K2 Five and Microsoft Flow comparison

Hi,

I only played with Microsoft Flow for a bit, so what I know may not be accurate.

You should know Flow is a cloud service, so your workflow basically runs on the cloud (to be more specific, Azure). If you need the workflow to interact with other services/systems, you do it through connectors. Now here's the thing. If your service is hosted within your company's network, then you will most likely need to expose it if you want a Flow workflow to interact with that service. Here are a list of supported connectors on Flow, and you should be able to create your own custom connector as well.

K2 Five is an on-prem solution. You setup your K2 environment on-prem, within your company's network. Similar to connectors in Flow, K2 uses something called a service broker, which allows you to connect with other services/systems within your company. You then create SmartObjects, which you can think of as a interface which allows you to read, write, or update records. You use these SmartObjects in your workflow. Here are a list of service brokers that come out of the box with K2.

If you do not want to expose your internal services, then K2 Five will be a better choice. If you are planning on creating a simple workflow which interacts with other cloud services such as Office 365, then use Flow.

Both Flow and K2 Five allows you to develop your custom connector or service broker, but it is easier to define your own custom connector on Flow, than to create a custom service broker in K2. To create a service broker in K2, you need to write codes. But for custom connectors, you only need to define some key properties in the connectors.

I can't help you with Flow, but you can contact K2 for a demo, or to request for a trial so that you can assess yourself whether K2 is suitable for you.