We’ll Just Use Power Automate”: What Does Replacing 1,000 SharePoint Alerts Actually Cost?

“We’ll Just Use Power Automate”: What Does Replacing 1,000 SharePoint Alerts Actually Cost?

When organizations evaluate replacements for classic SharePoint Alerts, Power Automate is usually part of the conversation.

And it should be.

Power Automate is an excellent automation platform. For business processes, approvals, integrations, multi-step workflows, and custom automation, it is an incredibly powerful tool.

But there is an important question organizations should ask before deciding to use Power Automate to replace hundreds or thousands of SharePoint Alerts:

Who is going to create and maintain all those flows — and what does that actually cost?

We often hear:

“We already own Power Automate.”

Or:

“We have an internal team that can build the flows.”

Both statements may be true.

But internal IT resources aren’t free, and Power Automate flows aren’t maintenance-free.

Let’s put some numbers around it.

Start With the Cost of the Person

A Power Platform resource with the skills required to create, test, troubleshoot, and maintain production Power Automate flows is a skilled technical employee.

Current U.S. salary data puts Power Platform Developer compensation at approximately $100,000+ per year, before benefits and other employer costs.

Once benefits, payroll taxes, insurance, retirement contributions, PTO, equipment, and other employment costs are considered, let’s use a reasonable fully loaded internal labor cost of:

$70 per hour

For comparison, Bamboo Solutions’ professional services rate is $150 per hour.

For this exercise, however, we’re going to use the much lower internal employee cost.

Now Assume You Have 1,000 Active SharePoint Alerts

Suppose an organization currently has 1,000 Active SharePoint Alerts that need to be replaced.

Those alerts might include requirements such as:

• Notify me when an item is added
• Notify me when an item changes
• Alert a department when a document is uploaded
• Notify a manager when a status changes
• Send an alert only when certain conditions are met
• Send alerts to different recipients
• Send immediate, daily, or weekly notifications

With Power Automate, these aren’t simply alerts anymore.

They become automations that someone has to configure, test, deploy, own, monitor, troubleshoot, and eventually modify.

Let’s Give Power Automate the Benefit of Reusable Flows

It wouldn’t be fair to assume an experienced Power Platform team would build 1,000 completely different flows from scratch.

A well-run organization would likely create reusable flows for its most common SharePoint alert scenarios.

Let’s assume an experienced Power Platform resource can complete that entire process in an average of just:

30 minutes per alert

Some simple alerts may take considerably less time. More complicated alerts involving conditions, multiple recipients, permissions, custom formatting, or troubleshooting may take considerably longer.

We’re assuming those differences average out to only 30 minutes.

For 1,000 Active Alerts:

1,000 alerts × 30 minutes = 500 hours

At our estimated internal labor rate of $70/hour:

500 hours × $70 = $35,000

That’s $35,000 of internal labor simply to recreate, test, and deploy the organization’s existing alerts.

And that’s before maintaining a single one of them.

Deployment Is Only the Beginning

Once those flows are deployed, the organization now has 1,000 production Power Automate flows.

• Someone owns them.
• Someone has to respond when they fail.
• Someone has to modify them when requirements change.
• Someone has to troubleshoot when a user says:

“I was supposed to receive an alert yesterday. Why didn’t I?”

There are many reasons a production flow can eventually require attention.

• Connections and credentials can fail.
• Permissions can change.
• SharePoint lists and libraries can change.
• Columns can be renamed or removed.
• Recipients and business requirements can change.
• Employees who own flows can leave the organization.
• Flows can be disabled or suspended.
• Governance or Data Loss Prevention policies can change.
• Microsoft connectors and platform behavior can change.
• And sometimes something simply doesn’t behave the way everyone expected.

Microsoft itself provides administrative guidance around flow ownership, monitoring, connection failures, troubleshooting, suspended flows, failure notifications, governance, and orphaned flows.

Power Automate flows are applications.

They may be small applications, but they still need to be managed.

What Does Maintenance Cost for 1,000 Flows?

Again, let’s use a very conservative assumption.

Suppose each flow requires an average of only:

30 minutes of IT attention per year.

Some flows might operate for years without requiring attention.

Others could consume several hours troubleshooting a single problem.

We’re simply averaging all of that activity across 1,000 production flows.

Thirty minutes per year works out to less than three minutes per month per flow.

For 1,000 flows:

1,000 × 30 minutes = 500 hours per year

At $70/hour:

500 hours × $70 = $35,000 per year

That’s the potential annual internal labor cost simply to own and maintain the alert infrastructure.

Now Look at the Three-Year Picture

Using these deliberately conservative assumptions:

That means the first year alone represents approximately:

$70,000 in internal labor

And over three years:

$140,000 in internal labor

Importantly, this calculation does not include:

• Power Automate cycle or execution costs
• Additional Microsoft licensing
• Premium connectors
• Outside consultants
• Migration consulting
• Other Microsoft platform costs

This is a calculation of labor only.

