14+ Microsoft Power Apps Alternatives | Experts Recommended

About Microsoft PowerApps

Microsoft PowerApps (or MS PowerApps) originally offers a low-code development environment, which allows users to create applications with drag-and-drop functionality with minimal coding.

Therefore, Microsoft PowerApp is wisely used, especially for citizen developers and business owners with little-to-no coding training.

Keep in mind that PowerApps is one of the core Microsoft products, therefore, PowerApps integrates seamlessly with other MS solutions, for examples: Office 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365. Therefore, PowerApps allows users to easily access and utilize data from other MS platforms into their apps. 

With extensive data storage - a secure and centralized location for storing application data, named Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft has also integrated AI-builder into PowerApps, enabling users to access AI features, including sentiment analysis, image recognition, and object detection.

Microsoft Copilot was also introduced in 2023 to support MS users to utilize their MS products and applications better. 

Two types of app creation

There are two types of primary app options in MS PowerApps, including the canvas and model-driven Apps:

1. Canvas Apps is to build a customized app with friendly interface, using drag-and-drop feature.
2. Model-Driven Apps is to leverage existing data from Microsoft Dataverse to a data-driven application with less customization but faster development time.

PowerApps highlights

1. MS PowerApps is mobile-responsive, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
2. MS PowerApps is integrated with Power Automate, a robotic process automation, to build workflows which automate tasks between PowerApps and other applications or services in the Microsoft ecosystem.
3. PowerApps enable users to share their applications and easily collaborate with colleagues within their organization.
4. Microsoft offers security and governance functionality, to manage access and permissions for all PowerApps applications, ensuring data privacy.

MS PowerApps price comparison

Explore 14 Power Apps alternatives with pricing structures, target audience and development approaches (no-code vs. low-code specifically).

Learn more: Why low-code no-code?

Microsoft PowerApps Cons

1. Limited accessibility, because of plan commitment and pricing
2. In-depth knowledge required: users should have fundamental knowledge about app creation logics and process

4 criterias to looking for in alternatives

Evaluating factors like integration needs, development expertise, and budget helps choose Microsoft Power Apps alternatives. So let’s check out the three criterias as below:

1. Base on business requirement: This is a super important step, understanding your organization's workflows, goals, and challenges is crucial to select a suitable solution which aligns perfectly with your business processes and objectives.

2. Simple-enough UX and UI for staff without technology knowledge, for both admins view and end-users views. The internal tools should not be rock science problems, but easy enough for all levels of personnel should be able to learn quickly!

3. Ability to scale when the business’s growing, as it’s definitely a nightmare for developers to move all business data from platforms to platforms. The business owners should consider picking the scalable tools from the beginning to avoid this future issue.

4. Ability to integrate with internal existing systems, for example: databases and third-party applications, which is very important for smooth workflows and data consistency

AppAlloy

AppAlloy is top Microsoft Power Apps alternatives, an AI-powered mobile app builder, which helps users to save time by creating their apps with ease. AppAlloy is a no-code tool, with simple logic and easy-to-use interface.

Feature #1: Mobile apps for various service industries

AppAlloy focuses on utilizing user experiences on mobiles and tablets, and seamlessly syncing with Google sheets. AppAlloy is the top choice for users working in services industries with mobilized offline teams, who’s in need of quick access on mobile devices to: 

• Inventory management: Update and add new items to store assets and stocks.

• On-site luxury brand management, for example: to grab customer orders, real-estate listing or serving in coffee shops.

Feature #2: Grab audience feedbacks

AppAlloy offers the best way to grab feedback from customers quickly via surveys and forms.

For people working in diverse fields and construction sites continuously, but still need access to their working app, to update inspection concerns or to give feedback to the team about working conditions, offline access is essential. 

All entered AppAlloy data is to be synced once the phone’s back online.

How it works

It’s super convenient to set up AppAlloy! Users can access and use AppAlloy with two main data sources, either to sync with Google sheet and offline MS Excel files, or to create a new AppAlloy table. 

Please keep in mind that AppAlloy will sync data directly to Google Sheet, so you wouldn’t have to update data twice. 

