***Please note that Integromat evolved into Make in February 2022. All content for Integromat is also valid for Make.***

Ever heard of no-code programming? No? Then you might be missing out big time. No-code programming or no-code automation is currently a hot topic. Basically, no-code automation tools allow you to do simple programming without actually having profound programming skills or even education.

Do you need to save all your Gmail attachments to Dropbox? Do you need to upload every new email address as a new line into a Google Sheet? Those types of tasks can be solved with no-code automation tools in minutes as opposed to hiring a programmer which would spend hours on programming, getting access to various APIs and setting up a server where all this magic would have to run. With no-code automation tools, you don’t have to worry about any of these boring things and you just need to build your scenarios. If I had to distil the definition of no-code automation tools into 1 sentence, I would say this: No-code automation tools allow you to send and transform data from one system/app to another.

There are currently 2 no-code automation titans on the market: Zapier and Integromat.

While I mainly work with Integromat I’ve recently had to use Zapier to solve a problem which was not solvable in Integromat. So I’ve figured it might be a good idea to share do a comparison of both tools.

Disclaimer: If you end up buying an Integromat license, I may get a commission from the sale. 

My Profile

I am not going to immediately jump into the comparison because I think it’s important to describe my profile since both tools are targeting slightly different markets.

My profile is:

1. I am not a programmer.
2. I’ve never studied programming.
3. I know how to write G Apps scripts.
4. I know how to write advanced SQL queries.
5. I deal with programmers every day in my day job.
6. I genuinely enjoy building things which save time and run completely on their own.

You can see that I am not necessarily a programmer BUT I do know something about programming and this article is biased by my profile.

Now, we can finally start diving into the comparisons.

Count of Supported Apps

Zapier currently supports “more than 2000” apps/APIs (today is 2021-01-31).  Integromat currently supports 665 apps. This is a clear win for Zapier.

Of course, you’ll find all important apps such as Gmail or Google Sheets in both platforms. It’s really the long tail which makes a difference now.  One app I did not find in Integromat but found in Zapier was GetAccept, for example.

Scope of Supported Apps

One thing is to support as many apps as possible, another thing is the scope of supported apps. By scope, I mean all the possible triggers and actions you can do in either of the platform.

I will give you a very specific example of Pipedrive (a CRM system):

• In Zapier, you can do this.
• In Integromat, you can do this.

When it comes to pure numbers around the Pipedrive in both platforms:

• Both platforms come quite close on triggers: Zapier 14 vs Integromat 12.
• They do differ in actions: Zapier 14 vs Integromat 40.
• They also differ in searches: Zapier 12 vs Integromat 19.

While it’s not always the case, I generally find Integromat more encompassing allowing me to do more stuff. In case of the Pipedrive example,  “Get” actions are completely missing in Zapier. Unclear why to me. Those are super useful.

I am gonna give this to Integromat.

UI

This is quite a subjective topic and I need to throw in a few example of both UIs look like.

In Zapier, the automation series are called “Zaps” which are basically a set of actions which are committed one after each other.

When you build your Zaps in Zapier, you go from the top to the bottom.

This is how edit/create action look like:

Let’s move to Integromat now. Zap’s counterpart is called a “scenario” in Integromat.  A similarly sized scenario in Integromat looks like this:

In Integromat, you move from the left to right. If you have a huge scenario, you can use scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in/zoom out.

When you attempt to edit a “module”, it looks like this:

My preference here is again Integromat but it might just because I am used to it. None of the tools is perfect. Here are the UI things I don’t like:

In Zapier:

1. Too much clicking and confirming – they treat you like you are an idiot
2. Too much pressure on testing – the Zaps kind of want you to test everything even though you are doing a very simple action
3. No real-time visualization when the Zap is running
4. Any edit to a Zap automatically turns off the Zap. The Zap can only run when you save your changes and there is no way to come back after a change is made. In Integromat, you can be editing your scenario while the previous version still runs in the background. Until you save your changes, the previous version keeps running. If you are unhappy with your changes, you cannot really revert them one by one BUT you at least don’t have to save them and so the previous version of the scenarios can still continue to run.
5. Not sure if this is just me but the whole UI somehow feels slow.

In Integromat:

1. Lots of scrolling in your variable list with inability to search. Search in variables is now supported. If your route uses 40 modules and you need to pick a variable from the first module, you can search for the variable or you can scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.
   
2. If you are editing a module and you accidentally click outside the module setup window, all the changes are gone and you can start over. I don’t get this. It looks more like a bug to me. If this is not a bug, this is a big UI fail. This was handled during 2021-03 upgrades.
3. It’s very difficult to test scenarios which start with a webhook. Basically, you need to replicate the ping so the scenario triggers and all modules run.
4. Not so clear handling of AND and OR conditions within filters

GO TO MAKE

Solving Complex Problems

This one is a clear win for Integromat before saying anything. Integromat has a few native modules and features which set it apart from Zapier, namely:

