Make or Zapier? What’s the best automation tool?

Automation can feel like a lifesaver, until you’re stuck choosing the right tool. With so many options, it’s easy to wonder: Am I using the best one? We’ve been there too. 

In this episode, we’re diving deep into Make vs. Zapier, two of the most popular automation platforms, and breaking down what actually matters when picking the right fit. 

Here’s what we’re unpacking: 

• The real differences between Make and Zapier (beyond just pricing) 
• Why Make might be a game-changer for more complex workflows 
• When Zapier’s simplicity can save you time and headaches 
• How AI-powered automation is changing the game 

This isn’t about choosing any automation tool, it’s about choosing the right one for your needs. If you’re looking to streamline your business without the tech overwhelm, this one’s for you! 

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Alane): All right, this episode is all about make versus Zapier. One of the biggest questions that I get when I talk to people about how we build automation and they immediately think zapier and we go make.

0:00:16 - (Micah): I love that intro, Alane, because it's so true. Most people are definitely thinking Zapier when it comes to automation. A lot of people have tried using it themselves and the most common thing that I hear after they've tried using it is, oh, I got some zaps going and then I got an error and then I was like, yep, I give up, I have no idea.

0:00:44 - (Alane): Yeah, nobody really wants to maintain their automation. That's not fun. But you know, I get why most people go to Zapier. I am one of those people. I built our first automations in 2016 in Zapier. And for a non tech person, I do feel like Zapier is an easier place to start and push the limits of what my brain power can do in building my own automation. And, but, and when I go to make, it feels very overwhelming at first.

0:01:18 - (Micah): Yeah, even coming from a development background, I was a little overwhelmed with Make. It was a brand new visual language. I didn't know what any of the modules really meant, how things worked, what I was supposed to do with it. But I remember sitting down and just focusing on it and telling myself, I'm going to figure this out because there's something here. And by the end of that day I remember walking out of the office and going, guys, we have got to get focused on this make stuff because it is crazy.

0:01:55 - (Micah): So if you like just quick, immediate win here. If you're listening to this episode, if you're thinking about automation, if you're thinking about Zapier, check out Make. It is at least worth looking into. Even after I said it looks complicated at first for a few main reasons. One, it actually is easier to build the things that you want to build. Once you learn the basics, it's far cheaper. So Zapier starts with a nice, like, level playing field here.

0:02:26 - (Micah): Sorry, Zapier, but then it can get expensive pretty quickly. Whereas make is more of a linear progression of costs which make it a lot more predictable and overall a lot less expensive than you would run on a bunch of zaps. It also is closer to, say, visual programming. So you have the ability to route and have variables and do different things, which, when you're using a team of people or an individual who knows how to do this, can produce far better results in far shorter periods of time and make it far more stable.

0:03:07 - (Alane): Yeah, I feel like Zapier kind of takes advantage of the people like me that aren't great at doing like an automation build. And so we get in, it's inexpensive at first, and then for us to keep using and building on top of it. That's where they get you. But I do love Zapier. I'm not saying anything bad. Like, I actually, from my perspective, I don't think I would have ever been able to create something initially and make and for me to get started in, which is, you know, if you're looking at building your own stuff, you know, Micah, you just mentioned, like, check out make and if, if you don't ever jam with it, like, there's nothing wrong with using Zapier.

0:03:48 - (Micah): Totally.

0:03:48 - (Alane): There's millions of companies out there that are using it, but there are some benefits of using make, and cost is one of them. But Micah, there's some other ones. And how it handles errors, I think would be one of the other benefits.

0:04:01 - (Micah): Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, even before we get into the technical side of it, I think you bring up a good point, Alane, is there's probably specific use cases if you're looking to do simple things. If you don't have a tech background, if you don't have somebody on your team who has a tech background, or if you don't want to hire a team that can do this kind of work, then Zapier is a great place to start. And it'll get you somewhere, it'll get you far.

0:04:28 - (Micah): It also has really impressive AI integration capabilities. So some of the things that they're doing with AI agents and chatbots, they're out there doing some really cool stuff. So Zapier does have a leg up on certain things. And I think when it comes to building systems and building more complex things, that's when the people who do have the technical background and the teams that do this professionally, like us, we lean more towards make because it gives us the capabilities that we need. And so, Alane, one of the things that you just brought up was the error handling, which sounds like a very technical thing when you hear it. Maybe.

