S1. Ep34 - How to Choose Between Zapier, N8N and Make.com for Your Business

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello, I'm Katie. And as always, I've got Noel here with me. Hi, Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: So this week, we are going to be looking into three different platforms that you can use for automations within your business. So a lot of people don't just get stuck with what to automate, but it's also like, even before that, it's then kind of like, you know, what platform do I use or, you know, how do I even. even do this. So we just thought we would give you a rundown of the three most popular platforms, platforms that both of us have used. And we will give you some pros and cons and some like personal insights as well. Are you ready now?

Noel: Oh, I'm always ready.

Katie: Are you? Are you? Not really.

Noel: Okay.

Katie: So as always, we just love to jump straight into it. No fluff. No hyping things up. No bro-marketing here. You know, we give very honest advice. No one's sponsoring us. So we are very lucky that we can just, you know, give our opinions. Okay, now, what platform would you like to start with first?

Noel: I think we should probably start with Zapier.

Katie: Okay, I feel like it's one of the older platforms as well. Like this has been around four years. And I feel like most businesses are aware of it as well. So, yeah, okay, let's start with that. So can you give us some pros or?

Noel: I guess one of the first big pros is the amount of apps. that are already in here. So they claim they've got more than 8,000 apps.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Already ready and raring to go for you to connect into, which is brilliant.

Katie: Uh-huh.

Noel: There's no digging through documentation, trying to figure out how to connect stuff. So that's always a positive. They also have some really good agents as well and chatbots and things out that you can add in. They are add-ons. So we'll talk about those in there,

Katie: the add

Noel: -ons in a bit. But they are there.

Katie: They work really well. Not really.

Noel: But yeah, I would say it's fairly easy to use. It would also be a pro. I wouldn't say it's the easiest, but it's definitely not. It's kind of, it's in the middle of the three, I'd say. So yeah, that's definitely, it's nice and beginner friendly. It's got all those apps that you can use and things like. So, yeah, I would say a good place to start for some businesses.

Katie: Yeah, I would agree. I feel like it's, you know, it connects to so many different apps. For me who has used it for my coaching and consulting business, I feel like it, you know, whenever like we want to connect, you know, sells pages to check out or, you know, to emails and things like that, like it's always been able to connect to, you know, to the places that I've always wanted it to connect to. and it doesn't take a lot of time to do.

Noel: No, no, because their builders are fairly straightforward. There's quite a lot of guardrails in their builder, which does make it beginner-friendly. So, you know, when you add in an app, it says, well, this is all the things you can do. And then when you select one, it goes, well, now you've selected that, this is the only things that you can do after that kind of thing. So it does constrain it. So unlike other apps, so you can connect anything to, to anything, not that that's a good thing. So that might not do it.

Katie: Okay, so what are some cons or Zapier?

Noel: So I'd say probably the biggest con is the price.

Katie: Yeah. Do you know what? I was going to say exactly the same thing. So you get a certain amount of zaps for free.

Noel: You do. I think they've kind of changed it in the past few months.

Katie: So they do

Noel: have a free tier, which is good.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: But you can only have two steps in your ZAPs, which isn't a lot. So you're taking data from one platform, sending it to another. You can't do anything else after that.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Which isn't ideal. And I'm just trying to figure out what it means by 100 tasks per month. So I think that kind of me, I'm not sure actually what that means on their pricing page. They don't actually talk about tasks. So, yeah, not sure. But either way, yeah, not great stuff. When it comes on to like the professional plan, so I'm just going to do everything that's pay monthly.

Katie: Okay. And is this in US dollars?

Noel: Yes, it will be, yes. So it will be 2999 per month. And with that, you do get some extra bits in there. You can have multi-stepzaps so you can upgrade, you know, to have as many as you wish. And you get unlimited premium apps. So that's also a concern really because it's like, well, what if I want to use that app when I'm on a free tier just testing it out? Yeah.

Katie: So what are they class in as premium apps? Just do they give any examples of what those are?

