Nintex vs Power Automate: Renew, Rebuild, or Run Both

If your workflows live in Microsoft 365 and mostly move SharePoint items, documents, and approvals between people who already have Microsoft 365 licenses, rebuild them in Power Automate. You already pay for most of what they need, and a second automation platform is a second set of skills, admin, security review, and invoices.

Keep Nintex, or move deeper into it, when it is doing work Power Automate does not do well on your licenses: heavy forms that live outside Microsoft 365, document generation and e-signature at volume, long-running processes measured in months, orchestration across several non-Microsoft systems, or an on-premises SharePoint Server Subscription Edition farm you intend to keep. Many organizations end up with both for a while. That is fine as long as it is a decision with an end date, not inertia with an invoice.

If you only remember one rule: decide per workflow, not per platform. The platform question answers itself once you know what each workflow does, who depends on it, and when it last ran.

Most "Nintex vs Power Automate" articles were written when both platforms were stable choices. Three dates changed that.

Nintex Workflow for Office 365 ended. Nintex announced in December 2023 that the product would reach end of support in December 2025, because it depended on the SharePoint 2013 workflow engine in SharePoint Online. Microsoft removed that engine from all tenants on April 2, 2026. Nintex's recommended path was its cloud platform, not a patch.

Nintex Forms for Office 365 needed a move. The legacy forms app was built on the SharePoint Add-In model, which Microsoft retired for all tenants on the same day. Nintex's guidance was to move every form to its SPFx-based app before April 2; forms left on the Add-In stopped opening.

SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 left support. July 14, 2026 ended extended support for both, along with SharePoint Designer 2013 and InfoPath 2013, per Microsoft's lifecycle pages. Nintex has said it has not announced end of life for Nintex for SharePoint 2016, and it still lists Nintex for SharePoint 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition as supported products. That is worth knowing and easy to misread: a supported Nintex add-on running on an unsupported SharePoint farm is still an unsupported farm. Our SharePoint Server and InfoPath exit plan covers what that means for the farm itself.

So the real question depends on where you start:

Nintex is a family of products, and which one you own matters. Nintex for SharePoint is the on-premises add-on most long-time customers started with: workflows and forms that run inside a SharePoint Server farm. Nintex Automation CE, the cloud platform, is Nintex's current focus: workflow, forms, apps, document generation and e-signature, and, as of its 2026 releases, agentic orchestration, in one cloud service that connects to Microsoft 365 among many other systems. Nintex Automation K2 is the on-premises platform Nintex positions for organizations that need strict data control.

Power Automate is Microsoft's automation service. Cloud flows run in Microsoft's cloud and connect to SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, Approvals, Excel, and hundreds of other services through connectors. Desktop flows add RPA for systems without APIs. Microsoft 365 licenses include cloud flows using standard connectors, which covers most SharePoint-and-email workflow. Premium, on-premises, and custom connectors need a standalone Power Automate license, priced per user or per process; check current terms at decision time. Forms are a separate product, Power Apps, with its own licensing story.

The two are not like-for-like. Nintex is a process platform that integrates with Microsoft 365. Power Automate is part of Microsoft 365, which is both its biggest advantage and the reason it sometimes needs other Microsoft products to match what Nintex does in one box.

Nintex gets dismissed by people who have only seen it as an expensive SharePoint add-on. Be fair to it.

Forms are a first-class citizen. A Nintex workflow and its form are designed together, and Nintex's forms handle conditional sections, repeating rows, and submitters outside your organization without a second product. In the Microsoft stack, the equivalent is a Power Apps app plus a Power Automate flow, which is more flexible and also two things to build, license, and maintain.

Documents and signatures are in the box. Generating contracts or letters from templates and routing them for signature is core Nintex territory. In Power Automate, the Word template action sits on a premium connector, and e-signature means a third-party connector and its own subscription.

Long-running processes are native. Microsoft's own documentation says flow runs time out after 30 days, including pending approvals. A process that legitimately waits three months for a renewal or a regulatory response has to be redesigned in Power Automate, usually as a chain of flows driven by a status column. Nintex workflows are built for that kind of wait.

