Zapier free vs Make free: which one should a small business use for automation?

THIS WEEK: Every small business has jobs that somebody does by hand every day, such as replying to enquiries, copying details into a spreadsheet and chasing the same information again. Zapier and Make both automate those jobs, and both have a free plan. This week compares them properly, covers how each one counts your usage, builds the same real automation in both, and ends with a clear recommendation on which to start with.

UK business owners spend about 11 hours a week on admin and finance, roughly six working days a month, compared with about 3.6 days a month on sales and business development. That comes from the SME Business Barometer, run by American Express with Small Business Saturday UK among 1,000 owners of UK micro, small and medium-sized businesses and reported in July 2026.

A fair share of that admin is the same small task repeated, such as replying to every new enquiry, or updating a spreadsheet each time an invoice is paid, or remembering, eventually, to ask a customer for a review once a job has finished. Automation tools do these jobs for you. You set a rule once, in the form "when this happens, do that", and the tool carries it out every time, including at 11pm on a Sunday when you are not at your desk.

Zapier and Make are the two best known tools for this, and the choice between them matters more than most comparisons admit, because the free plans work in quite different ways.

What Automation Tools Actually Do

Every automation has two parts. The trigger is the thing that starts it, such as a new form response, a new email or a paid invoice. The action is what happens next, such as sending an email, adding a row to a spreadsheet or creating a calendar event. You connect the apps you already use, pick a trigger and an action, and the tool does the rest without you opening either app.

Both Zapier and Make connect to the apps most small businesses already run on, including Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Forms and Google Calendar. One caution on Microsoft 365, because it catches people out. Zapier's Outlook connection needs a Microsoft 365 Business or Enterprise account with an Exchange Online mailbox, and personal Outlook.com accounts are not supported, according to Zapier's own integration page. Whichever tool you pick, check that it supports the specific apps you use before you build anything.

This Week's Tools: Zapier and Make

Zapier is the longer established of the two. You build a "Zap" by choosing a trigger and then one or more actions in a straight line, filling in a form for each step.

On the free plan you get 100 tasks a month, and each Zap is limited to one trigger and one action. Zapier counts a task as any successful action that runs. Triggers, polling checks, filters, paths, formatter steps and delays do not use tasks, and an action that fails does not count either. Zaps that check for new data on a schedule do so every 15 minutes on the free plan, while triggers that work instantly fire as soon as something happens. Premium apps need a paid plan. Link: https://zapier.com

Make takes a different approach. You build a "scenario" on a visual canvas, dragging modules onto it and joining them up, which makes it easier to see a complicated automation at a glance. It also has routers for sending data down different paths and stronger error handling, which is why people with more demanding workflows tend to prefer it.

On the free plan you get 1,000 credits a month, 2 active scenarios, and scheduled runs no more often than every 15 minutes. Each run is limited to 5 minutes, files are limited to 5MB, and execution logs are kept for 7 days. Make counts one credit for each module that runs, and this is where free plans catch people out, which the next section explains. Link: https://www.make.com

How Each Tool Counts Your Usage

This is the part most comparisons skip, and it decides which free plan suits your business.

Zapier charges for actions only, so a Zap that watches for new enquiries all day and finds none costs you nothing, while a Zap that finds one enquiry and sends one email costs one task.

Make charges for every module that runs, and that includes the trigger. Many Make triggers are "watch" modules that check for new data on a schedule, and a check uses a credit even when it finds nothing. Make's own training material gives the example of its Gmail Watch Emails trigger, which always counts as one operation whether there were 0 emails or 50.

On the free plan the shortest schedule is every 15 minutes. Checking every 15 minutes means about 96 checks a day, or around 2,880 credits a month, nearly three times the 1,000 credits you get free. A scenario left on the default schedule can use up the whole month's allowance in roughly ten days before it has sent a single email.

The fix is to run the scenario less often, and the worked example below shows what that looks like in practice.

The Paid Plans

Zapier's Professional plan starts at $19.99 a month billed annually, or $29.99 billed monthly, and includes 750 tasks.

Make's Core plan starts at about $9 a month billed annually, or $10.59 billed monthly, and includes 10,000 credits.

Do not compare those numbers directly. A task is one successful action and a credit is one module run, including triggers and empty checks, so the same automation uses them at different rates. A 2026 comparison guide from Softr finds Make usually cheaper for automations with many steps, and notes that frequent checking can make Make expensive.

Zapier vs Make, Side by Side

Ease of use: Zapier is the easier starting point, with a straight line of steps you fill in one at a time. Make has a steeper learning curve because of its canvas, though it becomes the better option as automations get complicated.

Free plan allowance: Zapier gives you 100 tasks a month and one action per Zap. Make gives you 1,000 credits a month and automations with as many steps as you need, within a 5 minute run time.

Cost of waiting for something to happen: Zapier charges nothing for waiting. Make charges a credit each time a watch module checks, so a scheduled check can cost credits even when nothing has happened.

Multi-step automations: Zapier's free plan allows one action. Make's free plan allows several modules in one scenario, with routers and filters included.

Branching and error handling: Make is stronger, with routers, loops and the ability to catch errors and retry failed steps. Zapier has added some of this, though the same 2026 guide finds it less developed.

App coverage: Zapier lists more app connections than Make. Check that both support the apps you use.