Noel: I've just clicked on it on their website. So Facebook ads, here we go. Webhooks. Ooh, yeah, webhooks are kind of important where it comes to all. automation.

Katie: A lot of

Noel: things would run off of a web hook. So yeah, that's a bit of a bit of a red flag for me.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Salesforce, Shopify, Shopify, QuickBooks, Zendesks.

Katie: Shopify's a premium app?

Noel: Yes.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: So, yeah.

Katie: They can't use the premium apps on a free tier?

Noel: No.

Katie: Okay, that's so interesting because you used to be able to do that. So they yeah they have changed it yeah they

Noel: have changed that yeah yeah

Katie: so it

Noel: does say premium maps are exclusively available to users on paid plans

Katie: okay okay interesting yeah okay they

Noel: do have some AI in at this level as well so on the professional level see in they they allow the to connect open AI accounts they

Katie: don't talk about any sorry the professional account per month was $29.99 per month?

Noel: Yes.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: That does also restrict you as well for the number of tasks per month. So I've just worked out what a task. So a task is how many times you're going to run your automations or, you know, if you had one automation, you could run that 700 times per

Katie: month.

Noel: So on the professional plan, you can only run 750 zaps per month.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: You can go up to 2 million ZAPs per month, if you wish. But, yeah, that'll set you back over $5,000. So, yeah, probably not. Whoa.

Katie: Per month? Yes. Wow.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Not great. Okay. Yeah. So the biggest then barrier to using Zapier is the price.

Noel: It is, yeah. When we, like we said, we also mentioned they have add-ons as well. So they've got agents, which I've seen online. I've never tried them myself, but I have seen people use them. They do work rather well. But, yeah, again, that's not included.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: No, there is a free plan.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: It doesn't really give you a lot per month, have 400 activities per month. So I guess that's 400 times you can call it or use as tools within the app. Other than that, you've then got to add 50. dollars a month if you want

Katie: a bit more so

Noel: yeah you're looking eighty dollars a month if

Katie: you've got both okay yeah so quite pricing

Noel: yes and then chatbox

Katie: is also

Noel: something separate as well

Katie: i do feel like zapier though has always been quite expensive

Noel: yes it always found

Katie: that in place it's not like they just put their prices up i i feel like they've always been quite expensive and you know most of us you know like online business owners have been trying to use the free plan as much as possible. Yeah. Okay, interesting. Yeah.

Noel: They also have chatbots as well, but those are, you can have two chatbots for free, but they've got really old. I would say, so you've got GPT 4.1 Mini, 4.1 Mini, which aren't the

Katie: best open AI models.

Noel: And then, yeah, other than that, you've got to then add another $20 a month. So, yeah, if you want chatbots, lots of Zaps and an agent, then, you know, you're $100 in.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah, it's not ideal.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: But yeah.

Katie: Okay. Should we move on to the next platform?

Noel: Yeah, I think the next one, should we do N-A-N?

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Okay. So N-A-N is a lot different to Zapier,

Katie: I would say.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: I would say very different.

Noel: Yeah, very, yeah. So let's just go through the pros. So there is an option where you can use it just like Zapier, so you log into N-A-N on their website, and then you have access to the builder. So that's one way of accessing it. The other way, which is a big pro for most companies, is you can also host it on your own server. So that could be a virtual server, it could be a physical server within your business, and that just really means that you control your data. whatever you're connecting in doesn't go to the outside world. So we don't have to trust, you know, the cloud environment that these platforms are providing. So, you know, we can go, you know, add more sensitive things in there, if you wish.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah, you've got that extra level security and you're in charge of that. And obviously, that's completely free as well.

Katie: So if you do that,

Noel: you know, you can go absolutely crazy. I think there's a few enterprise features that they don't have. within the option. But for most people, they'll just want to have this running 24-7 or they'll want to use it for a really big complex automations, which in like Zapier is going to use up a lot of zaps because you

Katie: can be

Noel: running it every few minutes.

