Zapier vs Make vs n8n: choosing an automation tool for a small business

For most small businesses, Zapier is the easiest place to start, Make gives you more control over branching workflows, and n8n suits businesses running many multi-step workflows or wanting a say in where their data is hosted, as long as someone technical looks after it. The biggest practical difference is how each one counts usage: Zapier counts tasks (successful action steps), Make counts credits (each module action), and n8n counts executions (one per complete workflow run, however many steps it has).

A disclosure before we go further: CentriWeb builds most client automations in n8n. We’ve kept this comparison to things you can check on each vendor’s own pages, and we link to their pricing pages rather than quoting prices, because prices change and the posts that quote them tend to contradict each other.

The short answer

Here’s how the three line up on the questions that matter to a small business owner.

None of these is the best tool in general. The right one depends on how many steps your workflows have, how often they run, and who in your business will fix them when something changes.

How each tool counts usage (and why it changes the bill)

Zapier: tasks

According to Zapier’s pricing page, a task is counted when Zapier completes an action for you. Triggers and polling for new data don’t count, failed actions don’t count, and Zapier’s built-in tools like Filter, Formatter and Paths don’t count either. Every other successful action step does. If you go over your plan’s allowance, a pay-per-task setting decides whether your Zaps keep running at an extra cost or stop until the next billing cycle.

Make: credits

Make’s pricing page says credits are now its billing unit (it used to talk about operations). Each action a scenario performs uses credits, and most use one: retrieving data from an app or webhook, searching, creating, updating or deleting records, and transforming data. Routers and error handlers don’t use credits. Some AI features use more than one.

n8n: executions

n8n’s pricing page says its cloud plans are priced on executions, and an execution is a single run of the entire workflow, no matter how many steps it has or how much data it processes. If you self-host the community edition, you don’t pay n8n per execution. You pay for the server and whoever maintains it.

A worked example

Take a workflow that starts when a web form is submitted, then runs six actions: create a contact in your CRM, tag it, create a deal, send an SMS, send an email and post a note to your team chat. It runs 500 times a month.

• Zapier: six counted actions per run, so about 3,000 tasks a month. The trigger isn’t counted.
• Make: seven modules including the trigger retrieving the form data, so about 3,500 credits a month.
• n8n Cloud: 500 executions a month, whether the workflow has six steps or twenty.

Put those figures against each vendor’s current plans and you’ll see why step-heavy workflows tend to favour execution-based pricing, while a handful of short Zaps can sit comfortably on a small Zapier plan. Count your own steps and monthly runs before you compare.

Ease of use: who in your business will maintain it

An automation is only as good as the person who fixes it when an app changes a field name or a staff member leaves. Pick the tool your maintainer can actually use.

• Zapier reads like a list of plain steps. Most owners or office managers can build and fix a simple Zap after an afternoon of practice. It connects to a long list of popular apps out of the box.
• Make shows workflows as a visual map, which makes branching, loops and error handling easier to see. It rewards someone who’s comfortable thinking about data structures.
• n8n is also visual, but it expects more technical comfort: reading API documentation, handling JSON, writing the odd line of code. Self-hosting adds server updates, backups and monitoring.

If nobody in your business wants that job, budget for a contractor or agency to own it, whichever tool you choose.

Hosting, data location and privacy

Automations move customer details between systems, so where the tool runs matters. Based on each vendor’s own documentation:

• Zapier says it hosts data on AWS servers in the United States.
• Make lets you choose a US or EU data centre when you create an organisation, and that choice can’t be changed later.
• n8n’s pricing page says its cloud plans store data in the EU, on servers in Frankfurt. A self-hosted instance runs wherever you put it, including an Australian data centre.

If your business is covered by the Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Principles include rules on sending personal information overseas (APP 8) and on keeping it secure (APP 11). Using an overseas automation tool isn’t banned, but you should know where the data goes, say so in your privacy policy, and keep only what the workflow needs. The OAIC’s guidance on the APPs is the place to check. This is general information, not legal advice.

Three example workflows and which tool fits

Missed call text back for a tradie

A call goes unanswered, the caller gets an SMS within a minute, and the job lands in your CRM. That’s three or four steps, triggered maybe a few hundred times a month. Zapier handles this well if your phone system has a Zapier connection. Many CRMs can do it natively too. Our guide to missed call text back covers the message itself.

Client onboarding for an accounting firm

A new client signs, and the workflow creates a folder, sends an engagement letter, requests documents, chases what’s missing, creates a job in practice software and notifies the team. It has conditions (individual or company, new or existing client) and runs over days. Make or n8n handle the branching better, and n8n’s per-execution pricing helps when every run has a dozen or more steps. See our guide to client onboarding automation for the full sequence.

Website enquiries into a CRM with scoring

Form submissions are cleaned, scored against your criteria, routed to the right person and followed up. Volume can be high and the logic changes as you learn. n8n or Make are good fits, though often the cleanest answer is a proper CRM setup that does most of this internally, with an automation tool only filling the gaps.

When none of them is the right answer

• Your CRM already does it. Most modern CRMs have built-in workflows for follow-ups, reminders and tasks. Adding a second tool means a second place for things to break.
• It runs a few times a month. If a job takes two minutes by hand and happens four times a month, a checklist may be cheaper than an automation.
• It’s really an app. If staff or customers need screens to log in to, approve things or see status, an automation tool is the wrong shape. That’s custom software.
• The process isn’t settled. Automating a process your team does three different ways bakes in the confusion. Agree the steps first.

How to switch without breaking things

There’s no import button between these tools. Workflows are rebuilt, not copied, so plan the move.

1. List every workflow. Name, trigger, apps involved, how often it runs, and who relies on it. You’ll usually find a few nobody remembers building.
2. Retire before you rebuild. Turn off anything that’s no longer needed rather than moving it.
3. Rebuild one at a time in the new tool, starting with the lowest risk.
4. Run both in parallel with the new one in test mode, comparing outputs for a week.
5. Switch over and watch the logs for the first few days, then cancel the old plan once a full billing cycle has passed cleanly.

Where to start

1. Write down the three workflows that would save your team the most time.
2. Count the steps in each and estimate how many times a month they’d run.
3. Decide who will maintain them: you, a staff member, or an outside partner.
4. Check whether your CRM or existing software already covers any of them.
5. Compare the three vendors’ current pricing pages using your step and run counts.

If you’d like a second opinion on which tool fits, or someone to build and look after the workflows for you, that’s what our business automation work covers.