Paid plan: Zapier from $19.99 a month for 750 tasks, billed annually. Make from about $9 a month for 10,000 credits, billed annually.

A Real Automation Built Both Ways: Every New Enquiry Gets a Reply, a Record and an Alert

Take a kitchen fitting company with an enquiry form on its website, built in Google Forms. At the moment, whoever checks the inbox next replies when they get round to it, and the customer waits. The automation below does three jobs for every enquiry. The customer receives an acknowledgement email, the details are logged in a spreadsheet, and the owner is alerted.

The Zapier route

Step One: Create a new Zap and choose Google Forms as the trigger, using the New Form Response event. Zapier's integration page lists this trigger as running instantly. Connect your Google account and pick the enquiry form.

Step Two: Choose Gmail as the action, using Send Email. In the To field, select the email address from the form response. Zapier lists a ready-made Zap for this exact job, called Send email via Gmail for new Google Forms submissions.

Step Three: Write the email once, using the customer's details from the form wherever they appear:

Subject: We have received your enquiry

Hi [first name from form],

Thanks for getting in touch with [business name]. We have received your enquiry about [service from form] and one of the team will reply by the end of the next working day.

If your enquiry is urgent, please call us on [phone number].

[Your name] [Business name]

Step Four: Test it with your own details, then turn the Zap on.

That is one action, so it fits the free plan, and it uses one task for each enquiry, which covers 100 enquiries a month. The other two jobs can be handled by Google Forms itself, at no cost. Click Responses in the form and then Link to Sheets, and every response collects in a spreadsheet. Click the three-dot menu in the same tab and choose Get email notifications for new responses, and the owner gets an email each time. Zapier does the part Google cannot do, which is the reply to the customer.

The Make route

Step One: Create a new scenario and add the Google Forms module that watches for new responses. Connect your Google account and choose the enquiry form. This module checks on a schedule rather than reacting instantly.

Step Two: Add a Google Sheets module that adds a row, pointing at your own enquiry tracker. A tracker of your own is worth having because you can add columns such as Status and Follow-up Date, which a form's response sheet does not give you.

Step Three: Add a Gmail module that sends an email to the customer, using the same acknowledgement text as above.

Step Four: Add a second Gmail module that emails the enquiry details to whoever handles enquiries.

Step Five: Set the schedule. This is the step that matters on the free plan. Checks per month work out as follows:

Every 15 minutes uses about 2,880 credits a month for checks alone. Every hour uses about 720. Every 2 hours uses about 360. Every 4 hours uses about 180.

Each enquiry then uses 3 credits on top of that, one for the row, one for the customer email and one for the alert. At a check every 2 hours and 100 enquiries a month, the scenario uses about 660 of your 1,000 credits. The price of that saving is that a customer may wait up to 2 hours for the acknowledgement.

So the trade runs like this. Make's free plan does all three jobs in one place and gives you a tracker you control, though the reply can be hours late. Zapier's free plan sends the reply straight away and covers only one job itself, with Google's built-in tools picking up the other two.

Which One Should a Small Business Choose?

Start with Zapier's free plan if you want one useful job automated this week, if you are not technical, or if the trigger needs to fire quickly, as an enquiry does. Triggers cost nothing, setup is simpler, and one action is enough for plenty of useful jobs.

Choose Make's free plan if you need several steps from a single trigger, such as logging, replying and alerting in one go, and you can live with a schedule that checks every few hours. It also suits you if you are comfortable with a canvas and a bit of trial and error.

Move to a paid plan when you hit the free limits. On Zapier that means needing a second action or more than 100 tasks. On Make it means needing faster checks or more than 1,000 credits.

My recommendation for most small businesses is to start with Zapier. Waiting costs nothing, the free plan sends a customer reply instantly, and Google's own tools cover the rest of this example. Move to Make when you need several steps in one automation and are ready to pay around $9 a month for it.

Write down the task you repeated most often last week and put it in the form "when this happens, do that". Check the two lists above and decide which tool fits. If it is one action, build it in Zapier this afternoon.

Start with a task where a mistake does no harm, such as a notification to yourself, before you automate anything that emails customers.

NEED HELP? In over your head? Wearing too many hats already? No idea where to start? I can help you. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!

Google Forms already does some of this for free with no extra tool. It can email you each new response and collect every response in a linked Google Sheet, which covers the alert and the log in the example above.

n8n (n8n.io) is free if you host the Community Edition yourself. It has no execution cap, but you pay for your own server and someone technical has to set it up and maintain it. The cloud version has no free plan beyond a 14-day trial, so it only suits a business with a technical person on hand.

Automation does exactly what you tell it, every time, and that includes the mistakes. A wrong field in the To box or a reply that promises something you cannot deliver goes out to every customer who fills in the form. Test with your own details, start with automations that stay inside the business, and read what the tool actually sends before you switch anything on.

An automation also repeats whatever process sits behind it. If your enquiries get lost between the inbox and the quote, an automatic reply will make that gap more obvious to the customer. Fix the process by hand first, then automate it.

Both plans have monthly limits and both can change, so check your usage page after the first week. A free plan that runs out on day ten is a better discovery on day ten than on the day a customer does not get a reply.

Need someone to do this properly rather than doing it yourself? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!