https://zapier.com/blog A blog about productivity, workflow automation, company building and how to get things done with less work. Tue, 12 May 2026 16:15:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/make-com-pricing Not to get all "back in my day" about it, but texting etiquette today is so different from when I was in high school. Gen Z seems to have an aversion to long text blocks, so instead, it's multiple messages with one idea per text (sometimes in quick succession). But if you had a cell phone in 2009, you remember phone plans that charged per text, not per month. When you don't have unlimited texting, every message has a cost—so you make sure every text counts. Make's credit model will feel familiar Nicole Replogle Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/make-com-pricing https://zapier.com/blog/mcp Generative AI tools are impressive, but I've long argued that they aren't very useful in the real world unless they have access to more information than just their training data—and can actually do something with it. It's this ability that allows AI tools to create usable content, offer useful insights, and perform actions that actually move work forward.  Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a method of giving AI models the context they need and allowing them to take real action in other apps. So le Harry Guinness Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/mcp https://zapier.com/blog/best-social-media-management-tools Social media has had a wild few years. Twitter is now X, AI is everywhere, Threads is a thing, LinkedIn is back, and TikTok had a big will-it-be-banned-won't-it-be-banned fandango. But what the chaos has shown is that despite everything, social media is still one of the most powerful tools available to modern businesses. You can use it to find new clients, drive traffic to your site, and keep in touch with existing customers so that they stay engaged with your business—even as names change and h Harry Guinness Mon, 11 May 2026 14:22:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-social-media-management-tools https://zapier.com/blog/interoperability-on-zapier The AI tool you or your team uses right now probably won't be the same in a year, and that's if we're being conservative. At the pace AI is moving, you might go through a tool migration every few weeks now. It's great to keep up with updates, but these migrations can come with a tax: you've got to reconnect your apps, rewrite your agent instructions, and rebuild your governance guardrails from scratch every time. And if your developers are using coding agents to build AI-powered integrations, th Steph Spector Mon, 11 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/interoperability-on-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/automate-quo Quo (formerly known as OpenPhone) is a shared business phone system. It gives your team one place to manage calls, texts, and customer contact. But it's just one piece of your tech stack—what takes place in Quo shouldn't stay there. It needs to flow into the other tools your business runs on. And if your team is moving customer interactions manually between systems, that process exposes your data to error and is tough to scale as you grow. Fortunately, Zapier does away with that issue. By build Juliet John Mon, 11 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/automate-quo https://zapier.com/blog/mailerlite-alternatives MailerLite is a lot of teams' first pick for email marketing, and it's usually because of the price tag: it consistently wins on the elusive price-to-features ratio. On top of that, for a lot of small businesses—including solo operators and creators with a newsletter and a dream—it's exactly the right tool. But as teams grow, MailerLite can start to lag. And for a few dollars more a month, there might be a tool that does a lot more. The Zapier team (myself included) has collectively spent thousa Nicole Replogle Mon, 11 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/mailerlite-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/best-cloud-storage-apps Phone storage maxed out? Need to back up your computer? Want access to all your files across devices? Does your hard drive look like the digital equivalent of living in your car, files stuffed under the seats, and you're sure that important document is somewhere? For all these situations, you need cloud storage (or maybe a life coach). But which of the billion cloud storage apps is right for you? The best comes down to a lot more than price or terabytes. Do you need HIPAA compliance? Photo auto- Michelle Martin Mon, 11 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-cloud-storage-apps https://zapier.com/blog/claude-vs-chatgpt When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, tech writers (myself included) became obsessed with testing its limits. Could it write poetry? Debug code? Explain quantum physics to a five-year-old? Once Anthropic's Claude entered the scene a few months later, the focus shifted to head-to-head task comparisons (like counting objects or navigating ethical dilemmas) to try to figure out which model was more capable. In 2026—after countless model updates, and with game-changing agentic capabilities now Ryan Kane Sun, 10 May 2026 22:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-vs-chatgpt https://zapier.com/blog/best-team-chat-app It doesn't matter at this point if you're remote, hybrid, or fully in-office—your company needs a team chat app. When used well, workplace chat apps become the hub for your entire organization—the place for announcements, yes, but also where work conversations can happen in real time regardless of whether your co-workers are across the hall or across an ocean. Part of this is about efficiency. But business chat apps also mean that everyone can decide to participate in, or at least see, relevant Justin Pot Fri, 08 May 2026 11:21:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-team-chat-app https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-mcp-vs-sdk If you've been paying attention to new products in the tech space, you may have noticed three initialisms popping up a lot: MCP, SDK, and CLI. Zapier has dedicated products for each: Zapier MCP, Zapier SDK, and Zapier CLI. All three connect AI to Zapier's ecosystem of more than 9,000 apps, and they all run on the same governed access layer. But the right one for you depends on where you like to build. Here's what each one does, how they work, and why you should use one (or a combo) based on your Steph Spector Fri, 08 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-mcp-vs-sdk https://zapier.com/blog/servicenow-alternatives I love my air fryer as much as the next millennial, but it's too easy to treat it like a magical appliance that can handle everything. While you can roast vegetables, reheat leftovers, make crispy chickpeas, and