Katie: And the same

Noel: with Make as well, because of how their pricing works. So yeah, for NAM, having that is brilliant. You can go crazy.

Katie: Go crazy. Yeah.

Noel: If you don't fancy doing that, like I said, they do have a cloud version as well, which is build at that is £24, and I can't change it to dollars.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah. So you look at about $30 per month for that. But yeah, you do get, they do restrict for the amount of workflows or automations that you can run concurrently, so you can only have five. on that base plan, which is a bit restrictive. In fact, they restrict even on the pro plan at £60 per month. That's saying you can only have 20 automations running at the same time, which again is a bit restrictive.

Katie: They're quite restrictive, isn't it? Especially that sort of money as well, I think, per month.

Noel: Yes, yeah, definitely. They do have, I guess kind of a pro is they do have access to some of the main apps. So there's no gatekeeping like Zapio when it comes to the, you know,

Katie: there's no

Noel: pro tier. Yeah.

Katie: There's no premium apps. Like you've got access to everything.

Noel: Yes. Although it's not as much. I don't think they actually state anywhere.

Katie: Okay. So they don't have as many connections to the, to apps.

Noel: No. They've got 1,185, which is very precise. Okay.

Katie: Yeah. And Zapia was, was it over 8,000?

Noel: Over 8,000,

Katie: yeah.

Noel: But then they've been going for so much longer.

Katie: If they have, they've been going for years and years.

Noel: Yeah, whereas NAN, they are quite new. So, yeah, they're still building up their library. And I believe they can have users input, you know, their integrations and things like.

Katie: So if there's an

Noel: app that isn't on here, the users, they can go off and create that and then supply it in then as a community, community node. which is, yeah, kind of helpful.

Katie: Okay. Yeah.

Noel: Okay, so I'm just trying to think if there's any other pros. I would say the speed of building agents is probably quite good, if that's one thing you're looking into. That's kind of really, really simple with the drag-and-drop interface. You just have your agent and you all on one view as well. So you can just say, well, I want to connect in with OpenAI, and I want that model. and then you can then assign all the different tools and that's all within one view and yeah that's something where other tools which will come on to in it a bit later on kind of falls over okay but yeah

Katie: so just comparing it back to zapier so um i know this was in in the cons which we'll probably get on to now, we were saying, it was because you mentioned agents. So with Zapier, agents were an add-on and as were chat was.

Noel: Yep.

Katie: Is that the case here or?

Noel: No, definitely not the case.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: They're fully included

Katie: throughout.

Noel: See.

Katie: A great problem.

Noel: Yes. And actually, they're, they're chatbot interface is actually pretty good. You can basically create like a chatbot trigger node within NAN and then it will then give you the code so you can go off and then embed it on your website. It's really, really simple and straightforward to do. There are some limitations when it comes to editing the look and feel of it. But, you know, if you just want to get something there and working really, really quickly, then NAN can do that within a couple of minutes. And yeah, You would just connect that into an agent or your automation, whatever you wish to have it access to.

Katie: And yeah,

Noel: all of that is all built in for free. But obviously, if you were, you know, local hosting this, then you're not then limited for the amount of times that that will run. But if you had the cloud plan, you know, you could only have.

Katie: Yeah, that's where you're limited.

Noel: Yeah, that's, yeah. So you would only, so if your chatbot on your website, you would only be able to send and receive two and a half. thousand messages per month.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: If that was all that was running on that account. Yeah, that's not great.

Katie: Okay, so let's go into the cons then properly for this platform.

Noel: Yeah. So one of the big ones is probably the learning curve. So I started out my journey on the other app. We're going to talk about in a bit.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: But where I thought, oh, well, I like this, you know, I like the sounds of N-A-N, you know, local hosts and all that sort of stuff. stuff, but there was still quite a big learning curve from going from one tool to another, mainly because you kind of need some sort of like coding knowledge in order to use it. So when we're connecting nodes together in the automation, you can drag and drop, you know, say I want the data from this app and I want it to go into this field within the next app. That's kind of common over all three.

