I get asked this question about once a week: "Should I use Make or Zapier? What about IFTTT?" And every time I ask the person what they're trying to automate, they say something like "I want to send a follow-up email when someone fills out my contact form."
That's a two-step automation. Any of these three tools will handle it. The question isn't which one is more powerful — it's which one makes sense for where you are right now. Here's the honest answer.
IFTTT (If This Then That) is exactly what the name says. One trigger, one action. If someone tweets with a specific hashtag, save it to a Google Sheet. If it rains tomorrow, send yourself a notification. Personal stuff, basic stuff, one-step stuff.
Pricing: Free tier is functional for simple use cases. Pro is $3.99/month.
The problem is the limitations are real. You can't build multi-step logic. You can't pass data between steps or add conditional branches. And the app integrations, while wide, aren't deep — you often can't customize what data gets passed.
This is what I recommend to 80% of the small business owners I work with. Zapier has the biggest app library (6,000+ integrations), it's the easiest to set up without any technical background, and it just works. The interface is clear. The error messages tell you what's wrong. When something breaks, you can fix it yourself without calling anyone.
Pricing: Free tier = 100 tasks/month (enough to test, too small for real volume). Starter plan = $20/month for 750 tasks. Professional = $49/month for 2,000 tasks.
The tradeoff: at scale, Zapier gets expensive fast. And if you need complex, branching logic — "if the customer said X, do this; if they said Y, do that" — you start hitting its limits.
Make (formerly Integromat) is where you go when Zapier's pricing becomes a problem or when your workflows get genuinely complex. Make uses a visual canvas where you can see the entire flow, branch logic, loop through lists, and do things Zapier simply can't.
Pricing: Free tier = 1,000 operations/month (10x Zapier's free tier). Core plan = $9/month for 10,000 ops. That's a significant cost difference at volume.
The catch: the learning curve is real. Make looks like a flowchart drawn by an engineer. If you're not comfortable with a little complexity, you'll spend more time troubleshooting than you'll save automating.
IFTTT: Free, simple, too limited for business use.
Zapier: $20/month, easy, reliable, the right default.
Make: $9/month, powerful, steeper learning curve, better at scale.
The biggest mistake I see small business owners make is spending three weeks researching Make vs. Zapier before building a single automation. You know what those three weeks cost? Three weeks of automations not running.
If you have never built an automation before: use Zapier. Start with their free tier. Build one workflow. When that works, build another. If you hit the pricing ceiling after a few months, you'll have enough experience to evaluate Make with real context — not YouTube videos and comparison blog posts.
The best automation tool is the one you actually use. Pick one and go.
If you want someone to tell you which tool fits your specific situation and help you set up your first automation — no course, no long-term contract — that's exactly what my setup sessions are for.
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