If you’re looking for a non-scripting way to handle advanced automations & advanced integrations with Airtable, the 2 most popular options in the USA are Zapier and Make.
Many years ago, I started off as a Zapier guy – but that was only because I had not yet discovered Make.
Make was partially created as a response to Zapier, because the CEOs of Make challenged themselves to make a product that was better than Zapier. In my opinion, they definitely succeeded. Not only is Make much better than Zapier, but it is also much cheaper as well.
These are just a few of the main advantages that Make has over Zapier:
Make has almost none of the limitations that Zapier has. Just as one example out of dozens of examples, Zapier only allows 3 conditional branches, whereas Make allows unlimited conditional branches. Another example is that Make has a purely visual drag-and-drop environment that makes it much easier to visualize entire automations at-a-glance.
Make is SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful than Zapier. For example, Make has an entire library of functions and tools built into the platform that let you manipulate your data in ways that Zapier doesn’t allow at all. Other examples: Make allows you to aggregate groups of Airtable records together, and Make lets you choose just the “latest X number of records” — neither of which are possible with Zapier. There are so many more examples like this.
Make is significantly cheaper than Zapier, even though it is way more powerful than Zapier.
In general, Make seems to have better tech support than Zapier, although sometimes I have gotten incorrect answers from Make’s tech support which I ultimately figured out on my own.
However, the one major downside to Make is that there can be a big learning curve. When I first started using Make, I found it highly confusing and they didn’t have any training videos. But I kept pushing forward with it, and eventually it became second nature to me.
To help people jump in faster than I was able to jump in, I recently created this very brief navigation video for Make, along with providing the link to Make’s relatively new free training courses, which are something like 8 hours of training videos!
Ultimately, I think that people will be highly rewarded by choosing Make over Zapier.
Also couldn’t agree more that Make is FAR superior than Zapier from a cost and UX standpoint. I am totally up for being proved wrong though let the automation wars begin!
@Appleapi7 They have some extensions that neither Make or Zapier has, that is true, the main motivator for me to use them is because they are free if it is self-hosted or local workstation. But overall it causes some headaches to figure out how to set it up, by far not as good with documentation. Go knock yourself out if there is an issue. But they have a supportive community.
The main reason I moved from Zapier to Integromat was the interface. It’s like a playground. No need to read the manual. Zapier, you never know at which end of the spaghetti chain you are and fixing things, good luck, need to go through clicking till the end again. Zapier has wider support I find, a lot of smaller software companies in North America support automation start with Zapier support and they never extend to Make. But I think Make as done a great deal nurturing their ecosystem that was quite distinct and Make as better international appeal, lest not forget they started in a different geography, European software market is highly fragmented with 100’s of business applications, every country has their unique ones and Make did support many early one, while Zapier couldn’t care less for the smaller local international apps.
let the automation wars begin!
You can’t choose one of the most common nouns in the English language and expect it to be searchable anywhere!!