Choosing the "glue" between your apps
Your web form, your CRM, your invoicing and your team chat each do their job. Between them, someone copies a new inquiry into the CRM, creates the customer in accounting and tells the team. Every business owner hears the same advice: "just connect them with Zapier." Then a consultant suggests Make, and your Zoho reseller mentions Zoho Flow. All three are good. The wrong choice costs you a rebuild later.
These tools are the "glue" between your apps: they watch for something to happen in one app and do something in another. Here's how I choose between them for clients, and what each really costs.
Start with the process, not the platform
Before comparing tools, I map the process the glue has to carry and answer four questions:
- Which apps are involved? If nearly everything runs on Zoho, the answer leans one way. If you use a mix of vendors, it leans another.
- How many times a month does it run? All three platforms charge by volume, so 200 inquiries a month and 20,000 orders a month are different decisions.
- How much logic sits in the middle? "Copy this field" is simple. "Check for a duplicate, split by region, wait for approval" is not.
- Who will look after it? An office manager adjusting a step, or a technical person maintaining it for years.
How the three compare
Zoho Flow: the natural fit for a Zoho business
If Zoho CRM, Books and Desk are your core, Zoho Flow sits closest to them and is priced for small volumes. Its Free plan allows 5 flows and 100 tasks a month, and paid plans start at 5,000 tasks a month, with a 15-day free trial and no credit card required (Zoho Flow pricing). Standard checks for new data every 15 minutes; Professional every 5.
Zapier: the widest catalog and the easiest start
Zapier is the easiest for a non-technical team to pick up, and almost every business app connects to it. Its Free plan includes 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps only. A task is a successful action step: triggers, filters, formatting steps and failed actions don't count (Zapier pricing).
Make: the most room for complex logic
Make shows each process as a visual map, which suits branching logic and data that needs reshaping on the way. It bills in credits: most actions use 1 credit, and the Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month (Make pricing).
My usual rule: Zoho-centric and moderate volume, Zoho Flow. Mixed apps and a team that wants to adjust things themselves, Zapier. Complex logic or high volume, Make. For large volumes or logic that must never fail silently, a small custom integration can beat all three.
What it costs: small, predictable, and capped
As of October 2026, from each vendor's own pricing page:
- Zoho Flow: Standard (5,000 tasks a month) is $25 a month billed yearly, or $29 month to month. Professional (10,000 tasks) is $41 billed yearly, or $49 month to month.
- Zapier: Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed yearly, or $29.99 month to month, for 750 tasks. Going over is optional: extra tasks are billed only if you switch on pay-per-task, and usage pauses at three times your plan, so there's no runaway bill.
- Make: 1,000 free credits a month, with paid plans priced by credit volume. Unused credits don't roll over, and extra credits can be bought in fixed bundles if a busy month needs them.
- What you don't pay for: on Zapier, triggers, filters and failed steps; on Make, error-handling and routing steps. And all three let you start free.
A worked example, with stated assumptions: 200 web inquiries a month. For each one, the glue creates or updates the contact in the CRM, creates the customer in accounting and posts a message to the sales team. That's 3 actions per inquiry, about 600 a month.
- On Zapier, 600 tasks fit the entry Professional tier, about $20 a month billed yearly. The Free plan's 100 tasks and two-step limit wouldn't cover it.
- On Zoho Flow, it fits Standard at $25 a month billed yearly, with plenty of room to grow.
- On Make, roughly 800 credits, including the step that picks up each inquiry, would fit inside the Free plan's 1,000 credits.
Without glue, someone exports inquiries every few days and imports them in a batch, or copies the important ones across when they have a moment. Say that's 3 minutes per inquiry: 10 hours a month, plus the inquiries that wait days for a reply. Re-typing every one by hand is the absolute last resort. Against that, any of the three is a small line on the budget.
Traps and safeguards
The platform matters less than how the automation is built. Whatever I use, I build in the same safeguards:
- It adds and never overwrites or deletes. Records your team has edited stay as they are.
- Cross-reference IDs in both systems. Each record carries its matching ID on both sides, so nothing is created twice and anyone can trace it back.
- Exceptions go to a person. A missing email or an unknown product goes to someone with a reason, instead of creating bad data.
- A failed run stops and alerts someone. The same day, not when a customer complains.
The common trap is the "Zap sprawl": dozens of automations built by different people, undocumented, with nobody sure which one changed a record. Keep a simple list of what runs, who owns it and what it touches.
Common questions
Can we switch platforms later?
Yes, but each automation is rebuilt, not moved. That's why the process map comes first: it makes a rebuild hours of work instead of an investigation.
What if the bill grows with the business?
All three bill by volume, and you set the ceiling. Zapier only bills extra tasks if you switch that on, and Make sells extra credits in fixed bundles. Higher volume usually means more business, and on Zapier the cost per task falls on bigger tiers.
Does my team need technical skills?
To use the result, no: data simply appears where it should. To change an automation, Zapier is the easiest to learn. I document every automation either way.
What if an app we use isn't supported?
A small custom piece can usually cover an app none of them supports, and it can run alongside the platform you chose. For the bigger picture, see my guide to connecting your business tools, or how the same principles apply to getting hours to payroll.
See how glue between many tools runs a whole connected client operation, or tell me what you want to improve.
Disclosure: some links in this article are partner links. If you buy through them, I may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.