It is not tied to Microsoft 365. If the process spans an ERP, a CRM that is not Dynamics, external portals, and a document system, Nintex's orchestration was designed for that. Power Automate can do it too, but almost every one of those connectors is premium.

It still runs on-premises. If you are moving to SharePoint Server Subscription Edition rather than to the cloud, Nintex for SharePoint Subscription Edition is supported and is the closest like-for-like path. Power Automate can reach SharePoint Server through the on-premises data gateway, but those connections are premium, and the flows themselves run in Microsoft's cloud.

It is a second platform. Every additional platform needs its own admins, skills, security review, identity integration, monitoring, and vendor management. For a small IT team, that overhead often costs more than the license line suggests.

The license is on top of one you already pay. If most of your workflows are SharePoint list approvals and notifications, you are paying Nintex to do work your Microsoft 365 licenses already cover. Sometimes that is still worth it. It deserves an explicit answer at every renewal.

The ground keeps moving under the SharePoint products. Nintex for Office 365 ended because the Microsoft infrastructure under it ended. Nintex for SharePoint 2016 and 2019 is supported on farms Microsoft no longer supports. That is not Nintex's fault, but it is your risk.

The talent pool is smaller. More people in your organization and in the market can read and fix a Power Automate flow than a Nintex workflow. That matters most when the builder leaves.

It is already licensed for most of the work. Cloud flows with standard connectors, including SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, and Approvals, come with Microsoft 365. For the typical SharePoint workflow estate, the incremental license cost of moving is small or zero.

It lives where your users already are. Approvals show up in Teams and Outlook, and Microsoft's guidance lists single, sequential, and parallel approvals plus a unified approval center that classic SharePoint workflows never had.

It shares governance with the rest of Microsoft 365. Data loss prevention policies, environments, Managed Environments, identity, and the admin center's Inventory, Usage, and Monitor views are the same ones you use for Power Apps and Copilot Studio. One governance model is easier to enforce than two, and it is where ALM for a small IT team starts.

It is where Microsoft is investing. The tooling for moving classic SharePoint workflows points one direction: the SharePoint Migration Tool can convert SharePoint Server 2010 out-of-the-box and SharePoint Designer 2010 and 2013 workflows into Power Automate flows. It does not convert Nintex workflows, which means a Nintex exit is a rebuild, not a conversion, whichever platform you choose.

The 30-day ceiling. Any run longer than 30 days times out, and run history is retained for 30 days. Long processes need a different shape: a state column in a list or Dataverse table, and short flows that react to it.

No site or reusable workflows. Microsoft's own migration guidance notes that Power Automate has no direct equivalent for site workflows or reusable workflows. The workarounds, such as child flows called from a parent, work, and some of them need premium licensing.

Premium creeps in. HTTP calls, custom connectors, on-premises data, Dataverse, Word templates, and most non-Microsoft systems are premium. A workflow estate that looked free on day one can end up with a meaningful number of premium licenses. Count them before you promise savings.

Forms are a separate build. Replacing a rich Nintex form usually means a Power Apps canvas app or a model-driven form, which is the right tool and also a different skill set. If you also have InfoPath in the mix, plan the two together; our InfoPath migration page covers that side.

The platform comparison matters less than the census. In a typical Nintex estate, the workflows split into groups that deserve different answers. Sort each one by four questions:

1. Does it still run? Usage history does a lot of the work here. A meaningful share of legacy workflows turn out to have run for the last time years ago. Those are retirements, not migrations.
2. What does it touch? If it only moves SharePoint items and email, Power Automate with standard connectors is the default. If it touches three non-Microsoft systems, price both options in full.
3. Does it depend on Nintex-only features? Complex forms, document generation, e-signature, and multi-month waits are the usual reasons to keep a workflow on Nintex, or to plan a deliberate redesign rather than a quick rebuild.
4. Who owns it? A workflow with no business owner is a risk on either platform. Find the owner before you spend money moving it.

From those answers, each workflow gets one of four dispositions: rebuild in Power Automate, redesign (the outcome is needed but the process deserves better), retire, or keep on Nintex for now with a review date. The result is a number you can take to the renewal conversation: how many workflows actually need Nintex, and what that subset is worth to you.

Inventory first, including what nobody remembers. List every Nintex workflow and form across every site, with its trigger, last run, and the business process it serves. Nintex exits slip when the inventory is a guess.

