Last Updated：2023/Sep/10
Make vs Zapier (Make.com vs Zapier.com)
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, automation and workflow optimization are essential for businesses and individuals alike.
Zapier and Make.com both offer unique solutions to help users streamline repetitive tasks and boost productivity.
If you wanna see first-hand on how Make and Zapier can streamline data automation, you can directly register free accounts both at Make and Zapier.
Register a free account at Make.com
https://www.make.com
Register a free account at Zapier
https://zapier.com/
For people still wondering which platform is better for the automation tasks, we would like to share our experience in choosing between Make and Zapier.
Although we finally adopt Make as our primary tool for data automation, it does not imply Make is absolutely superior in every aspect.
Readers should make their own judgements based on the business needs and task requirements in choosing the automation platform.
Limitations of Free Account
According to Zapier's pricing plan (https://zapier.com/app/pricing), the free account can creat only "single-step" zaps.
This "single-step" restriction basically means a zap could perform only one action.
Unfortunately, our data automation project requires several actions to complete the required job such as writing data to Google Sheet and passing extra infomation to Excel.
The free account of Zapier does not allow us to perform two actions in one zap.
In the following zap, we try to export data from HubSpot to Google Sheet.
After passing the data to Google Sheet, we intend to synchronize the data with Excel in OneDrive.
However, the free account of Zapier does not allow us to add an extra action to synchronize with an Excel file.
Without actually trying whether a zap will work or not, how are we supposed to believe that Zapier can help us get the job done?
In contrast, the free account of Make.com does not have any restriction on the number of "actions" in its free account.
Make.com calls each automation workflow as a "scenario".
In each scenario, we could add several actions to complete our automation task.
In the following screenshot, we create a scenario in Make.com to export data from HubSpot to Google Sheet and Excel.
This scenario involves two actions (writing data to Google Sheet and Excel). Such a design is not allowed in the free account of Zapier.
Webhook in Zapier requires Premium
For engineers working on data synchronization on the web, webhooks are powerful tools in data automation over the web.
If you job is heavily related to data synchronization over the Internet, inevitably there will be situations in which webhooks become an indispensable option in synchronizing the data. Sometimes, webhooks may even be the only option in data synchronization.
On one occassion, we try to use "webhooks" in Zapier and bump into the following screen:
Ouch, the webhook app in Zapier is a "premium" feature, which is NOT available for free accounts.
Now again, how can we trust Zapier to get the job done "without" even trying the webhooks in the first place.
In contrast, Make allows us to use webhooks in the free account so that we can truly validate the automation workflow actually works.
See the following screenshot in which we rely on a webhook to export data from HubSpot to Google Sheet.
Zapier Misses the Custom Fields from HubSpot
When designing one zap in Zapier to access the data from HubSpot, we encounter a mysterious issue in which all custom fields of HubSpot display "No data".
After searching for a solution on the web, we read the following webpage discussed in Zapier community.
https://community.zapier.com/troubleshooting-99/hubspot-to-sheets-missing-data-20664
The preceding webpage illustrates our problem in which standard default fields pass through while all custom fields are missing.
This is truly a deal breaker for us since our data synchronization will utterly fail without fetching these custom fields from HubSpot.
In the end, we turn to Make.com and successfully access the HubSpot data with all custom fields inside.
Connecting with HubSpot from Make.com
Connecting with HubSpot from Make.com is a breeze for us to set up.
No more juggling with tedious settings. Make.com really makes it straightforward to design an automation workflow.
Conclusions
Very few software or applications are perfect in this world. Likewise, neither Make or Zapier is perfect either.
We choose Make thanks to its easy connection with HubSpot and a rather generous policy for free accounts to try all features.
Hope our experience may help some engineers in choosing the appropriate automation platform for their jobs.
Register a free account at Make.com
https://www.make.com
Register a free account at Zapier
https://zapier.com/
