Show & Tell
figured id share since i spent weeks evaluating alternatives and couldnt find many real comparisons from actual users (just SEO blogs that all say the same thing)
background: marketing ops team, 6 people. we had about 40 zaps running, mostly form captures > CRM updates, lead routing, email triggers, slack notifications, and a few data sync things between sheets and our CRM
why we left:
- cost kept going up. we were at $750/mo and every time we needed a premium integration it jumped
- error handling was painful. a zap would silently fail and wed find out days later when someone complained
- no way to see all our automations in one view. 40 separate zaps with no real connection between them
what we moved to and hows it going:
the forms piece was the easiest switch. our lead capture forms look better now and the conditional logic is more flexible. biggest win is the forms feed directly into workflows here instead of needing a separate trigger
tables replaced our google sheets dependency for a bunch of stuff. instead of zapier reading/writing to sheets we just use tables natively. no more API quota issues or weird sync delays
workflows took the most time to rebuild but theyre honestly cleaner now. being able to see the full flow visually instead of a list of steps helps a lot. error handling is also way better - you can see exactly where something failed and why
things i miss from zapier:
- the sheer number of integrations. zapier has connectors for everything. here you sometimes need to use the HTTP node for niche tools
- the community is bigger over there so its easier to find answers (for now)
overall happy we switched. our bill went from $750 to roughly $200 and we havent lost any functionality for our use cases
appreciate you writing this up. we went through the same thing about 3 months ago, 25 zaps, similar use cases. the cost difference alone was worth the switch but the native forms > workflow connection is what really sold us. in zapier every form submission was a separate trigger and a separate zap. here its just one flow
RT
River Thompson · Mar 29
this is the comparison post ive been looking for. thanks
AH
Ashley Hernandez · Mar 29
good writeup but id push back slightly on the integrations point. the HTTP node honestly covers 90% of what those niche zapier connectors do, you just have to set up the API call yourself instead of picking from a dropdown. once you do it once its actually not that bad and you have more control over what data you send and receive
the only time i really miss zapier connectors is for apps with really complex auth flows. oauth stuff can be annoying to set up manually
MH
Michelle Harris · Mar 29
how long did the migration take you? weve got about 30 zaps and im dreading the rebuild
PW
Phoenix Walker · Mar 29