Make

Make is what you graduate to when Zapier's pricing starts hurting and you realise you want a visual workflow editor instead of a list of steps. Acquired by Celonis in 2020, the product has continued evolving and is now genuinely better than Zapier for power users — cheaper, more capable, and the visual flowchart UI makes complex workflows much easier to reason about. The core experience: build automations as visual flowcharts. Trigger nodes (when X happens), action nodes (do Y), router nodes (branch based on conditions), iterator nodes (loop over arrays), aggregator nodes (combine results). The visual representation makes 5-step workflows feel like flowcharts you'd actually draw on a whiteboard, instead of Zapier's linear 'step 1 → step 2 → step 3' approach. For founders Make beats Zapier on a few specific axes. Pricing is cheaper at scale — Make's 'operations' are roughly equivalent to Zapier's 'tasks' but priced lower (Make's Pro plan at $16/month gives you 10K operations vs Zapier Professional's 750 tasks at $20). Workflows can be more complex (proper looping, error handling, multi-path branching) without the 'use Code Steps' workarounds Zapier requires. And the visual editor is genuinely easier for non-trivial automations. Where Make trails Zapier: integration breadth. Zapier has 6,000+ app integrations; Make has 1,500+. For most common SaaS tools you'll find both. For niche or new tools, Zapier is more likely to have native integration. Make also has a steeper learning curve — the visual editor is more powerful but takes longer to master than Zapier's linear flow. The pricing model is honest. Free tier supports 1K operations/month and 2 active scenarios — useful to evaluate. Core at $9/month and Pro at $16/month cover most small-team needs. Teams at $29/user/month adds team features. The price-per-operation scales linearly, which is more predictable than Zapier's task tiering. My take: try Make if you're paying Zapier $200+/month or you've outgrown Zapier's linear flow for complex automations. The visual editor + cheaper operations + more powerful flow control are real wins. Stay on Zapier if you (a) need a specific niche integration Make doesn't have, (b) your automations are simple enough that the linear flow is fine, or (c) you have non-technical operators who'd struggle with the visual editor. For most founders building serious automations, Make is now the better tool.