0:05:12 - (Micah): But all, all that means is if the automation is running and an error happens, then what do you do? And so make makes it really easy to say, oh, this is an error. What should we do? Should we retry it in three minutes? Should we move on and just fill in a default value? Should we take a different route and say, like, let's create a ClickUp task? Because this error happened, which means that we need to create something in QuickBooks first.

0:05:45 - (Micah): It could be, could be any, any scenario, but it allows us to do things that typically would take hundreds of lines of code and custom programming to just, you know, add a module, connect it, fill out a few bits of information. And now all of a sudden every time an error happens in this sequence, it's creating a new ClickUp task. It's incredible if a scenario is shut down because of too many errors, because there weren't, you know, errors, you can't put error handlers everywhere and predict everything that's going to happen.

0:06:18 - (Micah): And so sometimes your, your automations will shut down. This happens on both Zapier and Make for sure. With make, when it shuts down, it creates a queue of everything that hasn't been run and then you can just push a button and run through the whole queue and restart it and it's amazing.

0:06:36 - (Alane): So like an example of when this is really important is marketing to customers.

0:06:44 - (Micah): Yes.

0:06:45 - (Alane): And Micah, you can speak to this from some of the automations that we've built, but you don't want in Zapier it has to restart it. Right. It doesn't pick up where it queued, so it'll double send in make, it's going to pick up where it left off. And so any customers that already received the email or text, if you're using it for text messaging, you're not duplicating those messages. And that is a huge deal in that type of scenario.

0:07:14 - (Micah): Yep. You can also add what's called filters very quickly in a tool like make, so you can do quick basically gut checks and say like, hey, if person A already has message one, well don't resend it. Yeah, super, super simple. And normally what we're talking about is, is programming logic. So it would be like a if statement and then, you know, if then or else. And you build out all these statements to create complex functions and functionality. Like now you can do that visually and everything's triggered with APIs.

0:07:54 - (Micah): It's, it's crazy.

0:07:56 - (Alane): It is. And I mean whether you're building the automation in Zapier or Make, it is really fun to me to see it all pull. Like if you're integrating, you want to pull data from a form, you can see every question of that form and MAKE in Zapier. So you can say I want the data from this answer to go over here. And so you're getting to see what you've built in other places and you're seeing it visually and makers happier and saying this is what I want to do with this data now.

0:08:25 - (Alane): And this is how we're able to integrate with AI. And we're saying, hey, take this information and do this and have AI run through it, analyze it, summarize it, whatever it is, and then produce something outside of it. So anyway, a little bit tangent on that, Micah. I know there's a few times where I've heard you and our team talk through and even like a quick Google sometimes on if to if we can connect to software platforms is that there is rare instances where we cannot use Make.

0:08:56 - (Alane): It's not. It's not able to. And so we have to use Zapier.

0:09:00 - (Micah): Yeah. So that in those scenarios it's going to be specific features that Zapier has that make doesn't. There's very few and far between. Usually it's the other way around. So it's Zapier. You're really set with the triggers and actions that are available in Zapier. For the most part with make, they. They have a bunch of flexibility. So like almost any. If a, if a piece of software has an API or a web hook, you can probably make it work and Make.

0:09:33 - (Micah): But you know, there's. There's some specific functionality in Zapier more around like the API integrated capabilities. So that's kind of the benefit. It's. It's almost like Mac versus PC. Right. Like when you're in the Mac ecosystem, you've got your iPhone, you've got your MacBook and it all works together. It's your imessage. Yeah, yeah. But every. Everything works. And so Mac can kind of build everything in that garden where everything works together because they have control over it.

0:10:08 - (Micah): That's the benefit that Zapier is running with a bit that it's all in there. Whereas make is a little bit more like the PC. Like you want some extra ram. Sure. Add this in like you would a PC, but it's a lot more open. But it also feels a lot more technical to get that same stuff done.

0:10:28 - (Alane): And I'm talking very rare instances and one that I can think of right now that's on the top of my head to just kind of paint. Like what we're talking about is Grain. So Grain we use to record our Zoom calls and they don't release their API and they don't have integrations with every company. So we're not, it's not necessarily make friendly right now, but I want to have an integration between Grain and pipedrive.

