Make vs. Zapier vs. custom: choosing the right automation platform

We've deployed automation for clients on Make, Zapier, and fully custom-built solutions. All three work. All three have real limitations. The right choice depends on your business size, the complexity of what you're building, and how much you want to be able to manage it yourself.

Here is a practical breakdown with no affiliate links or paid recommendations.

Zapier: best for simplicity and speed

Zapier is the easiest of the three to set up and the easiest to hand off to a non-technical team member. If your automation need is "when X happens in app A, do Y in app B," Zapier handles that extremely well.

Where Zapier shines

• Simple two-step automations (form submission triggers an email)
• Connecting mainstream tools (Gmail, HubSpot, Calendly, Xero)
• Teams with no technical background who need to manage it themselves
• Getting something live in under an hour

Where Zapier breaks

Zapier gets expensive fast as your task volume grows. It also struggles with complex conditional logic — anything with more than two or three "if this, then that" branches becomes unwieldy and hard to debug. And if an automation fails silently, you often don't find out until a client complains.

Make (formerly Integromat): best for complex logic

Make is significantly more powerful than Zapier for multi-step, conditional workflows. Its visual flow builder makes complex scenarios readable in a way that nested Zapier Zaps don't. The pricing is also more generous at scale — you pay per operation rather than per task, which matters when you're processing high volumes.

Where Make shines

• Complex multi-step workflows with branching logic
• High-volume automations where Zapier costs become prohibitive
• Teams with someone reasonably comfortable with data and logic
• Scenarios that need error handling and retry logic built in

Where Make breaks

Make has a steeper learning curve. A non-technical business owner can't usually pick it up and manage it without some training. If your team turnover is high or you can't guarantee ongoing technical support, Make scenarios can become orphaned and brittle.

Custom-built: best for strategic, long-term automation

A custom-built automation — built in code, deployed on your own infrastructure — is the most powerful and the most expensive to set up. It's also the most durable: it doesn't depend on a third-party platform's pricing changes, deprecations, or outages.

When custom makes sense

• You're automating a core business process that won't change much over time
• The automation handles sensitive data you don't want passing through third-party servers
• You need performance and reliability that platform tools can't guarantee
• The workflow is complex enough that maintaining it on Zapier or Make would be harder than maintaining code

How to choose

Start with these three questions:

1. How complex is the logic? Simple trigger-action: Zapier. Multi-step with conditions: Make. Core business process with sensitive data: custom.
2. Who will maintain it? Non-technical team: Zapier. Someone comfortable with data tools: Make. Ongoing technical support available: any of the three.
3. What's the volume? Under 1,000 tasks/month: Zapier is fine. Over that: Make or custom is usually more cost-effective.

In practice, most businesses under 50 staff start on Zapier, migrate the complex workflows to Make as they grow, and go custom only for the automations that are genuinely core to how they operate. That's usually the right sequence.

Ethan Sandery

Founder, Elevion AI — AI and automation for growing Australian businesses.