Rebuild the process, not the artifact. A Nintex workflow built in 2015 encodes 2015's workarounds. Copying it step for step into Power Automate reproduces old compromises on a new platform. Start from what the business needs the process to do now.

Build to a standard. Every rebuilt flow should have a named owner, a service identity instead of someone's personal account, error handling that makes failures loud, and documentation a stranger could operate from. Those are the things legacy workflows most often lack, and they are why they fail silently.

Run both in parallel briefly, then switch off. Cut over in waves, starting with the workflows where the business owner is engaged. Keep the Nintex version read-only for a short, agreed window, then retire it. Two live copies of the same process is how duplicate approvals happen.

Time it to the renewal. If you are reducing your Nintex footprint rather than leaving entirely, the renewal is your leverage. Walk in knowing exactly which workflows still need Nintex.

Treating the license line as the whole cost. Nintex's quote is visible. The cost of premium Power Automate licenses, Power Apps for forms, a signature vendor, and rebuild effort is not, until you add it up. Compare the full picture both ways.

Assuming a migration tool will do it. Microsoft's migration tooling converts SharePoint's own classic workflows, not Nintex. Third-party tools can help with discovery and scaffolding, but every Nintex workflow worth keeping needs a person to decide what it should become.

Forgetting the forms. Workflows get the attention; forms hold the user experience. A rebuilt flow behind a form that no longer opens is not a migration.

Leaving ownership on a person. Rebuilding into flows owned by the admin who did the migration recreates the departed-builder problem on a new platform.

Moving everything at once. A big-bang cutover across hundreds of workflows concentrates every surprise into one weekend. Waves are slower on paper and faster in practice.

For most Microsoft 365 organizations with a SharePoint-centered Nintex estate, the answer is Power Automate for the bulk of the work, a short list of workflows that deserve a redesign, and a smaller list, sometimes empty, that justifies keeping Nintex. For organizations whose processes are document-heavy, long-running, or spread across many non-Microsoft systems, Nintex Automation CE can remain the better tool, and the fair comparison is against a Microsoft build that includes premium licensing and a few additional products. Either way, the answer comes from the census, not from the platform brochure. That census is the first thing our SharePoint Modernization Blueprint produces, and workflow modernization is how we carry it out.

Vendor documentation for the platform and lifecycle facts above. Support status and licensing change; check current terms at decision time.

1. Nintex: Important Nintex Workflow for O365 end of life product announcement: December 2023 notice of end of support in December 2025, and the dependence on the SharePoint 2013 workflow engine.
2. Nintex: Nintex Forms for Office 365 deprecation: the move from the Add-In to the SPFx app before April 2, 2026.
3. Nintex: Microsoft end of support 2026: the Microsoft dates Nintex tracks and its cloud and on-premises paths.
4. Nintex for SharePoint: supported versions: 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition listed as supported.
5. Nintex community: Nintex for SharePoint 2016 end-of-life timetable: Nintex's February 2026 statement that no end of life has been announced for the 2016 edition.
6. Nintex: New at Nintex Q2 2026: Nintex Automation CE naming, agentic orchestration, and K2's on-premises AI engine.
7. Microsoft: Retirement announcement for SharePoint Add-Ins: Add-Ins stopped working for all tenants on April 2, 2026.
8. Microsoft: Migrate from classic workflows to Power Automate flows: feature differences, approvals, and the SharePoint 2013 workflow retirement.
9. Microsoft: Migrate SharePoint workflows with SPMT: which classic workflow types the tool converts.
10. Microsoft: Power Automate limits and configuration: the 30-day run duration and run retention.
11. Microsoft: Power Platform licensing FAQ: what Microsoft 365 includes and which connectors need a standalone license.
12. Microsoft: Word Online (Business) connector: premium classification in Power Automate.
13. Microsoft Lifecycle: SharePoint Server 2016: the end of extended support in July 2026.
14. Microsoft Lifecycle: SharePoint Server 2019: the end of extended support in July 2026.
15. Microsoft Lifecycle: SharePoint Designer 2013: the end of extended support in July 2026.
16. Microsoft Lifecycle: InfoPath 2013: the end of extended support in July 2026.