0:10:59 - (Alane): Well, Zapier has the API integration with Grain to, to be able to do that. So that's like those super, like rare instances where, you know, you might not have the capability, depending on the software and depending on the relationship that it has right now with Zapier, maybe they don't have a publicly available API. Or maybe to get API access, you have to pay $20,000 a year and you don't want to do that. You know, there's, there's instances where, you know, you may not have. And there, it's not common.

0:11:28 - (Alane): And only in those, you know, do we say, okay, like maybe it's worth building that specific scenario in Zapier. And then we build, continue to build everything else though, and make for all the other benefits that we talked about. That's like 1% out of the other 99.

0:11:43 - (Micah): Yeah, and, and it's interesting to kind of go down this thread for a second, Alane, because we have clients that, especially larger clients. If you've already started in Zapier and Zapier is an approved vendor, we're not going to go through the whole process of then getting make approved. Like, let's build it in Zapier. Like it can still be done. Right. We still have the technical know how in the background to do it all.

0:12:09 - (Micah): It's going to look different, it might take longer, it might be more cumbersome to test, but we're going to get it done. Yeah. There's other clients who run zaps for some things and make scenarios for others. And then there's still plenty of clients who, like we talked about earlier, tested the waters with Zapier, maybe themselves or a couple people on their team and know what they're trying to achieve.

0:12:35 - (Micah): But then we're able to look at that and help them through and go, wow, we could do this very simply in make. And then they make the move from Zapier to make.

0:12:46 - (Alane): Yeah, we love working with those clients. So if, you know, you're wanting to dabble in things yourself, build some zaps like go for it. And it just gives you more context into what's possible. Why automation takes a, takes time to build. It's not instant and it's just a great learning trajectory for you. And then like we mentioned, you most likely don't want to spend time maintaining them because they do take some maintenance. We have an episode on that we can link to, but they take maintenance. It's not, there's going to be errors. It could be just the API went down for a second. It could be that it was overloaded the API for a second. And so it Couldn't be processed. You know what these errors are so that they don't just sit there and then you know, we can go in and fix them or rerun it or whatever it is.

0:13:33 - (Alane): But why, you know why? Automation takes a little bit of time. So go for it, go create some zaps or go create some great points.

0:13:39 - (Micah): I will say both platforms have essentially like academy lessons, you know, so online simple courses to teach you the basics.

0:13:49 - (Alane): Yeah, they do and they, and I know make does this because I went through the MAKE certification is you actually build some scenarios. So it's not just out of context that you're actually building something when you're going through it. And I'm not sure what Zapier does, but it does help because it's not just you going through this dry course like you're actually going in and building and it really starts to help connect what we're talking about with the data that it can pull and the data that can trigger and where does it go. Right. Micah, Any other thoughts on make versus Zapier? I think I'm, I'm good.

0:14:23 - (Micah): No, I mean I think your advice on just, you know, get out there and try it, it's really good. I would set expectations that these days automations can be, can run the gamut. They can start very simple, let's trigger it from A and do B and you're good. And that can just run all the way through to effectively visual programming to replace code based programming. And everything's just tied together with actions and routes and filters and steps and web hooks and APIs with zero lines of code.

0:15:01 - (Micah): And so you know, it's just what you're trying to achieve and where you're trying to go with your systems and with your workflows and your automation. But if platforms have APIs and webhooks and you have an idea on a workflow, chances are you can automate it without custom development these days.

0:15:21 - (Alane): Yeah, yeah. And one other thing to that point is that make and Zapier have templates where they already have hundreds if not thousands of example templates that you can use like pipedrive to ClickUp or whatever that it's already got the basic structure there and then you just authenticate and customize. All right, perfect. So to sum it up, we typically 99% of the time recommend makeover Zapier for cost, for capabilities for error handling and how, how we're able to build things.

0:15:58 - (Alane): Zapier is also fantastic if you're non technical. You just want to start dabbling and building stuff yourself. I think that one's a great one to go. But either way, start building some automation if you're wanting to get in there yourself and try them out, and they're going to save hours and hours of time.