Zapier vs. Make vs. Airtable Automations

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Zapier, Make and Airtable Automations are the three most popular workflow automation tools. Let’s weigh the pros and cons and see which is right for which type of job. If you’re looking for a quick answer, just take the quiz below!

Zapier

Pros

Easiest to setup, especially for simple use cases

Has the most integrations

Flood protection for your database in case something goes wrong

Cons

Most expensive.

Less powerful for complex automations

If you're looking for an automation tool that will let you get up and running quickly, Zapier is your best bet. It's easy to use and integrates with thousands of different apps. They’re most well known for simple workflows, like “when Googlesheet is updated” → “send me a Slack message”, but you can also use Zapier for multi-step workflows.

If you're looking to do something more complex or you care about reducing cost, you’re likely better suited with Make. Many of the people we surveyed reported that Zapier pricing increases rapidly with your usage, so pricing can quickly get out of hand for individuals and small to medium businesses.

Make (formerly Integromat)

Pros

Best for complex use cases. Make is the most powerful automation tool

Most reasonable pricing

Best for piecing together data from multiple sources

Cons

More of a learning curve to get started

Make is a workflows platform that lets you create custom logic for your automations using multiple branches and steps. For example: if a Dropbox folder doesn't exist, create one; if it already exists, add a new file to the existing folder and send the link to the new file to a customer via email.

Make pricing is very reasonable and scales with you as your needs grow. Even though it has more of a learning curve than Zapier or Airtable Automations, it’s worth checking out if your needs are complex enough or you are trying to reduce costs.

Lastly, if you're piecing together data from several sources or want to do something really outside-the-box, Make might even be the only option that lets you do what you want. Their community is also particularly helpful, with lots of automation experts waiting to jump in if you have any questions.

Airtable Automations

Pros

Best if the automation trigger is something happening in Airtable

If you’re an Airtable power-user, Airtable Automations lets you centralize your workflows

Airtable triggers happen instantly (vs. polling approach by Make and Zapier)

Cons

50 automations limit per Airtable base

No HTML emails, only markdown

Airtable Automations is the go-to tool if your automation trigger is something happening in Airtable, like a record being created or updated. If you use Airtable a lot, it’s also nice to keep everything on one platform. This makes it easier to debug issues and reduces confusion when new people join your team.

In general, Airtable Automations is usually best for internal-facing automations. If you’re sending an email as part of a workflow, you currently can’t format the email using HTML, whereas you can with Zapier and Make. Markdown is usually good enough though, if the email is not being sent to your customers.

One final limitation is that currently you can only have 50 automations per base. They increased the cap from 25 to 50 in May of 2022, though, so hopefully that trend continues.

Concluding thoughts

To sum it up in one sentence:

Zapier is the easiest to use for simple build outs, Make is the most affordable tool for powerful workflows, and Airtable Automations is ideal if you're working in Airtable.

Hopefully this post helped you decide which tool is right for your business. Depending on the size and complexity of your use case, each platform offers different benefits. In all likelihood, you’ll probably end up using all three over time!

Happy automating - here’s to eliminating the most tedious tasks of running a business 🥂

Special thanks to the Airtable community for their feedback, which helped inform this post.