Pricing

Pricing starts at $4 per user per month with a free plan available.

Check out AppAlloy Pricing today!

Google AppSheet

Google App Sheet was first developed in March 2014 by Praveen Seshadri, then finally merged with Google ecosystem in 2020.

AppSheet is a business low-code platform solution; starting in 2018, SPEC (a natural language programming tool) was launched with the no-code development program being built, empowering non-programmers to build their apps.

Google AppSheet is another big name in the industry, purposely serving Google users, with pricing starting at $5 per user per month. There are $10 and $20 plans as well, with the Enterprise plus plan to help users accessing to cloud file storage, cloud databases, APIs, SaaS services, and other enterprise data services. 

More on Google AppSheet Pricing here!

Google AppSheet excels its UI and workflow to be truly intuitive and engaging. The Google AppSheet UI is very simple, but easy to use with friendly templates and guidance.

There are two options to create an app, to build one from blank app or start from a database!

Check out: Top Google AppSheet Alternatives revealed in 2024!

Glideapps

Glide keeps things simple for no-code programmers, as now users just need ideas and a data source to create their apps. Glide is practical and easy to use, which saves time and maximize productivity of daily operation.

Glide has a much broader target audience compared with MS PowerApps, including non-programming entrepreneurs, professionals, business owners and educators… basically people without skills in computer science.

Glide apps pricing starts from $60 per month for makers, with $49 per month for annual subscription. With companies, the price starts from $125 monthly plan with 5 editors, and $99/ month for an annual bill of at least 20 users.

Learn more on Glides Pricing today!

Glide is an end-to-end transparent solution, from the warehouse to the customer, therefore, they’re less customizable compared with their competitors. Also, they’re expensive as just an app creator itself, especially if you’re expanding your team.

Check out: Top Gildeapps Alternatives revealed in 2024

Quickbase

Quickbase is a low-code platform, which helps users to manage custom business applications. Quickbase supports business owners at all sizes, simple ones to improve efficiency, automate workflows, and streamline operations.

Their plans start at $35 per user per month, with a minimum of 20 users, with a negotiable enterprise plan.

Kissflow

Compared with MS PowerApps, Kissflow's audience is much wider, including IT leaders and developers, entrepreneurs and process managers. MS PowerApps has such smaller audience size, primarily targeting businesses which are already in-service with Microsoft products. 

Kissflow offers a wider range of workflow automation features in addition to app development, with built-in analytics and collaboration tools, with the goal to simpify complex processes.

Reasons for using Kissflow (According to G2): To enhance decision making process and business process agility by creation of internal/operational apps, as Kissflow provides  efficiencies to business users, with improvement in business process outcomes.

In conclusion, you should definitely consider Kissflow if you need an user-friendly platform with great workflow automation, which’s cost effective and can be integrated with other platforms at ease.

Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is well-known all around the world, as they offer an ecosystem (aka ERP) to solve problems of business software development. This app aims to help business owners streamline daily operations for greater efficiency and operation results.

Zoho Creator is low-code, with standard plan starts from $8 per user per month, billed annually. The premium plan could be up to $25 per user per mont for enterprise users, billed annually.

More on Zoho Pricing today!

Ninox

If spreadsheets are your comfort zone, then Ninox is your ideal choice, as it offers a familiar interface for data management and reports, along with pre-built templates to get users going fast. Additionally, Ninox is much better in terms of price range when compared with MS PowerApps. 

Check out key differences between Ninox and Microsoft PowerApps:

• PowerApps solely focuses on businesses already using Microsoft products, Ninox on the other hands focuses on people with familiarity with spreadsheet-like interface and data management.

• PowerAppsoffers a low-code development environment with drag-and-drop features and limited coding capabilities. Ninox offers a visual app builder, which combines a relational database. Therefore, Ninox could create a spreadsheet-like app, with more flexibility for data-driven applications construction.

• PowerApps is fully integrated with other Microsoft products like Office 365 and Azure, as Ninox has much wider integration options in comparison to. 