Katie: But with N.A.N., you,

Noel: they kind of have, instead of like making it really simple and saying, well, that's the data from there, they go, well, this is dollar JSON and then loads of like a code snippet.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: You know, so I don't really understand what that's doing. And then sometimes you would need to then type that in. So you would need to know how NAN works in the background to be able to create those JSON strings and get the data connected, which. is, yeah, kind of frustrating.

Katie: Yeah, so you may actually need help with this platform. Like, if you want to use this platform, you like what it can do and you like the price point of it and, you know, you like how it's going to integrate into your business. You know, maybe the con of this is actually that you then need to, you know, hire someone to actually, you know, create those automations for you.

Noel: Potentially, yes. Yeah. They have a massive database, actually, of community automations already. So one that you might want might already be in there, which is kind of handy. And I would say the way a good con, sorry, pro, sorry, is when you import workflows into NAN, they seem to work far better than they do on other platforms. So for the platforms, there's a lot of, you know, configuring and setting up. It can bring through errors, whereas I always find with N8N if I import, workflow it works almost straight away so yeah that's kind of helpful but yeah you would need to really dig into it and learn the platform in order

Katie: to use

Noel: it properly obviously

Katie: or you can just hire someone like us you

Noel: could do yes absolutely

Katie: yes we've been for all

Noel: that pain

Katie: yeah we're ready to go all of your automations for you what a pro that is

Noel: exactly in fact actually this that one thing with the jason string that's one of the things that make dot com track. So they have a, they have a list internally of all the features that NAN has that make.com does better and that this is one of them. And they're like, yeah, it's not very beginner friendly.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Good to know. Okay.

Katie: So other cons?

Noel: I'm not sure there's that many. Well, actually, no, I did find another one earlier for NAN and although they've got, you know, 1,000 odd apps already in here, not all of the API endpoints are there. So I looked at HubSpot on their website and basically they listed a fair few of the API endpoints, but there wasn't that many. And then you look at make.com and then they've got like a hundred API endpoints for the same app.

Katie: So yeah,

Noel: although that app is there, probably expect that not every API endpoint for that application is ready and available. So, yeah, they do supply modules where you can, you know, add those in and then, you know, so you can still use that functionality of those applications. So that is possible, obviously, you would need a bit more technical knowledge to get that up and running.

Katie: I think it's a very technical platform in this one. It is, yes. The biggest learning curve out of all of them.

Noel: Yes, yeah. And I would say, well, back in the day when we were using Zapio, I would say that had a, at that time for me was quite steep. But now, I would say, it's far, far easier than they had.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Yeah. Okay.

Katie: Okay. So shall we move on to the last platform? Yes. Nol's favourite. Make dot call.

Noel: Oh, we've got no favourites here.

Katie: Okay. Okay. We're neutral at the moment. then.

Noel: Yeah, we're Switzerland right now. Okay.

Katie: Okay, so let's start then with some pros for Make.

Noel: So with Make, I would say pricing is a big pro. They have updated recently how they've introduced a new credit system. So I would say the pricing is still very competitive even with those slight changes but right now there is actually a really good free plan to start off with a free plan first with that one you get access to to everything um there's no gatekeeping um i don't think oh actually no there is you don't get access to agents but you can get them on a 30 day trial i believe if you sign up for a free account um so that gives you plenty of time to test it out and see if you like it uh but on their free account you can use 1,000 credits per month. So basically if your automation has five applications, so five steps,

Katie: that would use five credits.

Noel: So you can then run that X amount of times per month.

Katie: I feel like they're very generous with their free plan.

Noel: Yes, it is quite generous.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah.

Noel: And then getting access to all of the apps and everything like that.

Katie: So how many apps do Make have?

Noel: So they currently have, stated on their website is over 3,000,

Katie: correct. Okay.

