Zapier Review: An Amazing Automation Tool That Can Save Your Biz Time + Money

Last Updated on December 2, 2022

You might be astonished by how many daily tasks within your business don’t actually have to be done manually. Zapier makes it possible for different apps to “talk” to each other (we’ll get into the details below!). With Zapier integration, you have an insanely powerful automation tool at your disposal that can create an automated workflow in your business, trimming hours of manual work each week, freeing up time, and saving you thousands of dollars each year.  

What is Zapier + How Is It Going to Help You Work Less? 

One of the themes I land on consistently in my writing and teaching is the value of automating your business as much as possible. Business automation frees you up to live your life in a way that honors your natural rhythms, nurtures your soul, and allows you to fulfill your life’s purpose (and maybe even get a good night’s sleep every night!) 

One of our FAVORITE automation tools here at team KK is Zapier (rhymes with happier 😊). 

Zapier is an online platform that helps you automate workflows by connecting most (probably even all) of the apps and online services you use. 

Zapier integration allows you to automate tasks without having to know code to build these integrations yourself, or spending big bucks to hire someone to build it for you.  

Some Examples of What You Can Do With Zapier (and How It Will Change Your Life)

Zapier is an “if this, then that” (iftt) automation platform. Each Zap (what Zapier calls the actions it performs) consists of a trigger (this), and an action (that).

A simple example is probably the easiest way to explain it: 

Let’s say you want to automatically post to Facebook every time you post something to your blog. You would set up a Zap to automatically handle that for you. If I post to the blog, then post it to Facebook. 

Zaps can also have multiple steps across multiple apps. For example, you could set up a Zap to send a message to a team Slack channel when someone completes a task in ClickUp and then also add that project name to a Google Sheets spreadsheet of completed tasks. 

You can add as many steps to a Zap as you want by simply hitting the + button below the last action you created. You can also create names for your Zaps and add notes so you don’t forget what each one does or how it works. I highly recommend this last step because as you add more and more zaps it’s easy to get confused about what’s going on.  

Zapier already has THOUSANDS of these Zaps pre-configured for you, so all you have to do is enter your credentials for whatever tools you want to integrate and choose which Zaps you want to use to automate your business. 

You can also use Zapier as a tool for personal growth. For example, let’s say you want to start going on a walk each day to move your body and clear your head. You can create Zaps to send you positive text messages everyday to remind and encourage yourself not to skip your time of silence and self-care. 

Or, let’s say you’re trying to get in the habit of repeating daily affirmations, you could set up a Zap to send your affirmations to your phone every afternoon.

Zapier Prices + Which Plan Is Right For You 

Zapier is incredibly affordable, with plans starting at FREE. The free plan is free forever, so technically you could stick with the free plan, although it’s fairly limited and might not have enough features for even the smallest businesses. It is a FANTASTIC way to get started and give Zapier a test run to see if it’s right for you. Or if you just want to use it as a personal automation tool with a few zaps, the free plan is a great option!

The next level in Zapier prices is their Starter Plan which is $19.99/month and offers almost all of the basic key features of the rest of the plans. Still an incredible price for such a powerful and time saving automation tool. 

After their Starter Plan, the next level in Zapier prices is their Professional Plan, which gives you features like unlimited Zaps, quicker update time (your Zaps happen faster) and custom logic in your Zap paths. The Professional Plan is $49/month and is probably where most small business owners are going to see the greatest benefit from this automation tool. 

You can get a detailed breakdown of all the features and benefits of each plan by heading over to Zapier and clicking on “Pricing.” 

I know many entrepreneurs who hate spending any amount of money on software and tools or just generally investing in their business, but I want to provide a reframe about why Zapier is worth every penny.

What if You Could Add Another Team Member at a Fraction of the Cost?

There are some specialized skills that can only be done by the creative mind of a human being, and for projects that require these skills, it’s wise to hire someone who is an expert in that job.

But there are also a lot of tiny tasks that can and should be a part of an automated workflow.

Zapier is a powerful tool that saves our team hundreds of productive hours a year! It’s basically like adding an additional team member, but for a small monthly fee instead of thousands of dollars per month.

And it’s actually pretty fun to use and set up. You can get really creative with the Zaps you set up. You have nothing to lose by setting up a free trial account and exploring some of the ways Zapier can automate your business and life, cut down on costs, and free up more of your time!

Zapier Review: What Team KK Loves Best

The amazing free trial Zapier offers! We’re pretty confident you’re going to LOVE Zapier, but it’s always nice to be able to test new apps and tools before you commit. 

