n8n vs Make.com vs Zapier: A Comprehensive Comparison for Automation

[00:00:00]what is going on guys it is jonno today we're going to be doing a comparison video about zapier versus make.com versus nadn to figure out which one is best for you and your use case scenario so in front of me I have my Google sheet that definitely did not take me 5 minutes to build took me tons countless sleepless nights meticulously crafting this to put it together for you guys I'm just kidding it took me like five minutes to build but but anyways I've categorized the things that I find the most important that I wanted to to tell you guys about but ultimately speaking like at the end of the day I think there's three things that the most important things here pricing learn a curve and functionality because ultimately that's what you're probably going to be basing your decision on so let's start with pricing zapier comes in at the highest cost it's approximately four times as much as make.com so just circling back into uh the actual pricing here zapier and make.com they both charge on operation by operation basis right so every time you execute a task right such as adding something to a Google sheet that's one operation and they will charge you for that right now in terms of zapier not only is it four times as much and I'm going to break into n8n here because it has a different pricing model in a second but in terms of zaper not only is it four times as much but they also charge you to th nail for all this extra stuff that you likely do not need at least do not need to get through them so they'll charge you for things like tables which is the one: one equivalent essentially of Google forms or in or Google Sheets sorry and interfaces which is like the one toone equivalent of Google forms or of online form software that you can find for cheaper that likely has more flexibility anyways and then of course chat Bots as well um which you can find in lot a lot of other applications so um with that being said all of these things are accessible but they're all paid add-ons as well if you want to add any additional users you're going to also have to pay for that as well so um that is a feature in all these other applications that's just free naden make.com they don't charge you for these application or for for teams um which is which is really really nice right and the other thing that I want to mention here too is that in addition to charging you for teams they're also going to charge you for premium features as well so what do I mean by that well there's a lot of functionality that all of these applications have that only zapier chart requires you to be in a higher tiered plan to access such as web hooks now this web hooks essentially are the ability to connect tens of thousands of applications into one of these platforms like zapier make.com anden so think about Facebook lead ads here that's a native integration it's built in Salesforce built in but what about all those smaller applications that aren't necessarily built in well CH turns out you can still connect most of them into these platforms you just have to use web hooks this is going to be something that you have to pay more to access through zapier right so all of these additional things are going to cost you more money now on the flip side naden is the cheapest option amongst all of them instead of paying on an operation by operation basis like adding something to Google Sheets for example they charge you based on the workflow executions so say you have a workflow okay and this workflow has 10 15 I don't know something like that operations in it they're only charging you one time for the actual execution of the entire workflow as opposed to make.com or zapier that charges you once uh once potentially for the trigger for make zapier I don't think charges the trigger but for all the actions 2 three four five six seven eight so on and so forth right so it is a lot cheaper which is nice and on top of that they do have a free plan as well which is called the community Edition a basic version of NN is available on GitHub that's my late night DJ radio voice sorry for the dad joke there but I just had to throw it in there um but yeah you can access this Community Edition it's totally for free but the catch is is that you do need to have a technical background specifically what that looks like is you're probably going to have to spin up a local environment using node package manager npm um what that practically looks like is you're hosting it on your own server and then you're deploying it live which means that you're actually the one hosting it right right so you can do it through nadn you can also do it through a platform like Docker which you could like spin up a virtual computer and pay for that virtual computer Docker and then host on the cloud somewhere um ultimately speaking maybe it's free maybe it costs you a bit of money to spin up a Docker environment in a virtual computer but ultimately it'll be way cheaper than the alternative but the problem with this is that you do need a technical background in order to be able to do this effectively so just keep that in mind as well now on to the other things here I want to talk about learning curve so um when it comes to these three platforms zapier by far is going to be the easiest one to pick up no doubt about it um with make.com being the second easiest and of course nadn being the trickiest just because there is so much functionality you can integrate code into it you can integrate your own custom web applications into it as well with that being said learn Lear curve and functionality do go hand in hand so the more functionality there is the more difficult the learning curve is going to be ultimately speaking zapier is just designed for beginners that are trying to get their first step in the door and learn these tools and then and it end is for people that are looking to get the maximum utility out of it and make.com