Microsoft Power Automate pros and cons
An honest review of Microsoft Power Automate covering what it does well, where it falls short, and which alternatives might work better for your team.
Workflow automation sits at the center of how modern teams operate. Here’s how we think about it.
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Summary
- Power Automate handles repetitive, low-effort tasks well - Things like sorting notifications, copying data between apps, and sending alerts can run on autopilot, freeing people for work that requires judgment and creativity
- Beginners get a head start with templates and connectors - The platform ships pre-built flows and recommends app pairings, which helps if you’ve never touched automation before
- Three flow types cover most scenarios - Automated flows trigger on events, scheduled flows run at set times, and button flows fire when someone taps a button manually
- Serious limitations emerge at scale - You can’t chain flows together, can’t reorder steps once built, and debugging gets painful fast. Explore workflow automation options
Microsoft’s automation tool has been through a bit of an identity crisis. It started life as Microsoft Flow, got renamed to Power Automate, and somewhere along the way picked up a handful of other product names that confused everyone. I’m going to call it Power Automate throughout, because that’s what it says on the box right now. At its core, Power Automate is a cloud-based system for building automated workflows between apps. The idea is simple - connect the tools you already use so data moves without anyone copying and pasting things manually.
The rebrand from Flow to Power Automate also brought it under the broader Power Platform umbrella alongside Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agents, which means Microsoft is clearly betting on this ecosystem as a unified low-code development suite. Whether that bet pays off for your team depends entirely on how deep you already are in the Microsoft stack.
What Power Automate does
Power Automate connects to roughly 1,000 apps and services, though the real sweet spot is the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, Excel - that’s where the magic happens most naturally.
We’ve built a connector for Power Automate too - check out our integrations page if that’s relevant.
The pitch is straightforward: take repetitive tasks off your plate. Email sorting, data collection, approval routing, notifications - the kind of work that eats hours without requiring any real thinking. Say you’re collecting survey responses through Microsoft Forms. Instead of manually exporting results and filing them somewhere, Power Automate grabs the data and stores it for you. One less thing to remember.
The platform divides flows into three types:
- Automated flows - triggered when something happens. A file gets updated, everyone gets notified.
- Scheduled flows - run at specific times. Daily digest of upcoming events, weekly report generation.
- Button flows - someone presses a button, something happens. Manual trigger, automated execution.
There’s also a decent template library for people who don’t want to build from scratch:
What works well
Power Automate has genuine strengths, especially if your team already lives inside Microsoft’s ecosystem.
Connectors link your apps together. The trigger-based approach lets you wire up workflows across different tools. Connect Outlook to SharePoint, sync Teams with your CRM, push form responses into a database. For non-technical people, the visual builder is approachable enough that you don’t need IT to set things up.
Data sharing becomes automatic. Once flows are running, information moves between apps without anyone lifting a finger. A colleague emails you a file - it automatically lands in SharePoint. Simple, and it works.
Custom connectors extend the reach. If a connector doesn’t exist for your tool, you can build one by describing the API you want to connect. Link Twitter to Power Automate and get notified whenever someone mentions your brand, for instance.
Priority email filtering. With 200+ emails hitting your inbox daily, Power Automate can flag the ones that matter. Set up a flow that alerts you when specific people send messages - your CEO, a key partner, whoever needs your attention first.
Multiple pricing tiers. There’s a free option bundled with Microsoft 365 for basic personal flows. Paid plans start at $15 per user per month for Power Automate Premium, with process automation bots at $150/bot/month and hosted RPA at $215/bot/month. Add-ons like AI Builder ($500/unit/month) and Process Mining ($5,000/tenant/month) exist for enterprise needs.
Where it falls apart
Here’s where I get frustrated. Power Automate has real limitations that become painful the moment you try to do anything beyond basic app-to-app triggers.
You can’t chain flows together. Want a second flow to kick off after the first one finishes? Too bad. You’re building from scratch each time. Every exception, every variation - defined separately. For a tool that promises “work less, do more,” that’s a lot of repetitive work.
You can’t reorder steps. This one drives me crazy. Build a flow with three steps, then realize you need to insert something between steps one and two? You can’t. Either live with the wrong order or start over. In feedback we’ve received, this single limitation pushes more teams away from Power Automate than anything else.
Flows aren’t portable. Create a flow that notifies you when Mark submits his report. Now you want the same flow for Jessica’s work too. You can’t just modify it - you’re rebuilding the whole thing. reviews on Gartner Peer Insights shows this rigidity is one of the most common complaints.
Approval emails break. HTML formatting in approval emails doesn’t render correctly. Bold tags show up as literal </b> text. Images display as broken frames with red X icons. You can’t see comments on approval emails, and there’s no way to tell who clicked “approve.” These issues have persisted for years.
Debugging is a nightmare. Error messages lack depth. When a complex flow with dozens of actions breaks, tracking down the problem feels like finding a needle in a haystack. G2 reviewers consistently flag this as a major frustration.
Bigger picture on automation tools
This is where I think the entire category of middleware tools - Power Automate, Zapier, Make, IFTTT - misses something fundamental.
These tools move data between apps. That’s useful. But they don’t help you define, track, or improve the actual human processes behind your work. Who’s responsible for what? Where’s the bottleneck? Did anyone follow the right steps?
