I’ve had this same thought. The features I get out of Zapier are very useful but lacking some basic functionality that would make it a killer app. Things like branching are missing and rate limits are low. The price is also very high per action which makes it a poor use case for anything that isn’t directly making you money.
Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
131–140 of 157 posts
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#132Zapier should do a Google and offer a self-hosted " Zapier Engine " box that one can self host... (Anyone recall the Google Search boxes from ~2007? Are they still avail? We installed some at Lockheed in ~2006 or something... never saw the ROI on that thing... but a zapier host on a closed network, I can see the ongoing value of such...
Google started shutting down its GSA (Google Search Appliance) business in 2016, with the latest customers getting shut off by the end of 2018/2019. The promised cloud replacement never materialized, at least for anyone who wasn't also on GSuite/Workspace. GSA was an interesting product that I and others spent 100s of hours mastering. Really hated giving it up, although it was never the panacea for cutting through search results "noise" we had hoped it would be. ROI? Given its short lifespan, I doubt you could get a consensus on that. One thing in its favor over existing cloud based solutions: you had a lot of fine-grained control over the output. You could say that GDPR killed it, but that wouldn't be fair. It could have been queasiness over storing all that internal customer data. Or maybe the infamous short attention span of Google's executives.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#133Zapier is vulnerable to disruption both ends of the dev/integration chain (code/no-code), and they have been for some time. Their primary edge (IMHO) is a huge ecosystem of integrations unmatched by their competition. I don't see that edge persisting. It won't be long before OpenAI-esque UI's can generate no/low code integrations and as you'll see below there is plenty of conventional competition. They've had adequat…
What functionality do you use IFTTT (assuming you made a typo with 'IFTT') for that Zapier does not support?
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#134Has the author just not heard of Jitterbit or Mulesoft? Tangential rant - I feel like there is this group of 20-somethings that just assume that because they haven't heard of companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. that they just dismiss them as being dumb and boring and then when they analyze a problem space. Yet have no idea how a company like P&G operates at a global scale (hint - they use software like SAP). Jitterbit a…
Don't forget Microsoft Power Automate (and Logic Apps). For anyone in the 365 ecosystem these become the default, and yet I never seem to see them mentioned alongside the more start-uppy stuff like Zapier and Imtegromat.
It's mostly because the most economical way to get it is with an enterprise M365 sub, which many companies with under 1,000 users don't have. Even at that level, the unforseen need for additional premium licensing can dampen enthusiasm ("but it worked with my trial subscription!"). Besides, "low code" or "no code" is still programming, and requies that non-IT people to deal with unfamiliar concepts like software support, security and lifecycle management (or to ignore them at their own peril). Logic Apps are a whole other thing. More pro developers should give them a closer look if they aren't already using them.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#1351. Revenue is only $125m
2. Revenue growth has not plateaued
3. There is user value and multiple value in an all in one offering
4. Distribution will be hard exceptionally hard, going up against a thought leading, financially solvent, Founder led organization with a proven solution.
...Thus, your unbundled solution must be exceptionally better for a few million dollars in aspirational revenue. Otherwise, so distinctly different that it is not really a competitor.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Marketing Ops guy, this gives me pause. > nice and tidy. And then the marketers can do what they need in the platform, and they're able to iterate and learn at a much faster pace. It changes the whole game. The reality is, marketers will frequently plug in any and every thing they can without thinking about the broader context. Sure you can plug all this stuff together, or you can spend a bit of time with ETL an…
Is your goal to have a martech stack that doesn't rely on third party silos, or is your goal to have your lead-gen form populate your Airtable CRM for your new experimental acquisition campaign? The marketer is being asked to acquire users, not make it look pretty behind the scenes. In the testing phase, it's way better to use Zapier to get things done fast. Then you can revisit and scale later with a proper solution…
> revisit and scale later with a proper solution
But there in is the problem. Most Marketers I've had the pleasure of working with/for will never come back and implement the proper (scalable, secured, etc) solution. By the time this first ad-hoc creation has either failed horribly or taken off, they're off on the next new "idea".. there's no time to property revisit that last one, why would we? It's either dead and forgotten or working as I gloriously intended!
I've actually already seen Zapier go 'full lifecycle' in two separate environments. It went from "cautiously approved" to "banned by both name and by functionality" both times due to the marketing team zapping their collected data off to, lets call them.. overly public output storage locations.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, in small companies you get carte blanche, and there are two kinds of big companies. Those that make it work with a process like the above comment (which looks like a great and reasonable set-up), and those that kneecap their marketing departments by rejecting the tools needed for modern marketing. As a side note, I've worked with 60+ startups. One thing that kills start-ups whenever it happens is giving too much…
It's been my experience that default-to-no is what happens when groups like security try a reasonable process... and find that marketing and similar enablement-first groups handle this by ignoring and bypassing it. This tends to set up a very ugly reckoning at some point. Marketing will lose, but the company overall will lose too. If marketing ever says "But an enterprise contract with SAML is too expensive! Can't we…
To be fair, the people that run SaaS platforms that extort a 3x multiple to go from "Pro" which just happens to have every feature they offer EXCEPT SAML, to "Enterprise" which, low and behold, adds no value /other/ than SAML all need to line up and die in a fire someplace.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to get an answer to this question as well. I keep comings back to Zapier and the likes hoping I will find a useful use case but can’t. It seems that all it does is add stuff from email marketing forms to Google spreadsheets.
For more complex things Zapier falls flat IMO. I've been using Make.com (formerly Integromat) and it offers way more flexibility and it's easier to configure for more complex automations.
Not to mention Make has a much better entry level cost point:
1 Month (billed Monthly):
---Zapier $29
---(5 triggers / 750 events)
---Make $11
---(unlimited triggers/10,000 events)
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any way to lock a Sheet from edits except for API-based changes?
Zapier makes changes on behalf of a single account. You can change the "share" permission to only allow view for anyone except for the account tied to Zapier which has edit permissions.
...and don't they offer full revision history?
Not sure what the commenter was on about, then.
Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
#140Is Zapier like an Enterprise Service Bus but for connecting multiple enterprises?