canvas where you draw the workflow, called a scenario, as connected modules. It handles branching, loops and reshaping data well, which makes it popular for workflows that would get awkward elsewhere.

How the pricing works

At the time of writing, Microsoft lists Power Automate Premium at £11.50 per user a month plus VAT, paid yearly. Zapier and Make publish their plan prices on their own sites, and they change, so check before you commit.

To see how usage adds up, take an example: 30 enquiries a day, each going through a four-step automation, over 22 working days. That’s about 2,640 steps a month. In Zapier or Make that counts towards your plan’s allowance. In Power Automate, if every step uses standard Microsoft connectors, it’s covered by the licences you already pay for.

Working with Microsoft 365

Power Automate has the edge here because it’s part of Microsoft 365. It can watch a shared mailbox, save files to the right SharePoint folder, post in a Teams channel and send approvals, without your data passing through another company.

Zapier and Make both connect to Microsoft 365 too, including Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and Excel, and Zapier can watch a shared mailbox. The difference is that your emails and files then pass through another supplier’s cloud, so it becomes a data processor you need to check and cover with a data processing agreement.

Connecting to non-Microsoft apps

This is where Zapier and Make earn their keep. Both connect to large catalogues of business software, and Make can also connect to almost any system with a public API.

Power Automate connects to many non-Microsoft apps too, but some connectors are premium. Microsoft says any premium, on-premises or custom connector needs a standalone Power Automate licence. Before you pick a tool, list the systems you most want to connect, such as your accounts package, CRM or practice management system, and check each one has a connector in the tool you’re considering, and which tier it’s on.

Where AI fits

• Power Automate: Copilot can build and edit flows from a plain-English description, such as “when an email arrives with an invoice attached, save it to SharePoint”. AI steps inside a flow, like reading a document or running a prompt, are paid for separately, through Microsoft’s Copilot Credits, which are replacing the older AI Builder credits.
• Zapier: its built-in AI helper, Zapier Copilot, is included even on the free plan, and AI steps inside a Zap use tasks from your plan. Zapier Agents and chatbots are sold as add-ons.
• Make: Make AI Agents sit alongside the fixed steps of a scenario, and features that use Make’s own AI provider can use more credits than ordinary steps.

The AI step is usually where the real value is: reading an email or document and working out what it is. It’s also where mistakes happen, so anything going to a client should be checked by a person. That’s the thinking behind our inbox automation.

Who should look after your automations

Automations need an owner. Suppliers change their email layouts, passwords expire, connections need signing in again, and processes change. Every tool here has the same risks:

• Flows tied to one person. In Power Automate, a flow that runs in the background is tied to the account that owns it: it uses that account’s limits and, usually, its connections. If that person leaves and their account is removed, the flow can stop. Use a dedicated account for anything business-critical.
• Nobody knows what exists. Five people building Zaps over two years can leave dozens of automations nobody understands. Keep a simple list: what each one does, who owns it and what it connects to.
• Silent failures. Make sure failure alerts go to someone who’ll act on them.

For most small firms, the choice is a trained person in-house, your IT provider, or a monthly support arrangement. What matters is that it’s someone’s job.

When to use none of them

Sometimes a custom build is the better answer:

• High volume. Per-task or per-credit pricing can climb quickly at thousands of runs a day.
• Complex logic or documents. Reading varied documents, handling exceptions and checking results is often cleaner in code than in a long chain of steps.
• Testing and records. When you need proper testing, logging and version history.
• No connector. When the system you depend on isn’t supported.

And sometimes the answer is not to automate at all. A task done twice a month rarely justifies the effort. Our workflow automation glossary entry covers the basics.

The short version

• Mostly Microsoft 365: Power Automate.
• Lots of different cloud apps and a need for speed: Zapier.
• Complex, multi-branch workflows: Make.
• High volume, documents or critical processes: consider a custom-built automation.

If you’d like a straight answer for your business, our free automation audit looks at your systems and tells you which automations are worth building and which tool fits each. On Monthly AI Support, we build and look after the automations for you.