Make vs Power Automate: Your Apps or Your Microsoft Licence

The short answer: if your company already runs on Microsoft 365 and the flow lives in Outlook, Teams and SharePoint, start with Power Automate: work accounts can build cloud flows with standard connectors at no extra cost, and Power Automate Premium is $15.00 per user a month paid yearly, checked on 26 October 2026 on Microsoft's pricing page. If your marketing stack is SaaS from many vendors, such as ad platforms, a CRM outside Dynamics and a shop, Make covers more of it on one canvas, with 3,000+ native apps and a Free plan of 1,000 credits a month (Make pricing).

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What Power Automate changes is where the bill comes from. It is licensed per person or per bot, and part of it may already be paid for inside your Microsoft contract. Make is billed by usage in credits, whoever builds.

Before you switch:

1. Price the people, not the runs. For example, three marketers on Premium cost 3 x $15.00 = $45.00 a month, or $540 a year, paid yearly, per the pricing page. Each Premium user gets 40,000 Power Platform requests per 24 hours, against 6,000 for users whose only licence is Microsoft 365 (request limits).
2. Check the licence you already hold. Basic Power Automate is included for work or school accounts: the Free licence creates and runs cloud flows, without sharing, on standard connectors only (licence types). If every connector your flow needs is a standard one, approvals included, you may need nothing new.
3. Know which counter to watch. Power Automate limits requests per user in a sliding 24-hour window, and a user over the limit sees flows slow down (request limits). Make counts credits per module in each run (operations guide).

Feature by feature

The differences that count

The licence you may already own

Microsoft's approvals connector is a standard connector, so any licence with standard connectors, Office 365 included, can build approval flows (approvals). For a team living in Teams and SharePoint, that is a working automation tool before any purchase. Make starts from zero on licences and has no tie to any one office suite.

Sign-off as a built-in step

Power Automate's Start and wait for an approval action supports four approval types plus sequential approvals, and the flow waits for the answer before it continues (approvals). For a marketing team, that fits legal review of a claim, or a manager signing off a budget change. On Make, the person in the loop is a step you design, for example a Slack message with a draft attached.

Where your other apps live

If the CRM is HubSpot, leads arrive from Meta and LinkedIn forms and orders come from Shopify, the deciding question is which of those apps each tool connects natively. Make lists 3,000+ native apps (Make pricing); Power Automate lists more than 1,000 connectors and lets you build custom ones (Power Automate). Look up your five most-used apps in both before deciding.

An AI step with Microsoft's own approval

Microsoft documents this pattern. A flow runs the Run a prompt action, which generates text with a GPT model through Azure OpenAI, then the Start and wait for an approval of text action sends that text to a person as suggested text they can edit before the flow continues (prompt in a flow). Applied to marketing: the prompt drafts a reply to a partner enquiry, a named approver edits or approves it, and only then does the send step run. Microsoft notes the prompt capability is limited to some regions, so check yours. Make's equivalent is its agent saving a Gmail draft and posting it to Slack for you to send (outreach agent).

What each costs

Power Automate, checked on 26 October 2026 on Microsoft's pricing page, all paid yearly:

Microsoft adds that prices on the page are for marketing purposes and the actual price shows at checkout. Make's plan prices are drawn by a script behind a security check and could not be read from its pricing page on 26 October 2026; its text confirms the Free plan's 1,000 credits and that annual payment costs less than monthly.

The free tier stops at standard connectors, and the first premium connector in a flow is where a paid licence begins (licence types). That is how a bundle is designed: the free part is wide enough to build on, and the paid line sits one connector away. Past that line the licence is counted in people, so each colleague whose flow needs a premium connector adds $15.00 a month, paid yearly. List the connectors your flow needs before you start, not after.

Try it on what you have

Build the flow first on the Free licence your work account already carries, using standard connectors, and run it for two weeks. If it needs a premium connector, the 30-day trial covers premium features (Power Automate). Build the same flow on Make's Free plan, then note which of the two reached all five of your apps without a workaround.

Choose Make if your job is

• Connecting marketing SaaS from many vendors on one visual canvas.
• Paying by usage rather than by the number of people who build.

Choose Power Automate if your job is

• Automating work inside Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Excel or Dynamics.
• Routing content or spend through formal approvals, or automating a desktop app with no API.

If the real question is whether marketing should follow IT's Microsoft estate at all, that is a stack decision rather than a tool one, and a one-week review such as the Startup Fixer, which I sell, is built for it.

FAQ

Is Power Automate included in Microsoft 365?

Partly. Work and school accounts can use basic capabilities at no cost, and other Microsoft 365 licences include a limited set; premium connectors need Premium or a Process licence (licence types).

What happens when a flow uses up its request limit?

The user's flows slow down; capacity is tracked per user or per flow over a sliding 24-hour window and cannot be pooled (request limits).

Can Make build a scenario from a description?

Yes. Maia, in public beta on paid plans, creates and edits scenarios from a prompt, and each reply uses credits (Maia).