Stats on Zapier: Is automation needed for efficiency?
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As with any type of work or industry, there are always certain tasks which are repetitive and time-consuming, leaving you feeling like there must be an easier more efficient way to get around it.
With the growing use and trust of of AI, platforms that can automate simple tasks are becoming increasingly popular, as people and businesses are looking for ways to save time and ultimately, money.
However, there have always been automation tools around, long before the popularity of AI. One of the most popular among businesses is Zapier.
What is Zapier?
Zapier is a robust web automation tool aimed at businesses, to help them streamline and automate processes, for increased efficiency and productivity.
Zapier supports thousands of app integrations, such as Hubspot, Slack, Buffer, WordPress and Google ads. While all of these apps are useful individually, Zapier harnesses the power of them all being used in conjunction, without any coding experience or daily input from the user.
The Zapier platform means that long workflows (also known as Zaps on Zapier) can be created, detailing a custom process of automation. Once the workflow is triggered at the start, Zapier carries out the automated process between many different apps, meaning businesses can focus on the more important ‘stuff’.
Let’s take a look at some of the key stats about Zapier and numbers which show how versatile the platform can be.
Stats on Zapier
- Supports over 7,000+ app integrations
- Founded in 2011
- There are 2.2 million+ businesses that use Zapier
- Zapier had an average revenue of $50 million from 2018 to 2020
- This almost tripled In 2021, with Zapier’s revenue hitting $250.7 million
- 25% of Zapier’s revenue comes from the larger organisations paying the top-end fees each month
- For paid plans, monthly fees can be up to £3.3k, with custom Enterprise plans being even more
- In 2021, the platform was valued at $5 billion
- Zapier has a total of 8 investors, with Sequoia Capital being the lead investor
- Zapier has pricing plans from $0 to $799
- During Covid-19 Zapier set up a $ 1 million small business fund for struggling business owners in the economy.
- The 2023 automation platform of choice for 87% of Forbes Cloud 100 Companies
Stats on who is using Zapier?
- Data taken across the past 8 years, shows the top Zapier companies are in the computer software industry (800), followed by IT (600) and Marketing (450)
- 59% of Zaper users are in the US, followed by 7% in the UK and 5% in Canada
- 37% of the total users of Zapier sit in the 25-34 age category group.
- 43.24% of users are female, 56.76 are male
- 82% of Zapier use is on a desktop, 18% is on mobile
- The average time spent creating a Zap is only 5 minutes and 28 seconds
- Over 25 million zaps have been created on the platform
- Zapier Community has 33,449 topics, 120,915 replies and 56,993 members
- 388,759 users have used their AI automation alongside other Zapier products
Stats on the Zapier workforce
- According to LinkedIn, Zapier has around 1,200 employees
- Zapier has always been a fully remote company, with employees across 38 countries.
- Zapier has 4.5/5 stars on the glass door and 98% of customers
(Sources: Togai, Zapier, SignHouse, Forbes, Enlyft, LinkedIn, SimilarWeb)
Zapier use cases
So now we know the key stats, let’s take a look at some of the day-to-day things that Zapier could help your business with. These are just a handful of possibilities that Zapier use to show what their platform is capable of, across different departments.
Streamline email marketing
Zapier has integrations with email marketing platforms like Mailchimp. Businesses can connect to their contact forms, automate their subscriber lists, segment into contact types, and automate campaigns all in one process using Zapier. What would usually be repetitive tasks, are now automated processes, leaving time for more creative email campaign creation.
If you have repetitive social posts, which usually pull information from your website or other social platforms, you can create Zaps which will automate this for you.
For example, if you are regularly posting case studies on your website, you can set this up as a trigger on Zapier to publish customised posts across all of your socials simultaneously.
E-commerce streamlining
Zapier can integrate smoothly with your inventory management, order processing and shipping process. Purchases on your site can trigger an inventory update, email confirmations, and delivery tracking emails. This way you can be sure that each customer is receiving the same process, also making it very easy to scale up the process as the business grows.
Integrate sales tasks and CRM platforms
The sales funnel can be complex and different for each lead you get, however, if there are certain processes you follow for each specific lead type, then Zapier could be a useful tool for you.
For example, if you always send a general follow-up email to someone who has filled in the contact form on your website, why not automate this?
Zapier could also be useful for integrating with apps like Salesforce and Hubspot to automatically generate new deals.
Zapier also highlights that their platform can help sales teams by:
- Trigger personalised email campaigns based on lead behaviour
- Automatically score leads based on numerical values of engagement and interaction so sales know who to prioritize
- Connect leads to the most appropriate sales rep through a CRM
Collect and organise form responses
Zapier can integrate with Google Forms, Type form or Webflow, to automate the process of collecting data and arranging it in a format which is easier to analyse. This means that data analysis can happen simultaneously with data analysis- also making it easier for sharing across a business.
