Why do you need Zapier?
In our online business, it rarely happens that one tool will suffice all our requirements.
We need to use different tools for different purposes.
For example, we are using a quiz for generating leads. We are using ‘involve.me’ for creating this quiz. Now, I want to add a person who participates in my quiz to my course hosted on Kajabi.
Now, this is not possible, because there is no direct connection between ‘involve.me’ and Kajabi.
So, we need some duct tape to connect them together.
And, this is where Zapier comes into the picture.
Whenever there are a bunch of tools that don’t speak with each other directly, we need to make them speak through someone. And, that someone is Zapier.
Why Zapier is prohibitive to newbies?
Zapier is one of the very sophisticated tools available to online entrepreneurs that are super easy to use.
Anyone with decent knowledge of how to use a browser will be able to connect different tools without any issues.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is the number of tasks.
Tasks? What’s a task now?
What are tasks?
Imagine a scenario where you’re receiving the payment through Stripe, and you want to record the payment details in Stripe.
But you want to check the country of the person who has made the payment and only if the country is the UK then only you want to push it in Google Sheet.
The steps in this workflow would look like the following
Payment details received from Stripe
Check if the country is the UK
If yes push the data in Google Sheet.
Here, these 3 steps are 3 tasks.
So, if you are processing 500 payments per month, you will use 1500 tasks.
And the crux of the matter is Zapier charges you depending on the number of tasks.
So, for 1500 tasks you need to pay $59 per month or $39 per month if you prepay for 12 months.
Now, imagine if the number of payments goes to 1000, then you would require 3000 tasks, which will cost you $133 per month.
You may be thinking, it’s 1000 payments per month, so $133 should not be a problem, right? But replacing 1000 payments with 1000 email ids collected and then justifying $133 per month becomes very hard.
People are literally spending hundreds of dollars on Zapier but when you’re small that amount can be prohibitive.
What are the alternatives to Zapier?
So, what now? Because you need to duct tape various applications, you need something like Zapier.
Thankfully there are such three good alternatives.
Pabbly
The best alternative to Zapier is Pabbly.
Pabbly is as easy as Zapier to use, but costs way too little than Zapier. In fact, they are providing a lifetime plan which costs peanuts in front of Zapier.
It supports more than 750 applications.
And their lifetime deal costs $149 for 3000 tasks per month and 10 workflows.
Integrately
Integrately is fairly new, and there are some issues with it, sometimes the automation is stuck in the queue and either they are lost or are processed in a batch.
However, similar to Pabbly; Integrately costs a fraction of what Zapier costs. Plus their free plan is very generous.
Right now it supports 600+ Apps and costs $19 per month for 14000 tasks. Talk about being generous.
Integromat
The third alternative is Integromat. Another option that costs nothing in front of Zapier.
I had used Integromat for one automation. So, I don’t have much experience with it. But for one workflow, it worked perfectly and there was hardly any issue.
However, I found it a bit tricky to use. And it wasn’t as easy as Zapier.
It costs $9 per month for 10000 operations.
So, Why I chose Pabbly?
More tasks at less cost
Pabbly is providing a lifetime deal. Which I think, you should take it with both hands.
It’s designed so beautifully that it could easily charge what Zapier is charging.
So, before the lifetime deal goes away and costs increase, you should it. I took it and I couldn’t be happier.
Even if you go with their monthly plan, it will cost you just $13 per month for 12000 tasks.
Whereas you will be paying $59 for 1500 tasks. You can easily imagine the difference.
Internal tasks are not counted
One of my gripes with Zapier is they charge for internal tasks.
So, what are internal tasks?
Condition checking
Number extractor
Text formatter
Currency formatter
Webhook
Email parser
Filter
And more such 20+ operations
So, in the case of the Stripe payment example, we studied initially, we won’t be charged for the Condition checking task. That is it won’t be counted towards our tasks credit.
This is such a big advantage over Zapier.
Free webhooks in Pabbly
Zapier has tagged some apps and actions as premium. And on the free plan of Zapier (which is useless in my opinion), you cannot use webhooks.
I’ll not go much into the details of what are webhooks because this will quickly turn into a tech article.
But, in one line we can say after some action the application will send some data to a certain destination. This destination is a webhook.
For example, if someone fills a form in GrooveFunnels, it will send the form data to the webhook, which will be captured by this webhook for further processing.
So, why webhooks are important?
When a new application is developed; rather than developing all the integrations, they provide a webhook that can be consumed by applications like Zapier and Pabbly.
In short, webhooks are very important.
The problem is Zapier has tagged webhooks as premium. So you cannot use them on the free plan and on the paid plan there are limitations on how many premium apps and actions you can use.
That’s not the case with Pabbly.
Webhook is not counted towards the credit you have.
What should you do?
I think if you want to save on future costs and want to use something that will compete with Zapier toe to toe, you should sign up for Pabbly.
Trust me, you won’t go wrong.
