I used Zapier for almost three years. It worked. It wasn’t broken. But every time I added a step to a workflow, I watched the bill climb — and eventually I had to ask whether “it works” was enough to justify what I was paying.
This isn’t a Make.com review. There are plenty of those. This is the story of actually migrating — pulling apart working Zapier automations, rebuilding them in Make.com, and figuring out what survived the move.
The Pricing Problem That Started Everything
Zapier charges per task. Every time a zap fires a step, that’s a task. A five-step zap that runs 100 times burns 500 tasks. Sounds manageable until you’re running a content pipeline, email routing, webhook handlers, and a handful of utility zaps. I was hitting my plan ceiling by the third week of the month.
The math got worse when I needed multi-step zaps. Zapier’s free tier caps at single-step. Their Starter plan limits multi-step zaps to 750 tasks. For a solopreneur running real workflows — not toy automations — that evaporates fast. I was on the Professional plan at $49/month and still watching the meter.
Make.com uses operations instead of tasks, and the counting works differently. A scenario with five modules that runs once counts as five operations, sure. But their free tier gives you 1,000 operations, and their Core plan at $9/month gives you 10,000. The gap isn’t subtle. I was spending roughly five times more on Zapier for comparable throughput.
What I Actually Moved
I had three main workflow categories to migrate:
1. Content Pipeline
My content pipeline was the most complex. Webhook receives a payload, enriches it with data from a couple of APIs, formats the output, and pushes it to WordPress as a draft. On Zapier, this was a seven-step zap. On Make.com, it became a scenario with roughly the same number of modules — but the visual builder made it easier to debug. You can see the data flowing between modules in real time, which Zapier’s linear task history doesn’t show as clearly.
I wrote more about how that pipeline works in practice: the full content pipeline automation breakdown.
2. Email Routing
I use automations to sort inbound emails — flagging certain senders, routing inquiries to the right channel, tagging things for follow-up. On Zapier, this was a multi-path zap with filters. On Make.com, routers handle this natively. You set up a router module with multiple branches, each with its own filter conditions. Cleaner design. Same result.
3. Webhook Handling
Several of my workflows start with custom webhooks — payment notifications, form submissions, external service callbacks. Zapier’s webhook handling works but feels bolted on. Make.com treats webhooks as first-class citizens. You create a webhook, get a URL, and it just listens. The data structure detection is automatic — send a test payload and Make.com maps the fields for you.
What Broke During Migration
Not everything went smoothly. Here’s the honest version.
Date/time handling almost wrecked me. Zapier has a forgiving date parser — throw it a string that looks vaguely like a date and it figures it out. Make.com is strict. It wants ISO 8601 or it wants you to use the parseDate function with an explicit format string. I had three scenarios failing silently because timestamps from a webhook were in a format Make.com didn’t auto-recognize. No error, just empty date fields downstream. Took me two days to track down because the scenarios were “succeeding” — they just had null dates propagating through.
That’s the gotcha I’d tell anyone upfront: audit your date formats before you migrate. If any of your sources send non-standard timestamps, you’ll need parseDate functions on every one of them. It’s not hard once you know, but it’s the kind of thing that silently corrupts data if you don’t.
Some app integrations are thinner. Zapier has more pre-built integrations, period. For most common tools — Google Sheets, Slack, WordPress, email services — Make.com’s modules are equivalent or better. But I had one zap connected to a niche CRM that had a native Zapier integration and nothing on Make.com. I replaced it with Make.com’s HTTP module and direct API calls. More work upfront, more control long-term. Not everyone will want to write API calls though.
Error handling is different. Zapier replays failed tasks with a button click. Make.com has error handlers you attach to individual modules — break, resume, ignore, rollback, commit. More powerful, steeper learning curve. I set up break handlers on my critical paths and ignore handlers on non-critical ones. Took a few rounds of testing to get right.
What’s Actually Better on Make.com
Beyond pricing, a few things genuinely improved:
Visual scenario builder. Zapier’s editor is a vertical list. Make.com’s is a visual canvas where modules connect with lines. For simple two-step automations, it doesn’t matter. For anything with branches, loops, or error paths, the visual layout is dramatically easier to reason about. I can look at a scenario and understand the flow in seconds. On Zapier, I had to click into each step.
Operations batching. Make.com lets you process arrays natively. If a webhook sends an array of 10 items, you can iterate over them in a single scenario run. Zapier would count each item as a separate task run through every step. This alone cut my operation count significantly on the content pipeline.
Built-in data transformation. Make.com has functions for string manipulation, math, date formatting, and array operations built into every module’s field mapping. Zapier has Formatter steps, but each one is a separate task in your count. On Make.com, transforming data inside a module mapping costs zero additional operations.
What’s Still Worse
I’m not going to pretend Make.com is perfect.
The learning curve is real. Zapier is deliberately simple. Someone with zero technical background can set up a working zap in minutes. Make.com assumes you understand data structures, at least loosely. The concept of bundles, iterators, and aggregators takes time to click. If you’re building automations for a team where non-technical people need to maintain them, Zapier is still the safer bet.
Documentation gaps. Zapier’s help docs are polished and searchable. Make.com’s documentation is adequate but occasionally outdated, and some advanced features are better explained in community forums than in official docs. I’ve spent time on the Make.com community boards solving problems that should have been in the main docs.
Execution speed. Make.com scenarios run on a schedule you configure — every 15 minutes on the free plan, down to 1 minute on paid plans. Zapier’s paid plans run near-instantly on triggers. For most of my workflows the delay doesn’t matter, but if you need real-time responsiveness, factor that in.
The Cost Comparison, Plainly
Here’s what the switch looked like on my actual bill:
- Zapier Professional: $49/month for 2,000 tasks. I was regularly hitting the cap and either throttling workflows or paying overage.
- Make.com Core: $9/month for 10,000 operations. I run comfortably under the limit with room to add more scenarios.
Same workflows. Roughly the same functionality. One-fifth the cost. For a solopreneur watching every line item, that’s not a marginal improvement — it’s a category change.
Should You Switch
If you’re on Zapier’s free tier running single-step zaps and it’s working, stay. The migration effort isn’t worth it for simple automations.
If you’re a solopreneur running multi-step workflows, paying for a Zapier plan, and the per-task pricing is eating into your margins — Make.com is worth the migration. Budget a weekend for the switch. Audit your date formats first. Expect to rebuild, not import — there’s no one-click migration tool.
The tool isn’t the point. The automation is the point. Make.com just lets me run more of it for less money, and after six months on the other side, I haven’t looked back.
About the author: Chris Myers builds AI-powered business systems and tests every tool in his own solopreneur stack before recommending it. He writes at Piscion Global.