1. Router – router lets your route your scenario into many “branches” depending on filters. So imagine you have a scenario which monitors your Gmail and then forwards emails to 50 different people based on 50 different conditions. You can do this in Integromat very easily thanks to to the router, you cannot really do this in Zapier. Zapier will only let you to define 3 different “Paths”, but not 50.
2. Inline functions – If you are an Excel formula pro, Integromat’s inline functions will come quite handy for you.  You can e. g. select a first word from the sentence and the capitalize it – all within 1 nested function.  These inline functions are somewhat similar to Zapier’s “Formatter”. The trouble with Formatter is the fact the it allows you to do only one operation at a time so you’d have to use 2 Formatters (basically 2 steps) in your Zap to extract the first word and then to capitalize it. Now imagine you have to capitalize words for 10 fields. In Integromat, you’d just use startcase() function over your variables. In Zapier, you’d have to use formatter 10 times over each variable resulting in roughly 1000000000 extra clicks compared to Integromat.
3. “Programming modules” – for advanced users, Integromat modules such as Repeater, Iterator, Array Aggregator, Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit, and Ignore which are able to handle many scenarios which you’d handle with your full-blown code if you were writing the code from scratch.
4. HTTP, SOAP, XML, JSON modules – if you are unlucky and you need to start working with a super niche app which is not natively supported by Integromat nor by Zapier, there is still a big chance you’ll be able to achieve what you need to just by using e. g. the HTTP module firing requests directly to the app’s API.

Long story short, I’m running a specific scenario which contains more 40 modules in multiple routes (sometimes even nested) and it all starts just with one receiving webhook:

I would never be able to achieve this scenario in Zapier. For every route in Integromat, I would have to create a new Zap and I would still have struggles to cover the sub routes.

So this section is a clear win for Integromat. By now, you are probably starting to feel the Integromat is more for people with “programming minds” which aren’t necessarily programmers.

GO TO MAKE

Debugging and Error Handling

Both platforms handle debugging, error handling and error exploration very differently.

Zapier

When you are building your Zap, you are kind of forced to test of everything you do as soon as you are done with a step:

I don’t prefer this push for testing even for the most basic operations but I can imagine that beginners can find this force quite helpful. Either way, you can still “Skip Test” if you finally notice the button.

Once your Zap is running in production and a failure happens, you’ll get an email. The email will lead you to Zap’s History where you can find the failed run and see what happened step by step.

Also, the Zap History allows you to filter for any specific data point and check how this piece of the data was processed by the Zap. For example, you need to check for a specific customer name and how it went through your Zap.  Lets search for my name:

If matches are found, you can then drill down into specific runs and see what happened:

 

This feature is super powerful and IS NOT available in Integromat.

One area Zapier sucks big time is error handling – there is nothing like Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit, Ignore and you have these modules in Integromat.

GO TO MAKE

Integromat

When you are building your Integromat scenarios, you can “Run this module only” to test what happens. You are not forced to do it as in Zapier. You just need to provide whatever variables are needed and press the “Run this module only” button.

One feature I’m missing is to be able to “Run scenario up to this module”. Imagine your are working on a scenario with 50 modules but you want to test run it only up to the 30th module. This is not possible.

When an error happens in Integromat, you will get an email which will point you to the scenario History. In my example, all runs are “success”. However, when there is a an error, status will show “error” and then you can click the “Details” button to see what each module produced. As I said, you cannot really look for a specific piece of information within your runs as you can in Zapier.

On the top of all this, you can add error handling modules such as Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit, Ignore.

Overall, I prefer Integromat (again), mainly thanks to the error handling modules.

Speed

I am not talking about the speed of UI but rather about the speed of scenario/Zap runs. I often feels like Integromat is 2-3x faster to process a similar scenario than Zapier. Most of the time the speed does not really matter as long as the result is eventually produced but I’ve already found a few situations where speed mattered for me.

GO TO MAKE

Pricing

While pricing structure seems to be quite similar, there are big differences in how you are billed.

In Zapier, you pay for:

• Tasks – you will be charged +1 task on any successful action step OR on any filter step that passes OR on any time a path’s rules pass.
• Number of Zaps in lower priced tiers

Pricing table as of 2021-01-31:

In Integromat, you pay for:

• Operations – any performed operation by a module is +1 operation including a trigger going off while not even proceeding thru the next filter. So if you have an API which generates pings to webhooks with every update of an item, Integromat will charge you +1 operations for every hook recieved while Zapier will charge you 0 tasks.
• Amount of data transferred in MBs.

The pricing table as of 2021-01-31:

Overall, I think Integromat comes about 2-3x cheaper than Zapier for an average user. I’m using the BUSINESS tier for $99/month to cover all my needs (actually I pay $67 while applying a Christmas discount). With Zapier, I would likely need to use TEAM subscription for $299/month.

Conclusion

You can probably tell by now that Integromat is a clear winner for me. However, the winner hugely depends on how complex problems you are trying to solve and what programming experience you have. So I would say this:

Go for Zapier if:

1. You don’t really know much about programming
2. You scenarios don’t need complex conditional logic
3. You don’t need lots of operations per month

Go for Integromat if:

1. You have programming mind
2. You really need to handle complex problems
3. You need to handle errors properly
4. You need to make HTTP calls to super niche APIs

GO TO MAKE

Any more comments from your side? Drop me a comment in the section below!