Zapier integrates almost EVERY TOOL in the online world. Literally your imagination is the limit. “5,000+ apps, infinite possibilities”. 

It’s like the ultimate assistant on Team KK! Before, we would spend HOURSSSS manually copying and pasting data, or checking one tool and manually adjusting something else in another tool (like when someone buys a product in Kartra and then we want to automatically send them a contract in SignNow). Zapier does all of this automatically and it’s a huge lift in our productivity and efficiency as a team, too.

Zapier’s customer service team is excellent and they always have suggestions or workarounds for whatever problem or challenge you bring to them. What we appreciate from them is they’ll tell you to “try thing one thing” and if it doesn’t work “try this 2nd option.” They’re very responsive, too! 

No coding required! Zapier’s user interface is simple, clean and intuitive. As mentioned, there are even thousands of templates you can just plug and play to set up your own Zaps. Zapier integration requires very few tech skills. 

Pro tip: When you set up a Zapier integration, be sure to test your zaps!

If you’re not technically savvy, you might want to spend a little extra time playing around with any Zaps you set up. Test them and confirm that they work the way you intended them to. If it doesn’t work, walk through the setup from the beginning, changing one variable at a time and then testing again until you find the problem.  

The Best Zapier Features + Tools 

Paths. With paths, a Zap can perform different actions based on if/then logic. 

Filters. With filters, your Zap will only run when a certain condition is met. You can also schedule your Zap to run when you want or delay the action step. As an example, I use filters to do something like “a contract will only be created if they have this specific lead tag in Kartra” 

Formatter. Allows you to change a format of a date & time/numbers/text, etc. and turn it into a format that makes sense to how you want your data to look like. For example the weird date & time formatting of Kartra can be transformed into something easier to understand (ex. MM/DD/YYYY). 

Formula. You can predetermine some stuff and have Zapier do the math for you. For example, we have a start date for our Incubator clients and we just add a variable like “+12mos” and Zapier would calculate their end date for us, and automatically add it into our contract signing tool. 

Zap replays.  if something’s not right, or there’s an error, Zapier notifies you about it and gives you insights where it might have gone wrong. Once you’ve fixed and tested it, Zapier will allow you to “re-run” the historical data.

Team KK’s Fave Zaps 

Dashboard Data: Do you love seeing how many subscribers have opted in on your email list for the past week? Or how much sales you’ve made in the last quarter? Or which lead magnet performs well? You can use Zapier to pull in these data from one tool to another. In this screenshot, we pull raw data from Kartra to Google Sheets, and we create reports from there!

Client Nurture Workflows: We love Zapier for helping us keep our clients nurtured and at ease sending us all types of reminders, contracts, and automations that could happen even in our sleep. No one needs to log in after work hours when a client decides to enroll then. These Zaps do the trick for us.

Some more sneak peek to the Zaps we use!

My Favorite Bonus Benefit of Zapier Integration

I want to address a side benefit of using Zapier as a tool to create automated workflows. Not only is it a great way to automate your business so that you work less, you’ll likely see an additional boost in your productivity as a result of the Zapier integration with the various tools you use. 

There was a time in my life that I was a proud multi-tasker, hustlin’ my way through every day (burning myself out in the process), until I learned the truth about the myth of multitasking. 

There is no such thing. 

What we call multitasking is actually context shifting, and it’s a HIGHLY inefficient way to manage your day. You can’t really focus on more than one thing at a time, so what you do when you “multitask” is continually switch back and forth between however many tasks, killing your productivity (and focus, and adrenals…) in the process. 

According to psychologist Gerald Weinberg, each additional task or ‘context’ you switch between reduces your overall productivity up to 20%! (source)

• When you are focusing on one task at a time, you can give that task 100% of your productive time.  

• When you add one more task, you can only give 40% of your productive time to the task, and you lose 20% of your productive time to context switching. 

• When you try to do three tasks at a time, you can only give 20% of your productive time to each task and 40% is lost to context switching. 

These results are kind of staggering, and enough for me break my multi-tasking habit, and encourage everyone on my team to do the same! 

So what does this little tangent have to do with Zapier? 

First off, Zapier reduces the amount of time you switch between your various tools by allowing you to perform many of the actions you need to perform all in one place. 

And of course, once you get all your automated workflows and running smoothly, Zapier takes care of it all in the background, freeing you up to focus (100%!) on other tasks. 

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Ready to Go From “Stuck” to “Sprint”?

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Frequently Asked Questions About Using Zapier Integration to Create More Automated Workflows