The things we spend the most time on at work are usually repetitive tasks. Reading emails, moving data from one system to another, compiling reports, managing notifications... Most of these tasks can be automated, and you no longer need to be a programmer to do it.
I've been working with different automation tools for the past two years, and three main platforms stand out: Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat) and n8n. I've used all three on real projects and seen the strengths and weaknesses of each up close. Now I'll share those experiences with you.
Why Do You Need Automation?
Let's start with a concrete example. You run a small e-commerce business. Every day you do the following:
- Check new orders
- Enter order details into Excel
- Send a confirmation email to the customer
- Update stock status
- Pass the invoice details to the accountant
These tasks take you two hours a day in total. That's 40 hours a month, 480 hours a year. By setting up an automation, you can automate 90 percent of these tasks. That means you save about 430 hours a year. You can spend that time growing your business, developing new products or taking a vacation.
Zapier: The King of Ease
Zapier is the best-known name in the automation world. It offers integrations with more than 7,000 apps, and setup is incredibly easy.
I first used Zapier for a blog project. My goal was simple: when a new blog post is published, it should automatically be shared on social media accounts. When a new post was published on WordPress, Zapier would detect it, grab the title and link, post it on Twitter, send it to LinkedIn and send a notification to a Slack channel. Setup took exactly ten minutes.
Zapier's Strengths
Ease of use is undisputedly number one. Even if you have zero technical knowledge, the interface is understandable. The "When this happens, do that" logic is an approach everyone can grasp. It has the widest range of apps. It integrates with most of the tools commonly used in Turkey. With multi-step Zaps, you can perform multiple actions after a single trigger.
Zapier's Weaknesses
Pricing is very expensive. The free plan includes only 100 tasks, which would be used up in a day under serious use. The Professional plan starts at $29.99 per month and rises quickly for complex automations. There is no visual workflow design. In Zapier, you can't visually design your workflow with branching and loops. It's limited for decision trees and parallel operations. Data transformation features are restricted. It's more limited than Make and n8n when it comes to processing and transforming data.
A Real Use Case
I set up the following automation for a client: when a new lead is created in HubSpot, Zapier takes the lead's details, adds them to a Google Sheets table, sends a notification to the sales team on Slack, and three days later sends an automatic introductory email. Setup time: 25 minutes. This process used to be done manually, and sometimes leads went days without follow-up.
Make: Powerful and Visual
Make (formerly Integromat) is the best tool for visual workflow design. You design your workflows visually, like a diagram, which makes complex automations easier to understand.
When I first used Make, I said WOW. The interface is like a mind map. You drag and drop modules, connect them to each other and see the data flow in real time. This visual quality is a lifesaver especially in complex workflows.
Make's Strengths
The visual designer is incredible. You can build branching, loops, error handling and parallel operations visually. It has the best price-to-performance ratio. The free plan offers 1,000 operations, and the paid plans cost about half of Zapier's price. Data transformation is very powerful. It is very flexible when it comes to converting between JSON, XML and CSV, and filtering and processing data. API integration is easy with the HTTP module. You can connect even to services without an official integration through HTTP requests.
Make's Weaknesses
The learning curve is steeper than Zapier's. The interface can feel intimidating at first. Debugging can sometimes be hard in complex scenarios. The number of integrations is smaller than Zapier's, at about 1,500 apps.
A Real Use Case
I set up the following system for an e-commerce client: when an order came in from Shopify, Make would take the order, send notifications to different warehouses depending on the product category, automatically create a shipment with the carrier, email the customer the shipping tracking number and record all the details in Airtable. This workflow had 12 different modules and included branching logic. A flow this complex would either be impossible or very expensive to build in Zapier.