You can also integrate your forms/surveys with Gmail and MailChimp to automate sending automatic thank-you emails to participants.
Keep on top of internal communication
Slack is the second most used business communication tool behind Microsoft Teams. Many businesses rely on Slack to communicate across teams and keep relevant people in the loop. Zapier has options to integrate Slack with Google Calendar docs and forms so that people are notified in a timely manner.
Streamline HR processes
Recruitment and employee management often involve a lot of individual tasks. Automating the processes which require lots of admin, can free up valuable time for HR professionals to put energy into a happy workforce, improving systems and finding quality candidates for the future.
Zapier can help HR with:
- Sharing job openings automatically from your website, across multiple platforms simultaneously
- Set up notifications in Slack for new applications
- Automatically store and save documents in the cloud from your email
- Onboard employees using training workflows and give them access to certain tools once they have completed training.
Downsides to Zapier
There is a common theme of the Zapier price tag being too high to be justified in some cases.
Across many forums, there are also multiple complaints about the lower-end pricing plans having so many restrictions, that that platform becomes almost useless. While Zapier appeals to and keeps those larger/ enterprise companies, these smaller businesses getting hooked on free trials and low-cost plans eventually go looking for alternatives.
Zapier has also been criticized for being too ‘if this- then that’, where users find themselves looking for more customisation options, meaning other tools are needed anyway to fill the gap.
Zapier has also faced criticism for being too complacent with tech fails on their end. Since its release, the platform has had multiple errors where zaps and workflows have stopped working, affecting thousands of businesses and their productivity for days.
This explains why many competitors have a clear focus on advertising the robustness of their security features.
Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives to Zapier out there and figure out where it sits in the market.
Alternatives to Zapier
Make
A very clear competitor for Zapier…Make has its own campaign running called ‘Outgrowing Zapier? Advance with Make’.
The platform has many similarities with Zapier such as AI tools, solutions for each industry, helpful blogs and an enterprise plan. The key difference is the pricing, with Make claiming they are up to x30 more cost-effective when looking at the pricing plans and what each brand offers.
While Zapier supports 7,000+ app integrations, and make only 2,000, businesses, especially larger ones looking for an enterprise plan choose Zapier presuming better value for money. However Make claims that, while they have less integrations, they actually have more ‘actions’ that can be carried out within each app.
Under comparable pricing plans, Make also says that they have unlimited ‘branches’ or ‘steps’ that can be added to the pathways while Zapier puts a limit on this.
Encharge
Encharge is still an automation efficiency-based platform but has more niches compared to the vast amount of services that Zapier provides.
This platform is for those who are looking for more email marketing, sales and customer service tools, with unique features like behaviour-based email targeting. It might not be worth paying for all the extras that Zapier comes with if you know you won’t be using the vast majority of them all.
Being email marketing focused, Enchange is also priced based on audience size, starting at $49 for a 2,000 audience size.
Looking at the stats, it’s clear to see why Zapier is the industry leader, however, the high prices and possible misleading solutions could mean businesses end up looking elsewhere.
Workato
Compared to Zapier, Workato presents itself as the automation platform for larger companies and those looking for the best value enterprise plan. A huge part of their selling point is being able to guarantee zero data loss if there is an interruption on the platform, something Zapier has struggled with in the past.
The key upper hand that Workato seems to have is the option to have advanced automation processes with conditional loops and branching, allowing for a more customised workflow.
Three key differences:
- Workato can process large amounts of data at once
- Workato can process historical data, whereas Zapier can only process data fed into it once the process is made.
Boomi
Without repeating the above, Boomi another integration-automation platform would fall into the same market as Workato for the type of audience they are targeting. Boomi is developed with scalability in mind for those larger businesses needing advanced integration capabilities.
One difference is Boomi has the option for both Cloud and on premise data storage for hybrid IT departments.
Conclusion
Zapier offers business owners a dream of removing all of their manual repetitive tasks, increasing efficiency, and communication, and allowing them to focus on what could really make their business grow.
As we’ve seen there are a few downsides to the platform which other competitors are clearly trying to capitalise from and market themselves with.
It is interesting to see many of the competitors are writing blogs about why switching from Zapier to their platform is beneficial. But Zapier doesn’t try to defend its platform in the same way. This does give the impression that Zapier will remain the market leader for its ease of use anda larger selection of app integrations. It may not offer the most advanced or custom workflows just yet, but will continue to be a huge success with small/medium businesses.
The market for automation, not just in tech but in manufacturing, health, retail, agriculture, and transport, is growing very fast. We use automated processes daily here at Embryo for ourselves and for our clients, such as automated bidding for paid ads. If you need experts to help with your marketing strategy get in touch with us today.
