Power Platform | Power Automate or Logic Apps or both?

If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.

– Deepak Chopra

Sometimes, making a decision inside your project isn´t an easy task. When it comes back to using low-code- or pro-code tools, it remains true as well. We all have been into those situations – using a screwdriver to put a nail on a concrete wall? Well, an easy ask, but what if you have at least two hammer looking almost the same – which one to use? Sledgehammer or fitter´s hammer? In simpler words – which tool for the job?

Above visual outlines the home of Microsoft Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Power Automate, which is important to keep in mind in terms of your preferences and preferred way of going forward. Why?

Same, as I used above example from a DIY project at home, you could ask inside your project: Logic Apps or Power Automate or both? And why is Microsoft making an offer for both?

I guess the last question is an easy to answer – providing options and freedom of choice to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. The first question though remains a not so easy ask. From the visual earlier, you could think of this being a question of PaaS vs. SaaS. Based on conversation with customers, I‘d say multiple factors come into play here.

From an earlier post you might have recognized me talking about a step out of seeded licensing offer. What I mean by seeded, is using Power Automate as being part of your O365/M365 licensing. Logic Apps is for sure something that needs to be licensed individually. For that, Microsoft is offering a cost estimator which can be used as a guidance. In case of Logic Apps, you´ll be asked for providing estimates on actions, standard and enterprise connector, optional data retention and if you consider Logic Apps to be used as integration tool some additional parameter. Almost same as with Power Automate, when it comes to connectors, there´s a classification in place.

In the past, if you would have asked Microsoft to provide an answer for which tool to go with, the debate would have been started with personas deriving the answer. If we would ask pro-developers, their preferences could be on the Logic Apps side, due to features like Visual Studio integration or application lifecycle management. If asking Citizen developers their preference might be going with Power Automate instead. Today, you could take a look at information shared, such as this – that aims to help you with a comparison and decision. But what about the myth of Power Automate being way to expensive, if individual licensing is needed?

Let´s say there´s a use-case identified that causes a trigger or connector that is classified as „premium“. In this case, as of writing this article, we got 4 paths to follow:

• Your flow logic is part of a Power Apps application and you therefore could go with Power Apps licensing
• Your flow logic is part of an intelligent chatbot and you go with Power Virtual Agents licensing
• Your flow should be used individually and therefore you go with the „per User“ Power Automate licensing
  (Note: you got two options in here, with attended RPA incl. or without RPA)
• your flow is going to be used by a department and you consider a „per flow plan“ licensing instead.

All of above paths causes different costs while addressing different needs and purposes. An example: While writing this article the list price for a „per User“ Power Automate license is 12,60€ per user / month or 0,41€ per day [12,60€ *12 / 365 = 0,41€]. This would allow individual users to create unlimited flows based on their unique needs.

Running the same definition with Logic Apps, the math is a little different: Every time a Logic App definition runs the triggers, action and connector executions are metered. Prices are therefore given per execution. That adds a complexity to a comparison, would you agree? We cannot simply compare the price estimation for Logic Apps with the above price for Power Automate licensing. Above pricing would be needed to narrow down to per execution level for a true comparison.

Is there a way for us doing so? Some say yes, let’s take a closer look into the pricing matrix again and find something like „Active flows per user“. For the given license it says „unlimited“ with a reference to usage being subject to service limits. Please review https://aka.ms/platformlimits for more details. That link provides us an information of 5.000 API requests / 24 hours.

If now it would be possible to count the number of API requests within a single flow you could do the math and find out the max amount of flows that could be called within given limits. You would then return to the Logic Apps cost estimation and do the math on the same amount of execution per day. And you would have a true comparison between pricing? Well, you got closer.

The problem with the API limits is that there’s no hard cut off. So technically you could fire more than 5k without running into issues beside a throttling.

Could ROI be our friend then? ROI is a popular metric, because of its versatility and simplicity.

ROI = (Current Value of Investment − Cost of Investment​​) / Cost of Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) Definition (investopedia.com)

Sometimes, it can be hard to use this formula. Comparing Power Automate with Logic Apps, you would need to define what „unlimited“ creation of flows means to you or your company in terms of the current value of investment. So while Logic Apps is a per execution decision, clearly above mentioned tells us Power Automate is aiming to cover more than a single use-case in terms of how it is licensed.

Defining more than one use case, of course you could do a price estimation for Logic Apps as well – don’t get me wrong. And yes, pricing in terms of licensing costs still could look way more attractive then Power Automate until you reach a certain amount of executions of flow definitions.

As I outlined in today´s title, this article is not about Power Automate for each and everything. You’ve found a price difference between both? Can you now find the arguments of why using the fitter’s hammer? Find a couple of useful challenger question:

• Who is your main audience to serve? Professional developers, Citizen developers or both?
• What’s your preferred model IaaS, PaaS or SaaS or a mixture?
• Are you talking about a single-use case only or multiple use-cases?
• Do you prefer the main Governance happening via Azure only, or do you wish to allow a Governance Team to setup DLP policies?
• What could be additional methods for determining value?

Making the business case is a challenger. Until then,…