n8n vs Zapier vs Make: which automation tool for which job

I get this question every other discovery call. “We are thinking about Zapier. Should we be on something else?”

The honest answer is that the right tool depends on three things: how much volume you have, how technical your team is, and how much you care about owning the infrastructure. Here is how I decide.

The three tools, in one paragraph each#

Zapier is the easiest. Click-to-connect, huge library of integrations, no thinking required. Great for non-technical teams that want to wire two SaaS tools together fast. Pricing scales with task volume and gets expensive quickly.

Make (formerly Integromat) is the more powerful middle ground. Visual flowchart-style builder, better at branching logic, iterators, error handling. Pricing is also volume-based but cheaper than Zapier at higher tiers. Steeper learning curve.

n8n is the developer-friendly option. Open source, can be self-hosted (free for unlimited runs), or run on their cloud. Closest thing to a “real” programming environment for non-developers. Most flexible. Highest learning curve. The one I reach for most often for serious work.

The decision tree#

Here are the questions I ask, in order:

1. Is this a one-off integration or a workflow that will grow?#

If you want a quick “when X happens in tool A, do Y in tool B,” and you do not need it to scale or evolve, Zapier is fine. Set it up, forget it, pay the R200 per month.

If you expect this workflow to grow (more conditions, more branches, more integrations, more volume), skip Zapier and go straight to Make or n8n. Migrating later is painful.

2. How technical is the person who will own it?#

If the answer is “not technical at all,” Zapier is the only real option. Make is doable but the learning curve is real. n8n is overkill.

If the answer is “comfortable with logic, willing to learn,” Make is the sweet spot. It rewards investment.

If the answer is “has a developer on the team, or wants to learn the technical side,” n8n is the right answer. The flexibility is in another league once you climb the curve.

3. How much volume?#

Volume kills Zapier. If you are running more than a few thousand tasks per month, the pricing scales painfully. At 10,000 tasks per month, Zapier is around $399 (R7,300). Make at the same volume is around $99 (R1,800). n8n self-hosted is whatever your VPS costs (R150 to R500 per month for SME volume), with unlimited runs.

I have seen Zapier bills hit R30,000 per month at clients who started cheap and grew into the trap. Migrating off Zapier at that point is a three-week project. Worth catching it before you get there.

4. Where does the data live?#

If you are processing sensitive data (financials, customer PII, internal docs), self-hosted n8n gives you control. The data never leaves your infrastructure. Zapier and Make both process data through their cloud, which has compliance implications depending on your industry.

For most SME workloads, cloud is fine. But it is worth asking.

5. Who maintains it long-term?#

The “easy” tools become the hard tools the moment the person who built the automations leaves. If your team can read JavaScript, n8n’s code nodes are easier to debug than Zapier’s no-code black boxes. Counterintuitive but true.

My defaults#

For most SA clients I work with, the decision lands like this:

• Solo founders, non-technical, simple integrations: Zapier. Pay the premium for the simplicity.
• Operations teams, 1 to 3 person stacks, moderate complexity: Make. Best ratio of power to learning curve.
• Any team where the workflows will compound, or where data sensitivity matters: self-hosted n8n. Cheapest at scale, most flexible, fully owned.

When clients ask me to recommend without context, I usually start with n8n self-hosted on a R200/month VPS. The unlimited runs and full control pay back fast, and the curve is not as steep as people make it out to be.

The unsexy truth#

Whatever tool you pick, the tool is rarely the bottleneck. The bottleneck is whether anyone is monitoring the automations, fixing the ones that break, and killing the ones nobody uses anymore.

A team of 50 Zapier automations that nobody owns is worse than five n8n automations with a monitoring dashboard and a person responsible for them. Pick the tool that matches your team’s capacity to maintain it, not the one that promises the best demo.

That is the real answer to “which tool should I use.” The one you will actually keep alive.