Noel: So not as much as Zapier.

Katie: No, but more than anything.

Noel: Yes, yes, a lot more. Yeah, double. But I would say they cover all the bases. They've got all the big ones in there.

Katie: You know, you've got your Monday,

Noel: Monday.com, HubSpot, you know, Salesforce. You've got all of the AI platforms are in here.

Katie: And again, with. this platform, there's no, like, premium apps versus, like, regular apps?

Noel: So there is, there is potentially, so on the free plan, they say 2,000 plus apps, but then you look at their apps page and it says 3,000 plus. So I don't know if there's kind of like a, they haven't updated one from the other. Yeah.

Katie: I was going to say, is that someone not updating the web pages or?

Noel: Probably.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah, because I'm looking at the what comes within the core plan, which is the first pay plan, and it makes no mention of any additional apps.

Katie: Okay, so that could just be like a little update that they haven't done. Yeah,

Noel: I would say it's only been recently where they've actually updated it to over 3,000. So, yeah,

Katie: yeah. Maybe this is something that we can find out and let people know for...

Noel: Yes, we can ask them this week.

Katie: Yes. Definitely.

Noel: Yeah. So another pro for Make.com is the ease of use. And although it's kind of like complicated in a sense, so I spoke to one of the VPs at Make their event last year, and he was kind of worried that when you first open the platform the first of a time, you go off to create your automation and you just met with a big purple plus. And then he's like, that could be like really, really overwhelming for someone that has no idea about what to do. You click the plus and it goes, well, now you have access to all of the apps. What are you going to do?

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: And you're like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. But they do give you, you know, access to absolutely everything. But then there's also templates as well that are built in. And one real big pro for new users is using these templates because you can go through. and then say, well, I like this particular template. It's going to take data from the app I already use, and it's going to put it somewhere where I wanted to go and stuff like that. So you can say, well, take me through a guided setter of this template. And instead of just giving you the template and then go, right, now, figure out how to connect all of those apps in to make, it takes you through a step-by-step process. And it will say, well, if the first app on there is like air table as an example, it would be right, right, you now need to go off and connect your Airtable account in to make. And, you know, it can go off and then guide you through that process. And then the next app might be OpenAI. So it goes, right, well, now you need to go off and get your API key from OpenAI. This is how you do it. And then once you've gone through the entire process, your automation's sat there ready to go. None of the other platforms do that sort of handholding.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: So, yeah, yeah, really, really helpful for anyone that's just starting out.

Katie: Yeah. Also, I think a pro for make is that they are very open to feedback from users.

Noel: Very open.

Katie: Which is great. And this is definitely, I would say, not the norm for a lot of platforms. No. I've only known a handful of platforms to do this. Yeah. I feel like that is definitely worthy of a mention.

Noel: Definitely, yeah. Because I feel as if I sent an email to Zapier, like would they ever get back to you?

Katie: Would it ever be

Noel: a human that gets back to you?

Katie: Probably not. So we should also mention as well then that actually makes customer service is pretty good.

Noel: Yes, definitely.

Katie: Very good. I think really makes a platform. Like if your customer service is good, then, you know, that just makes such a massive difference.

Noel: It does, yeah, yeah. And I'll give two examples of their responsiveness. So I guess you could see that we're probably in maybe a slightly privileged position, I guess, because we've already interviewed Martin from Make. So I've already kind of got a side door into the organisation. So I can always email Martin different things.

