We build on all three of these, and we do not have a favourite. Which one is right depends on three things nobody asks about in the comparison posts: how much volume runs through it, what happens when a record is bad, and who looks after it in eighteen months.
Prices change too often to publish here, so check them yourself. What follows is the part that does not change.
Zapier — start here if the connection is simple
The largest library of ready-made connections and the shortest path from idea to working automation. If your need is "when a form comes in, create a row and send an email," Zapier is the correct answer and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something more complicated than you need.
Where it stops fitting: cost climbs steeply with volume, and error handling is thin. A single malformed record can quietly stall a run, and you find out when somebody notices a missing invoice. For low-volume, low-stakes work, that is an acceptable trade. For a process the business depends on, it is not.
Make — when the logic branches
You see the entire flow on a canvas, which matters enormously once there are conditions, loops and several possible endings. It is generally better value than Zapier at volume, and the visual model makes a complicated process explainable to somebody who did not build it — which is worth more than it sounds when the person who built it leaves.
Where it stops fitting: it is still a hosted service with its own execution limits, and complex scenarios get visually dense enough that the canvas stops being the advantage it was at the start.
n8n — when volume, error handling or ownership matter
Real branching, real retries, and the option to run it on infrastructure you control. This is what we reach for when one broken record must not stop the whole run, when a human approval step has to sit in the middle of a process, or when a client wants the system to keep working regardless of what happens to our relationship.
Where it stops fitting: it expects somebody technical to look after it. If nobody in your business is that person and you are not hiring one, choose a hosted option and spend the difference on something else.
The option most comparisons leave out
Check what you already own first.
Your CRM, your accounting package and your job platform frequently ship native connections to each other that nobody switched on. It is the least interesting answer in this category and it costs nothing. We have handed operators that finding as the entire result of an Assessment, and it is one of the more satisfying outcomes of the job.
How to choose in five minutes
| If this is true | Start with |
|---|---|
| One or two steps, low volume, nothing breaks if it is late | Zapier |
| Several conditions, someone non-technical must understand it | Make |
| High volume, or a bad record must not stop everything | n8n |
| A customer sees the output, or it moves money | Whichever — but with a human approval step |
| You have not checked your existing tools yet | Do that first |
The thing that matters more than the choice
Whichever platform you land on, the build should fail loudly, keep a record of what it did, and stop for a person wherever the output is customer-facing. We know one of our own builds ran at about a 97% success rate across roughly 300 estimates because it was measured, not estimated — and the 3% was caught and handed to a human rather than silently sent.
An automation nobody is watching is not a system. It is a liability with good uptime. The longer version of this argument is in the guide on connecting your tools.
If you would rather have somebody map this with you, the Architecture Assessment is 45 to 90 minutes and ends with a written report. It is $250, credited 100% toward any build — and if we find nothing worth building, we say so. Book it here.