What Is Zapier and How Can It Help Your Business?
Zapier connects your apps and automates repetitive tasks without code. Here's what it does, what it costs, and the most useful automations to set up.
3 min read · Updated 2026-04-15
Short answer
Zapier is a no-code automation tool that connects over 6,000 apps. When something happens in one app, Zapier automatically does something in another. For example: when someone fills your contact form, Zapier automatically adds them to your email list and sends you a Slack notification.
How it works
Every Zap (automation) has:
- Trigger — the event that starts the automation ("New form submission in Typeform")
- Action — what happens next ("Add subscriber to Mailchimp")
You can chain multiple actions together. For example:
- New Stripe payment → 2. Add row to Google Sheet → 3. Send welcome email in Mailchimp → 4. Post notification in Slack
Most useful automations for small businesses
Lead management
- Contact form submission → Add to CRM (HubSpot, Notion, Airtable)
- New lead in Facebook Ads → Add to email list
- New Calendly booking → Add to Google Sheet + send Slack alert
Customer communication
- New Shopify order → Send personalized thank-you email
- New negative review → Alert via email or Slack
- Customer fills NPS survey → If low score, notify team immediately
Admin and operations
- New invoice paid in QuickBooks → Update client row in Airtable
- Team member completes task in Asana → Move to "Done" in Trello
- New Google Form response → Create Notion database entry
Social media
- New blog post published → Auto-post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook
- New YouTube video → Post notification to email list
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Zaps | Tasks/month | |------|-------|------|-------------| | Free | $0 | 5 Zaps | 100 tasks | | Starter | $20/month | 20 Zaps | 750 tasks | | Professional | $49/month | Unlimited | 2,000 tasks |
Tasks = how many times your automations run. A Zap with 3 actions uses 3 tasks per trigger.
Alternatives to Zapier
- Make (formerly Integromat) — more powerful, cheaper, steeper learning curve ($9/month)
- n8n — open source, self-hostable, free (technical setup required)
- Pabbly Connect — one-time price option, good alternative
Is Zapier worth it?
If you're manually copying information between apps more than a few times per day, yes. One automation that saves 30 minutes daily pays for itself immediately.