Katie: But I didn't get back to me. And he also is in our membership, AI. business club and he floats around in there as well so you know we have you know we're able to have conversations with with him in there as well which is great

Noel: yeah but before we'd even spoken to make or martin the first ever time they just released the well they were about to release the grid and it was in like a beta closed beta and i had access to it and i i just had a look they had some new updates that they've done and i thought hold on the minute this doesn't doesn't quite make sense. So I click the give feedback. I gave them detailed feedback on, you know, on my opinions and what I thought maybe should be there. And that was probably about 3pm. And then by 8 a.m. the next day, I'd had the lead engineer, it was, you know, leading the grid team. He was emailing me about going, thank you so much. You know, this is really, really appreciative, you know, this is great feedback. And then within 10 minutes of that email, I've then got an email from one of the developers on that team going, this is great. How would you like it to look? If, if you know, forget any technical barriers,

Katie: what would

Noel: you like it to look like? Can we get a bit more information? You know, and I was,

Katie: I was blown away by that. Feedback, isn't it? Yeah,

Noel: absolutely. And I guess the other bit of feedback, was when they did the credit system. So it didn't fully make sense to me at the time. I remember I set an email off to Martin, and within a week I had a call set up with their head of AI to sit down with me for half an hour just to understand my viewpoints as a customer and things out. He was like, yeah, you know, we're taking all of this on board, and you can partially thank me for this, but they had, they've got an app on there, which is the data extractor. And at the time, they were saying for every page of a document that goes through, that's going to cost you 20 credits. And I was like, what, that's mega, that's really expensive in terms of credits. And, you know, they kind of went off, had a look at it, and then sent me an email, like a couple of days later and said, thanks to your feedback, we've halved it to 10. So I was like, oh, okay. I thought that was just for me, but it's for everyone. Yeah.

Katie: I know,

Noel: yeah. That happened within a week. So, yeah.

Katie: Yeah, they took that feedback on board.

Noel: I spoke to the head of AI on the Friday, and Martin emailed me on the Monday and said their team's already been talking about everything that you discussed. You know, they're taking action from there. So I was like,

Katie: wow, okay.

Noel: That's really good.

Katie: It's just right, though, that they were even willing to review it. I find. Yes.

Noel: Definitely, yeah.

Katie: Where they were like, no, we've set that. Someone's set that is, that's 20 credits. And then, you know, they get feedback and they've gone, okay, let's review this. And they've reviewed it as a team, as a company. And they've gone, yeah, actually okay.

Noel: They listen to feedback, which is excellent.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Another great positive, I guess is the development. speed, I would say as well. So agents became a big thing at the start of this year.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: And I guess they weren't the quickest at releasing agents. NAN was all over it from day one and all the YouTubers jumped all over that. And then Make agents came out maybe a couple of months later.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: And they've just continually updated that. So every time I seem to log in, they've added something new. And yeah, it's added more functionality. made things, you know, a hell of a lot better. And, yeah, they just keep adding more and more AI tools, which they host themselves into the platform that, you know, just makes everyone's life that little bit easier. So we're not having to prompt an AI agent or an AI from like Anthropic or OpenAI. We don't have to figure that out. They've already done that for you. And yeah, you just got to plug it in and then off it goes and then does that for you. So you don't have to do some of the prompt engineering.

Katie: things like. Which is right.

Noel: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Katie: I feel the entry barrier for make is just at a really great level. And I know from obviously the members, you know, that we're teaching me. I know people, you know, who have had no automations or AI experience whatsoever are actually able to, you know, build things use and make for the first time, you know, like following, you know, the tutorial videos that we have inside.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: So I feel like it is definitely the easiest platform to use. Definitely, yeah.

Noel: And it's also, as well as the community, it's also the, so I've got courses on EUDOMI and, yeah, there's like over 500 people that either I've taught there. and their feedback is like, this is like so easy to do. And I wouldn't dream of teaching the other two platforms.

Katie: I just find

Noel: that makers just beginner friendly. Yeah,

Katie: I agree.

Noel: And when we talk about the paid plans as well, so I don't think we mention that, but the first paid plan is $10.59 a month.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: And that gives you access to 10,000 credits per month,

Katie: which is

Noel: low.

Katie: that equate to?

Noel: So that would be how many steps within your automation? So like I say, if you've got five steps in your automation, you run that once you use five credits.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah. There's also a thing in there as well where if you're using their AI internally, so if you're using makes AI within their AI tools, then you do then incur some additional credit costs.