• The major power of Microsoft PowerApps is AI features in creation of an AI app builder, with data competencies through Microsoft Dataverse.

• Ninox offers a much simpler interface, as it focuses solely on data management and building reports with common visualizations, including Kanban and Gantt charts. 

• Ninox also offers pre-built templates for common use cases, for example CRM, project tracking and inventory management.

Airtable

Airtable is intuitive and flexible, with features to empower users to organize, collaborate, and automate workflows, as Airtable solution is suitable for all departments, including CRM, HRM, Marketing, Sale and Operation. Therefore, users could manage projects, track inventories, or organize business and customer data with Airtable. 

This software stands out to be an user-friendly solution for those seeking highly customizable application development capabilities.

Airtable is offering a free plan, with team plans starting from $20 per seat per month, with an option to scale enterprise (Contact Airtable for more on pricing).

Outsystems

OutSystems is a low-code platform, suitable for business owners to build apps based on their needs, from healthcare, finance to manufacturing or retail…

Learn: OutSystems Pricing!

They focus on entrepreneurs, business owners, with a free Personal Edition plan. Outsystems also provide opportunities for newbies to learn low-code and instruction to build and use effectively!

With a premium plan, Outsystem Developer Cloud starts from 36.300USD per year.

Nintex Process Platform

Nintex Process Platform is a low-code development platform which offers a comprehensive workflow automation solution. Nintex could handle complex workflows requiring deeper technical expertise. 

Nintex Process Platform is the trustable robust workflow automation engine, as only suitable for large enterprises. Therefore it could be said that MS PowerApps have a much broader audience.

Nintex Process Platform provides both low code solutions with advanced development options. Their drag-and-drop interface simplifies workflow creation, but also allows for custom code injection for complex logic.

Nintex Process Platform doesn’t have any free plan, but with transparent pricing structure, based on features and user count. Therefore, if you’re looking for a basic business process automation need, let’s go for MS PowerApps!

Budibase

Budibase is a low-code platform, which’s open-source and highlight customizable, helps teams to turn data into meaningful apps. 

Similar to other enterprise apps, with Budibase, you also can connect any data, build professional interfaces, automate manual processes, and host your apps with minimal efforts of custom coding.

Budibase offers three distinct pricing plans, to scale business based on needs including Free, Premium, and Enterprise, starts from $50 per month for creators, and end-users at $5 per month to access the apps.

The current limitation of Budibase is no built-in AI functionalities embedded. While Microsoft PowerApps integrates with Microsoft's AI Builder suite, offering pre-built AI components, Budibase currently doesn't have this capability.

Mendix

Together with Retool, Mendix is one of the oldest low-code platforms. The goal of Mendix is to provide internal tool solutions, with the main target audience being professional developers.

Therefore, Mendix clearly focuses on developer teams working in enterprises and large corporations.

For examples, Mendix has offer a suite of workflow features, which’s specifically integrated into SCRUM lifecycle / Agile methodology.

Mendix has four ranges of pricing, starting from Free (Single-app user) to Premium (Enterprises), as the charge starts from $50 to $800 per month for five users respectively, with additional end-user fees. Therefore to be able to use Mendix, the business should spend at least $2000 per month on internal workflows.

Retool

Retool was launched in 2017, one of the oldest Power apps alternatives, is a low-code development platform to build internal tool. Retool is highlighted with simple solutions, including forms, CRUD apps, admin tools, portals, and any other workflow applications.

Retool is an early market entrance, as it includes:

• Large component library, with pre-built components to build UIs.
• Integrations by API and external data source 
• Workflow automations.
• AI capabilities, with its own built-in AI assistant (JavaScript and SQL).
• Enterprise features, including SSO, audit logging, self-hosting, and extensive support.

Retool focused on developers, as it is well-known with back-end developers, they’re comfortable with configuring and handling data but don’t have advanced UX or design skills.

Retool is also suitable for full-stack developers, who need to save time.

There’s a free plan available with Retool, as their team plan starts from $10 per month per creator and $5 for end-users. The team plan supports more than five users.

Their business plan starts at $50 per month per creator and $15 per month per end-users.