is that sweet middle ground in between the two now in terms of app Integrations this is pretty interesting here because zapier actually connects into to 7,000 uh what is it 7,874 different applications they have native Integrations for all of these different things Google Drive HubSpot notion MailChimp Facebook kly all that kind of stuff with make.com it's like 2,000 100 or something like that and then with naden it's 400 so it's there's a there's depreciates quite a bit here based on the application that you're using now this is fantastic but just circling back to what I was saying earlier with these web hooks where um web hooks allow you to connect into um tons of applications that don't necessarily have native Integrations well you can connect using web hooks you can also Connect using API documentation so API documentation so let's just say like click up API documentation here turns out that all of these um applications have something called API documentation and you can more or less connect in to these platforms using their API docum now the problem with this is once again you do need to have a technical background um in order to do this but there is always a way for you to connect into platforms using either a web hook or an API documentation um for you to to roll out yourself right so it just really depends on what you're looking for like this is really convenient that Zer actually has all the app Integrations but there's also B other ways to integrate it in once again like you're paying in terms of time or money right it's one of the two currencies either you're paying and it just depends on how much you value your time versus the money you're spending and what that sweet spotter equilibrium is between how much time you invest into it and how much money you're investing into it as well um so that's important to note but there are alternatives out there to integrating all these other applications that you likely use just one other anecdote about this is that while it's great that they have 7,837 applications like man I don't use that many like I probably use like maybe 20 I don't know and the 20 I use can likely be found on me zapier and NN there's only one application that I found that I needed to use zapier for that make.com in NN didn't have the functionality or ability to connect into so just kind of keep that in mind as as well now in terms of data security take this was a grain of salt as a as a grain of salt but like for most people watching this I'm assuming you fall on the category being either freelancer or your small business uh maybe or or maybe your mediumsized business for me personally like I'm totally fine with the encryption that these platforms have the data that I'm sending back and forth over the service I'm not like I don't think it's too sensitive so I'm not that worried about it but if you're a massive company and data security is super super important for you then I'd highly recommend moving over to nadn right um so it just depends on how important this is to you in particular but also keeping in mind too with n if you spin up a custom web app and you connect in um that custom web app into in it in you're whole you're opening up a whole can of worms where now you have to worry about network issues and you have to worry about the code that you're writing and all the security risks that come along with that as well in terms of data storage uh you know I just like connecting my data storage into uh Google Sheets which all of these have access to which is really really nice and then in terms scalability which is just the last thing here I like to think of them uh being like low medium and high so let me give you a practical example here okay so let's say that you're an e-commerce company and you're looking to web scrape your competitors to do a price comparison analysis and maybe match the prices that they're offering to your customers as well well that's going to take you a ton a freaking ton of operations and if you're using something like zapier you're going to be paying through the freaking roof even make.com it might not be e economically feasible for you to do so but at least with something like naden you can get the free addition where you're not paying any money doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for the other software applications you're using like maybe a web scraper in this example but at least with naden you're not paying so with that being said um I think that nadn is probably the most scalable followed by make followed by zapier that is a fringe case example most people aren't going to be using that many operations but just something to keep in mind so in a nutshell guys I think that if if you're already using one of these three softwares and you're happy with it obviously you know I think the best option is just to stick with that because you're going to save the time of switching everything over and the leading curve of another platform if you're already seeing success with it then continue on to get that success so that you can free up your time to focus on the highest leverage tasks that are actually making you the most money if you're new then I'd recommend make.com is my number one just because it gives you pretty much all the functionality you need with a lower learning curve or time investment than nadn um if you're just wanting to you know automate certain things you're not looking to go a mile deep zapier is maybe the best option for you as long as you're okay with the pricing model and then if you're very technical you have that background and you want the maximum customization and flexibility then I'd go with nadm so that's it for this video guys please let me know your your your thoughts or questions in the comment section down below if you like this video and you want to see more videos just like this one make sure to subscribe to this Channel and I'll see you guys in the next one thanks for your time and bye-bye