n8n, Make or Zapier: what we actually build on (and when)

Every few weeks someone asks us which automation platform is best. The honest answer is that it depends on the shape of the problem, the budget, and how much control you need. Here is how we choose.

Zapier: fast and friendly

When a client needs a handful of simple, reliable connections up and running today, Zapier is hard to beat. It is the easiest to maintain and the least likely to surprise you. It gets expensive at volume and it does not love complex logic.

Make: visual and flexible

For branching logic and data manipulation without writing much code, Make sits in a nice middle ground. The visual builder makes complex flows legible, which matters when someone other than us has to look after it.

n8n: power and ownership

When we need real control, custom code, self-hosting, and no per-operation ceiling, we build on n8n. It is our default for anything that has to scale or hold sensitive data, and it is where most of our production systems live.