Katie: But they do

Noel: make that really, really clear. and up front so you can just hover over it and go well this is going to cost you you know five credits every time you run it you're like right okay yeah I do I want to spend that five credits there or do I just want to switch it out for open AI then get that to do it for one yeah so yeah there's that trade off

Katie: okay really okay so should we talk about the the cons of make is this difficult for you no yeah

Noel: I would say One of the cons for me is probably, and it was actually for Corky Ballas as well. He really didn't like their AI chatbot in the corner, which is there to help you out. So if you hit any errors or anything like that, there is a help bot that's within the scenario builder. It's not amazing. Okay. So, yeah, if you do get stuck, then you can't really ask that much of it. Well, I would say on the flip side of that is their help documentation is really comprehensive. So you would have to then go off and look it up yourself and figure things out.

Katie: Okay. Or you can come into the AI Business Club and you can just ask Noel. And Noel usually has the answer.

Noel: Yeah. Yeah. If not, though, within the community, there is a custom GPT which looks through all of makes help files. So, yeah, it actually works a bit better than makes own help AI, which is kind of help.

Katie: Do they know this? Do they know that our custom GPT is actually better than their help bot? They will.

Noel: Well, we're going to their conference, aren't we, this week?

Katie: And that's one of the things you're going to tell them, is it?

Noel: Yeah, I'll tell Martin. It'll feed it to whoever needs to know.

Katie: okay can i not be around when you when you tell martin that please

Noel: yeah yeah absolutely okay great

Katie: i would say another con for make is the amount of apps that they have available like we were saying zapier have over 8000 make has 3,000 so feel like there's quite a way for them to go and i know like we were saying like zapier is a lot lot older it's more established it's been going for like I want to say easily 10 years.

Noel: Yeah, probably more. And they went Zapier, yeah. Yeah,

Katie: definitely. So I do get there, you know, there's a massive difference, you know, make is relatively new compared to, you know, Zapier. So I get that's why. There's not so many apps, but I have to put it as a con.

Noel: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There is also another one as well where you might go, So what I ever say to people just started out with Make is, you know, you already know what tools you use in your business. So I would always say you go to the apps page on their website and then you search to see that your tool already exists. And then you can then see all of the modules you then get access to. So all the different things you can do. But there are some that get tagged as community. and those are a third party has created those apps and makers reviewed them and gone, yep, that's fine, that meets our rules and stuff and then they upload it onto the platform. But what it does mean is you'll then go off and you'll need to pay that third party to then access that application

Katie: within make.

Noel: So yeah, yeah, if anything comes up to tag community, then yeah, you would have to pay.

Katie: There's a hidden cost that you may not be aware of. Yeah.

Noel: There's not that many, though, I wouldn't say. There's not a huge amount of community apps.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: But most

Katie: of these apps, no.

Noel: But at the moment, I would say, like, the apps that are there that are marked as community, they've already got really good API documentation. So there's nothing stopping you from implementing that yourself. And that's one thing, actually, the AI agent within the builder's good. So you can give it the API call and then say, right, create me a HTTP module that does this. And then off it goes and does it.

Katie: Brilliant.

Noel: I use that all the time. So, yeah, top tip.

Katie: Brilliant.

Noel: So, yeah, yeah, there's a fair amount in there. But yeah, they're kind of less, less unknown apps, I would say.

Katie: Okay.

Noel: Yeah. Good to know.

Katie: Okay. So I feel that was a really good review of those three different platforms. I hope it has helped you decide. which platform is going to be best for you. Obviously, we think if you're a beginner, then make.com is a really great place to start. And if you do need any additional help with Make or even building automations, then please just reach out to us. We would absolutely love to help you, whether it's with, you know, just straightforward automations or if you want to add in that AI aspect into your automations as well. As always, we'll leave all the links for you. you below in our show notes and we'll catch you for another episode very soon.