Power Automate vs Zapier vs Make: which should a UK business use?

If you've decided to automate some of the manual work in your business, the next question is what to build it on. Three names come up again and again: Microsoft Power Automate, Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat). They all connect your apps and run automations — but they're aimed at different situations, and picking the wrong one can cost you in licence fees or wasted effort.

Here's an honest, jargon-free comparison for a typical UK small business.

The short answer

• Already living in Microsoft 365? Power Automate is usually the right choice.
• Stitching together lots of non-Microsoft SaaS tools? Zapier is the easiest.
• Want power and value for complex, high-volume flows? Make is hard to beat.

Power Automate

Microsoft's automation tool, and the natural fit if your business runs on Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel. It's included (in some form) with most Microsoft 365 business plans, so you may already be paying for it. It goes deep into the Microsoft world and handles approvals, document workflows and email beautifully.

Best for: teams on Microsoft 365 who want approvals, document handling and email automation — like an automated approval workflow or AI email triage.
Watch out for: "premium" connectors (and AI features) can need a paid add-on, so check licensing before you build.

Zapier

The friendliest of the three, with the biggest app library — thousands of tools connect out of the box. If your stack is marketing and SaaS apps (Mailchimp, HubSpot, Shopify, Slack, Google Workspace), Zapier wires them together in minutes.

Best for: non-technical teams connecting lots of cloud apps quickly.
Watch out for: pricing is per "task", so high-volume automations get expensive, and it's shallower than the others on complex logic.

Make

The most powerful for the money. Make gives you a visual canvas where you can build genuinely complex, multi-step automations, and its pricing (per "operation") is usually far cheaper at volume than Zapier.

Best for: complex or high-volume flows where you want control and value.
Watch out for: a steeper learning curve — it's more capable, but less hand-holding.

How to actually choose

Forget the feature lists and ask three questions:

• Where does your work already live? If it's Microsoft 365, Power Automate avoids new subscriptions and integrates deepest.
• How complex is the automation? Simple app-to-app: Zapier. Complex, branching, high-volume: Make or Power Automate.
• What's the running cost at your volume? Cheap to pilot can get pricey at scale — check the per-task or per-operation maths before committing.

The best tool is the one that fits where your business already works — not the one with the longest feature list.

The takeaway

For most UK businesses we work with — who are already on Microsoft 365 — Power Automate is the sensible default, often topped up with AI for the smart bits. But Zapier and Make each win in the right situation, and we'll always recommend the one that actually fits, not the one we'd most like to build on.