Zapier Free Plan Features: What You Get and What You Don’t.
Zapier is an automation tool in the same vein as IFTTT, but arguably more powerful in many ways. While IFTTT is superior to smart home applications, Zapier finds widespread use in business and productivity applications. Perhaps one of the most powerful features of Zapier is the ability to customize multi-stage automation.
Of course, these powerful features are blocked for paywalls. This guide will take a look at the free Zapier plan and help you decide if it’s worth trying it out, or if you shell out some money on a premium plan every month, you’ll get the extra tools and features you need.
Zapier Free Plan
Before explaining what the free Zapier plan offers, there are a few terms you need to understand. Zapier calls its automation “Zaps”, so any link to Zap is a link to an automated linked task.
Free Zapier plan allows users to install up to 5 Zap. It also limits users to 100 tasks per month; In other words, 100 activations of your Zaps before the service is terminated until the next month. The free Zapier plan also limits users to one-step Zap files and only checks for updates every 15 minutes.
With all this in mind, why is the free Zapier plan good? The answer is simple: testing. This is a great way to give Zapier a try and find out if you like the basic features and interface. However, it is too limited for any real form of automation.
The next level is much more useful. For $ 20 per month (billed annually), you get 750 tasks per month, up to 20 Zap at a time, but still limited to 15 minutes of refresh time. However, you get access to Multi-Step Zaps, 3 premium apps, filters, formatter, and webhook connections.
It is a much more useful program, but a little more expensive. Try the free plan and decide if Zapier can achieve your goals before you decide to commit funds. However, Zapier provides users with a 14-day free trial of its services.
Zapier compatibility
Zapier is compatible with over 2,000 different apps, but some of the most powerful (and most popular) are Google Sheets, Gmail, Slack, Twitter, and Trello. As we stated earlier, Zapier is focused on productivity, not home automation.
In fact, Zapier has little to no smart home compatibility. It is compatible with 36 different IoT applications, but only a few of these applications are commonly used (such as Philips Hue and Google Assistant).
Certain apps on the Zapier platform are considered “Premium” apps, including Salesforce, Shopify, PayPal, and GoToWebinar. These premium apps are only available to those using one of Zapier’s paid plans.
Zapier preparation
The strength of Zapier is that it doesn’t take long to get started. You can register with Google to get started. From now on, creating a Zap is as easy as choosing from a list of options.
First select the trigger on which your Zap will take effect. It could be anything. In this example, we have selected a specific Twitter search query as the trigger. When Zapier searches and finds results, it triggers an action.
The second step is the effect. Choose what you want the Zapier to trigger. Continuing with the above example, we send an email containing the relevant information about the search query to the specified email address.
If you are using a plan that allows you to set up multi-stage Zaps, you simply need to click the plus sign under the second step to continue creating instructions.
Is Zapier’s Free Plan Worth Using?
The free plan is so limited in features and functionality that it has practically no real application. If you only need to automate a few tasks that rarely run every month, this might suit your needs. On the other hand, if you’re planning to build a workhorse for automation, you’ll quickly run out of tasks if you don’t pay for the premium plan.
The free Zapier plan isn’t even that useful for testing purposes, as anyone interested in the service can try out the premium plan within 14 days of signing up. However, Zapier itself is extremely powerful, especially when it comes to linking Slack and other business communication tools with other services.
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