These Assumptions Actually Favor Power Automate

1. We’re not assuming every flow requires custom development.
2. We’re assuming reusable flows already exist.
3. We’re assuming only 30 minutes to configure, test, and deploy each alert.
4. We’re assuming only 30 minutes of maintenance per flow for an entire year.
5. We’re using an internal labor rate of $70/hour, rather than Bamboo’s $150/hour professional services rate.

Even with those assumptions, 1,000 Active Alerts potentially represent:

500 hours to deploy

plus

500 hours every year to maintain

That’s 1,000 hours of skilled Power Platform labor in the first year alone.

“But We Already Have an Internal Power Platform Team”

Great.

That still doesn’t make the cost zero.

If your Power Platform team spends 500 hours deploying alert replacement flows and another 500 hours maintaining them during the first year, that’s:

1,000 hours of skilled Power Platform resources devoted to SharePoint notifications.

That’s roughly half of one employee’s productive work year.

And that introduces another cost that is often overlooked:

Opportunity cost.

Those 1,000 hours aren’t being spent on:

• Business process automation
• Power Apps
• Copilot and AI initiatives
• Dataverse solutions
• Application modernization
• System integrations
• Process improvement
• Other projects in the Power Platform backlog

The question isn’t whether your organization can create 1,000 Power Automate flows.

It almost certainly can.

The better question is:

Is maintaining SharePoint notifications the best use of 1,000 hours of skilled Power Platform resources?

That’s the Problem Alert Plus Was Designed to Solve

Alert Plus approaches SharePoint notifications differently.

Rather than turning every notification requirement into another individually managed automation, Alert Plus provides a centralized platform specifically designed for SharePoint alerting.

Users and administrators can create and manage alerts through Alert Me and Alert Admin, including support for:

• Alert conditions
• Recipients
• Immediate and scheduled notifications
• Alert Templates
• Item-level alerts
• Summary notifications
• Centralized administration

Instead of managing hundreds or thousands of individual flows, organizations manage alerts through a purpose-built alert platform.

One platform.

One management experience.

One alert engine.

One place to troubleshoot.

And users can create many of their own alerts without submitting a request to a Power Platform developer to build another flow.

Power Automate Still Has an Important Role

This isn’t an argument against Power Automate.

We use and recommend Power Automate ourselves.

If changing a SharePoint item needs to:

1. Start an approval
2. Update another business system
3. Create a task
4. Post information to Teams
5. Send notifications
6. Continue through additional business logic

That’s exactly the type of business process where Power Automate shines.

But consider a much simpler requirement:

“Tell these people when this changes in SharePoint.”

Do you really need to create and maintain another custom automation for that?

For one alert, the difference may seem insignificant.

Multiply that decision by 1,000 Active Alerts, and the economics change dramatically.

“Included” Doesn’t Mean “Free”

This is perhaps the most important part of the conversation. An organization may already have access to Power Automate through its Microsoft licensing. But software availability and solution cost aren’t the same thing.

If an employee spends 30 minutes doing something, there is a cost.

If a highly skilled Power Platform developer spends 1,000 hours doing something, there is a significant cost – even if your organization never receives an invoice for those hours.

When comparing Power Automate with a purpose-built SharePoint alerting platform, organizations should consider the complete cost:

Creation + Configuration + Testing + Deployment + Administration + Troubleshooting + Governance + Maintenance + Opportunity Cost

Not simply:

“We already own Power Automate.”

Ask the Better Question

At enterprise scale, the question shouldn’t simply be:

“Can Power Automate replace SharePoint Alerts?”

Of course it can.

The better question is:

“What will it cost us to create, manage, troubleshoot, and maintain those flows over the next several years?”

Using our example of 1,000 Active Alerts and intentionally conservative assumptions, the answer could be approximately:

$70,000 of internal labor in Year 1

and

$140,000 over three years.

And that’s before counting a single Power Automate execution or additional licensing cost.

Power Automate is an incredibly valuable platform.

Your Power Platform team’s time is valuable too.

Perhaps their time is better spent using Power Automate to solve the complex business problems it was designed to solve – rather than maintaining 1,000 flows whose primary job is simply to send a SharePoint alert.

If your Power Platform team spends 500 hours deploying alert replacement flows and another 500 hours maintaining them during the first year, that’s:

1,000 hours of skilled Power Platform resources devoted to SharePoint notifications.

That’s roughly half of one employee’s productive work year.

And that introduces another cost that is often overlooked:

Opportunity cost.

Those 1,000 hours aren’t being spent on:

• Business process automation
• Power Apps
• Copilot and AI initiatives
• Dataverse solutions
• Application modernization
• System integrations
• Process improvement
• Other projects in the Power Platform backlog

The question isn’t whether your organization can create 1,000 Power Automate flows.

It almost certainly can.

The better question is:

Is maintaining SharePoint notifications the best use of 1,000 hours of skilled Power Platform resources?