At Tallyfy, we built something different. Instead of wiring apps together with triggers, we focused on tracking and automating the work itself - the tasks, the handoffs, the decisions. Drag-and-drop connectors are the floppy disks of integration. That’s where automation is heading.
Something I’ve noticed across industries with operations teams, the pattern is consistent: people start with tools like Power Automate for app-to-app data syncing, then realize they still need something to manage the human workflow side. The two approaches complement each other.
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How Power Automate compares to alternatives
Here’s a quick breakdown of the main options:
IFTTT is the simplest of the bunch. One trigger, one action. Great for home automation and personal use. Free tier available. But it’s single-action only - you can’t get both a Slack message and an email from the same trigger. Not built for business complexity.
Zapier connects to 7,000+ apps - roughly 7x more than Power Automate. The learning curve is gentler. Multi-step workflows (“Zaps”) work well. But costs add up fast with per-task pricing, and you’re still just moving data between apps.
Tallyfy takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of connecting apps, it tracks and automates the workflow itself - who does what, when, in what order. Templates are reusable, steps are rearrangeable (imagine that), and the whole system is designed for people who aren’t developers. Based on hundreds of implementations, we’ve found that teams typically need both an integration tool and a workflow tool - they solve different problems.
| Features | Power Automate | IFTTT | Tallyfy | Zapier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| App connections | ~1,000 (Microsoft-centric) | Hundreds (IoT and consumer focus) | 1,000+ via integrations | 7,000+ (broadest coverage) |
| Best for | Microsoft 365 heavy teams | Personal and home automation | Human workflow tracking | Cross-app data syncing |
| Workflow complexity | High (within Microsoft) | Single-action only | Complex human workflows | Multi-step data flows |
| Pricing model | Per user/month + add-ons | Free and paid tiers | Per user/month with free trial | Per task pricing (adds up fast) |
| Human workflow tracking | No | No | Yes - core feature | No |
Workflow templates you can automate
What I’d tell someone choosing today
If your team runs on Microsoft 365 and you need basic app-to-app automation, Power Automate is fine. It’s probably already included in your license. Use it for email routing, data syncing between SharePoint and Teams, simple approval triggers.
But if you’re trying to manage actual business processes - onboarding, compliance workflows, approval chains involving multiple people - you need something designed for that. Power Automate connects apps. It doesn’t track work.
My honest advice? Use both. Power Automate for the plumbing between Microsoft apps. Tallyfy for the actual process management - who does what, where things stand, what’s overdue.
And keep an eye on where this whole space is heading. The era of manually configuring triggers and connectors is ending. AI is making it possible to describe what you want automated in plain language and have it built for you. We’re working on exactly that at Tallyfy, and it’s going to make drag-and-drop flow builders feel as outdated as fax machines.
Related questions
What is Microsoft Power Automate used for?
Power Automate turns repetitive tasks into automated workflows. Think of it as a robot assistant that handles the boring stuff - sending emails, copying files, gathering data - so you don’t have to do it manually. It can save email attachments to folders, notify your team when forms get filled out, or sync data between apps.
Is Power Automate free?
Sort of. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can build basic flows using standard connectors at no extra cost. But most teams end up needing premium connectors, which means paying $15 per user per month. RPA bots and AI add-ons cost significantly more. Check Microsoft’s pricing page for current details.
Is Power Automate worth it?
It depends on what you’re automating. For Microsoft-to-Microsoft data syncing, it’s solid. We built Tallyfy because we kept seeing with workflow automation, we’ve observed that teams save 2-4 hours per week on routine tasks after setting up basic flows. But the setup time is real, debugging is painful, and it won’t help you manage human workflows. The true question isn’t whether Power Automate is worth it - it’s whether trigger-based automation alone solves your problem.
How long does it take to learn Power Automate?
Basic flows take a few hours to figure out. Most people get comfortable within 1-2 weeks of regular use. Complex flows with lots of conditions and branching logic? That’s 2-3 months of practice. The visual builder helps, but the learning curve steepens quickly once you move past simple triggers.
Can Power Automate replace human workers?
No. And I think framing it that way misses the point entirely. Power Automate handles repetitive, rule-based tasks. It doesn’t think, judge, or create. It takes the drudgery out of your day so you can focus on work that requires a human brain. The goal isn’t fewer people - it’s people doing better work.
What are the main limitations of Power Automate?
The biggest ones: you can’t chain flows together, you can’t reorder steps after building them, debugging complex flows is frustrating, and there are daily limits on how many actions a flow can run. It also works best within Microsoft’s ecosystem - non-Microsoft app support exists but isn’t as smooth. For tracking human processes rather than just app-to-app data movement, you’ll need a different tool.
About the Author
Amit is the CEO of Tallyfy. He is a workflow expert and specializes in process automation and the next generation of business process management in the post-flowchart age. He has decades of consulting experience in task and workflow automation, continuous improvement (all the flavors) and AI-driven workflows for small and large companies. Amit did a Computer Science degree at the University of Bath and moved from the UK to St. Louis, MO in 2014. He loves watching American robins and their nesting behaviors!
Follow Amit on his website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, X (Twitter) or YouTube.
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