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Microsoft Power Automate vs Nintex
March 19, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
16★
Microsoft Power Automate (earlier Microsoft Flow) - is a versatile automation platform that integrates seamlessly with hundreds of apps and services and allows users to create custom workflows without coding through a drag-and-drop interface.
10★
Nintex is the market leader in end-to-end process management and workflow automation. Easily manage, automate, and optimize your processes with no code.
Microsoft Power Automate and Nintex are, at first glance, remarkably similar—like two competing alien civilizations that have independently discovered fire, the wheel and the ineffable desire to automate everything in sight. Both promise to liberate office workers from the tyranny of manual tasks, allowing them to build workflows with the sort of effortless simplicity that usually takes a team of consultants and a nervous breakdown to achieve. They both integrate with all the usual suspects—SharePoint, Salesforce, Dynamics 365—because it turns out that even automation needs to be automated. And, crucially, both are designed for people who would very much like to feel like programmers without actually having to learn how to program.
Power Automate, originally known as Microsoft Flow (because “flow” sounds much more zen than “automate”), was unleashed upon the world in 2016 and later rebranded in 2019, presumably to make it sound more serious. Being a Microsoft product, it is deeply enmeshed in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, which means it’s fantastic if you happen to live inside that particular walled garden and somewhat less fantastic if you don’t. It also takes a particular shine to robotic process automation (RPA), presumably so that the robots will have something to do while they wait for their inevitable uprising.
Nintex, on the other hand, hails from the distant shores of Australia and has been around since 2006, which in software years makes it positively ancient and therefore wise in the ways of business process automation. While it started off as a SharePoint-focused tool, it quickly grew beyond that, developing an almost unnerving knack for document generation and process intelligence. Where Power Automate aims to be approachable to the common folk, Nintex instead leans into the more complex, enterprise-level needs of organizations that find joy in the phrase “business process management.” Whether that joy is real or just an elaborate coping mechanism is up for debate.
See also: Top 10 BPM Software
Power Automate, originally known as Microsoft Flow (because “flow” sounds much more zen than “automate”), was unleashed upon the world in 2016 and later rebranded in 2019, presumably to make it sound more serious. Being a Microsoft product, it is deeply enmeshed in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, which means it’s fantastic if you happen to live inside that particular walled garden and somewhat less fantastic if you don’t. It also takes a particular shine to robotic process automation (RPA), presumably so that the robots will have something to do while they wait for their inevitable uprising.
Nintex, on the other hand, hails from the distant shores of Australia and has been around since 2006, which in software years makes it positively ancient and therefore wise in the ways of business process automation. While it started off as a SharePoint-focused tool, it quickly grew beyond that, developing an almost unnerving knack for document generation and process intelligence. Where Power Automate aims to be approachable to the common folk, Nintex instead leans into the more complex, enterprise-level needs of organizations that find joy in the phrase “business process management.” Whether that joy is real or just an elaborate coping mechanism is up for debate.
See also: Top 10 BPM Software
