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12 Comments

Where does Zapier or Integromat fall short?

Hi, all

I am doing a bit of research alongside app integrations. As the no-code movement continues to explode. Zapier or Integromat will grow as the backbone of integrations.

However, is there anything that you found annoying with those services?

For example I had a hard time conneting Webflow + Zapier as outlined in this post. If the app does not have a clean API. Zapier or Integromat will fall short.

I was wondering are there other limitations like this.

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    Unlike most no-coders I first started off with Integromat over Zapier to try and create an automated translation tool. One thing I really like about Integromat that you can't do with Zapier is the fact that you can literally make your own custom API. I made an API to crawl content from a foreign language site which in turn google translated it into English, worked flawlessly.

    Zapier doesn't allow you to do that and it's APIs are limited to just those available in the marketplace. Even though it's intuitive and a lot easier to use, I prefer Integromat over Zapier for that reason.

    One thing about Integromat is that it has a steeper learning curve. As a no-coder I had difficulty navigating some of its functions at the start, but it's better for more complex integrations since the possibilities are endless.

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      I believe you could do this too, with Zapier using their "Webhooks by Zapier" zap, yes? That said, Integromat is by FAR the better (and cheaper) choice for sure 👍

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    I wanted POST form request body to be saved as a single row to a Google Sheet and the response would be a redirect to my thank you page. Could not do this with Zapier, so I hackedtogether my own sserver that does this.

    Edit: it's a standalone service that supports multiple user accounts. Never registered a domain for it though. Ping me if you have a need for such service.

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      Definitely one of the many pain points with Zapier. That said this is trivially easy with Integromat, though if you did this a few years back it may not have been available then...

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      Interesting. You could not get the body of the form to update inside the google sheets or you could not get the redirect to work?

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        Unfortunately I can't remember the details as it was a couple of years ago, but I do remember trying it out and couldn't get it to work.

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    This may be a different perspective than what you're looking for but: Users don't want to use Zapier or Integromat with your app or SaaS or whatever. They just want the integration to be 1-click, work, and be able to forget about it.

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    If the app does not have a clean API. Zapier or Integromat will fall short.

    I've found that to be very true for Zapier, but not at all true for Integromat.

    Zapier is the hand holding beginners version of creating your backend. Because of this there are limitations, like you just noted.

    Integromat removes the hand holding which makes it MUCH more flexible.

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    Better support for actions you want to do on a bunch of items, e.g. when an api call returns multiple items (the "loop" or "map" equivalent in programming).

    A better experience integrating custom code. It still is difficult to integrate own custom code into your automation workflows. There are several actions where I feel like writing 2-3 lines of custom JS/Python is still the easiest way to accomplish what I want to accomplish, but that's harder than it should be.

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      A better experience integrating custom code.

      Curious...what have you done so far to overcome this limitation?

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          Gotcha. I don't know if you're still looking for a solution and if so, how technical you are I've used AWS Lambda (serverless) functions called directly from Integromat to have this work. I have a link to a screencast walking through how to set that up if you're interesting, just let me know...

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