Workflow automation compared: build it yourself or have it done.

All five have a visual editor, and AI helps with the building: Copilot in Power Automate, Zapier Copilot, Maia in Make and n8n Assistant turn a description into a draft, and UiPath names Autopilot and coding agents as starting points. Zapier Copilot and Maia are in beta, n8n Assistant is a preview. [3][7][13][16][23] Reviewing the draft and taking responsibility for it is up to you; n8n, for example, advises always reviewing generated workflows before production use. [23]

With nara, you describe the process the way you would explain it to a colleague: form, steps, approvals, permissions. nara builds it, shows every step, tests it in a simulated run and goes live after your approval. Your team learns it within days.

A built workflow does what was defined when it was built. When an API, a role or a rule changes, someone has to adjust it. Power Automate turns off cloud flows that fail continuously for 14 days. [5] With version 3.0, n8n removes older nodes; workflows that use them fail after the upgrade, and a migration report lists the affected ones beforehand. [22]

With nara, you say what should change, for example: “From now on, the head of department approves orders from €3,000.” nara adjusts the process, shows you the change and applies it after your approval.

Classic workflows follow the path you modeled. For deviations, you set up error paths, retries and notifications yourself; Make has dedicated error-handling modules for this. [15] AI agents decide more freely within a workflow and pass difficult cases to people, at UiPath through Action Center. [8]

nara works with the person who made the request. If something is missing, such as the cost center, nara asks. Anything that needs experience or a decision goes to your team, with everything that has already been clarified.

All five offer approvals. In Power Automate, approvers respond in Outlook, in a Teams card or in the action center; after 30 days of run time, pending steps of a flow time out, approvals included. [4][5] With UiPath, people review and decide agents' escalations in Action Center. [8] Zapier notifies by email or Slack; approvers need a Zapier account, and on the Professional plan approval requests can only go to yourself. [12] n8n asks before an AI agent's tool calls, for example in Teams, Slack or by email. [21] Make offers a human-in-the-loop app that sends review requests through Slack or email, for example; Make assigns it to Make Enterprise. [18]

With nara, you decide which steps need approval and who gives it. The responsible person approves where they already work: in Teams, by email, by phone or in the portal.

Auditors want to see who ran and approved what and when, even months later. Power Automate keeps the run history of cloud flows for 30 days; responses to approvals stay in the approvals history. [4][5] Zapier keeps Zap history for 29 to 69 days; an audit log comes with the Team plan for 6 months and with Enterprise for one year. [11][14] UiPath lists retention of 2 years on Standard and 5 years on Enterprise. [7]

With nara, every case is in the ticket: who made the request, what nara did, who approved and with what result. That keeps every case traceable for internal audit, data protection and the works council.

Zapier stores data on AWS servers in the United States and does not offer EU-only storage. [14] With Make, you choose a data center in the EU or the US when you set up, and it cannot be changed afterwards. [17] n8n Cloud stores data in Frankfurt; self-hosted, you decide the location. [19] UiPath runs an EU region and, from the Standard plan, also offers operation on your own servers. [7][10] If certain AI models for agents are not available in the EU, UiPath routes the model processing to the US or to global deployments. [10] In Power Automate, the AI for environments in Germany runs within the EU Data Boundary. Microsoft lists the designer Copilot among the features whose data may leave the region if you allow it. Flex routing can then run the AI outside the EU Data Boundary at peak load; it is on by default for eligible tenants created after 25 March 2026, and you can turn it off. [6]

nara is developed and hosted in Germany. AI processing takes place exclusively in the EU, and your data is not used for training. For large enterprises, nara can run entirely in your own data center, AI included.

Zapier charges per task, Make per credit, n8n per execution, Power Automate per user or bot and UiPath per user and robot. [1][7][11][15][19] With Zapier, if pay-per-task is on, extra usage costs 1.25 times the task rate on annual plans and 2.5 times on monthly plans; otherwise Zaps stop at the limit. [11] Calculate with your expected volume and add building, maintenance, operation and a ticket system.

With nara, the complete ITSM costs €2.50 per employee per month, €1.75 from the 1,001st employee, with every module and unlimited IT agents. The nara plan comes on top, from €1,500 per month with a fixed allowance.

Many processes start as a request: access, a laptop, an order. Workflow tools start a run from a trigger and connect a ticket system such as ServiceNow through connectors. [2][15] Status, SLAs, follow-up questions and history then live in a second system.

nara is a complete ITSM, from the ticket system and service catalog with approval chains to change management, SLAs, the CMDB with discovery and client management. Request, resolution and audit trail sit in one system. If you want to keep your ITSM at first, you start nara alongside it.

Power Automate runs the flows your teams have built, such as notifications or document approvals. nara takes your employees' requests in Teams, by phone, in the portal and by email, resolves them in your systems and on the device, and sees the ticket through to closure. Existing flows keep running, and nara triggers them where it fits. Whatever nara handles better, you move over step by step.

For many cases, yes. Classic RPA robots follow steps that someone defined in advance and run as licensed bots on machines you assign them to, one flow per bot at a time. [1] nara works with systems with or without an API, including older software on internal servers through nara Edge. It starts from what the employee needs, collects approvals and logs every action in the ticket.

Zapier stores data on AWS servers in the United States and transfers data from the EU under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; it does not offer EU-only storage. [14] Whether that is enough is a call for your data protection team. nara is developed and hosted in Germany, its AI runs exclusively in the EU, and your data is not used for training. We provide documents for data protection, information security and the works council.

Yes. nara connects any system, with or without an API, and can trigger existing workflows. Proven flows keep running while nara takes the requests, collects approvals and documents every case in the ticket.

The complete ITSM costs €2.50 per employee per month, €1.75 from the 1,001st employee, with every module and unlimited IT agents. The nara plan comes on top, from €1,500 per month with a fixed allowance. As long as your old ITSM contract runs, you pay nothing for the ITSM, for up to 12 months.

nara works alongside your existing system within one to two weeks. You set up the first process yourself or together with us, and your team builds the next ones. You don't need developers or a center of excellence for this. The full ITSM switch with ticket history, knowledge articles and assets takes about six weeks.

As of October 2026, last checked on 19 Oct 2026. Information from the vendors' public documentation, pricing pages and help pages; prices as stated on the pricing pages. nara is one of these vendors too. Microsoft, Power Automate, Copilot, Copilot Studio, Office 365, Teams, Outlook and Entra are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. UiPath is a trademark of UiPath, Inc. Zapier is a trademark of Zapier, Inc. Make is a trademark of the Celonis group of companies. n8n is a trademark of n8n GmbH. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their owners. Something out of date? Let us know through the contact form.