cook salmon in 12 minutes flat, you're not searing a steak in that thing. And if you're making fries for a crowd, you'll spend the next hour baking painfully small batches while everyone waits. ServiceNow is the enterprise software equivalent. It covers enterprise ITSM, AI workflow autom Nicole Replogle Fri, 08 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/servicenow-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-mcp-guide Large language models can extract, classify, summarize, and write for us. They just can't execute those tasks on their own. Or not without some seriously cumbersome technical upkeep, anyway. For AI to do something in an app you use, a developer has to build a complex integration. Or—much preferred these days—you can fast-track the process with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a translator between AI tools and apps that lets your AI take actions on your behalf. Most MCP servers connect to a sing Steph Spector Thu, 07 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-mcp-guide https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-sdk-guide Right when I perfected my AI chatbot workflows, I found out all the cool kids had already migrated to building with AI coding agents. So I made the switch. And luckily for me, technical builders, and fellow vibe coders everywhere, Zapier SDK launched right on cue. Zapier SDK is a resource that gives AI coding agents access to more than 9,000 pre-built app integrations in the Zapier directory. They all run through Zapier's governance layer, so you can build safely while you carry out more than 30 Steph Spector Thu, 07 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-sdk-guide https://zapier.com/blog/cursor-alternatives I may be a marketer, but I use Cursor for a lot of my workflows. It's a VS Code fork with deep AI integration, fast inline edits, multi-file context, and a polished agent mode—but you don't really need to know what any of that means to use it. And that's why it's become the default AI coding tool for a lot of teams, technical and otherwise. But I've also tried a lot of other AI coding tools, and they all do something a little different. Codex and Claude Code are the big names here since they're Nicole Replogle Thu, 07 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/cursor-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/claude-code-vs-cursor Every day a developer sits down to work, they face a choice: do you want to stay close to the code or hand it off entirely? Staying close means you still know how your codebase works, which is useful when building new features or fixing anything that breaks. But handing it off sounds like the productivity dream: you assign tasks to an agent and come back after lunch to review the outputs. Neither choice is a clear winner right now. Staying too close to the code is slow and doesn't scale. Delegat Miguel Rebelo Thu, 07 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-code-vs-cursor https://zapier.com/blog/scaling-lead-gen-linkedin-and-zapier It's a scene that digital marketing and demand gen ops leaders know well: You check your LinkedIn campaign dashboard on a Monday morning. Click-through rates look solid. Cost-per-lead is within range. Your campaigns appear to be working. Then you open your CRM. The demos booked last month, the new opportunities in your pipeline, and the deal that closed on Friday are all tagged as direct traffic, but you know that LinkedIn ads had influence on the deal. From your CRM's perspective, however, all Hannah Herman Wed, 06 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/scaling-lead-gen-linkedin-and-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/fix-linkedin-ads-attribution-gaps Picture a Monday morning for your demand gen or performance marketing team. Your demand gen manager opens your LinkedIn campaign dashboard. Click-through rates look reasonable. Cost-per-lead is within range. Your campaigns appear to be working. Then they check your CRM. The funnel events—like demo requests—from last week don't match what LinkedIn reported. Sales pipeline from last month is tagged as direct traffic. A deal that closed on Friday has no campaign attribution at all. So your demand g Hannah Herman Wed, 06 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/fix-linkedin-ads-attribution-gaps https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-alternatives ChatGPT is the biggest name in AI chatbots, but it's far from the only one around. And depending on what you're trying to do, it might not even be the best option for you. ChatGPT is a great general-purpose chatbot, but like most jacks-of-all-trades, it can lose out to more specific tools for certain jobs. So if you need something that better suits your needs, your workflows, or even your personality, there are plenty of ChatGPT alternatives to consider. I've been using and writing about ChatG Harry Guinness Wed, 06 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/claude-design Good design is easy to recognize: the visuals and the user flow tell your brain the actions you can take inside an app or website without explanation. But good design is hard to build. You can stare at a new design for days and still feel that a page looks bland, the navigation is confusing, or that key information doesn't pop into the viewer's attention. Claude Design levels the playing field for design beginners, letting you create designs, prototypes, and slide decks with AI so you can reach Miguel Rebelo Tue, 05 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-design https://zapier.com/blog/google-stitch You're building an amazing product running on ground-breaking technology. Explaining it to investors, users, or your co-founder gets them eager to see more. But even if people understand the value of your idea in theory, seeing an interface that looks like a wireframe drawn on a dirty napkin is the easiest way to kill that initial excitement. Google Stitch helps you remove the friction in the first contact with an idea, raising the bar of your starter design without you spending two hours on Fig Miguel Rebelo Tue, 05 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/google-stitch https://zapier.com/blog/best-project-management-software-small-business Managing projects in a small business setting might seem simple—there are fewer people involved and fewer processes, preferences, and work styles to navigate. But big businesses often have a dedicated project manager for marketing, another for sales, and another for product development. The small business project manager, on the other hand, oversees multiple departments and wears more hats than can comfortably fit on a human head. It's important to find project management software that can help Kiera Abbamonte Mon, 04 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-project-management-software-small-business https://zapier.com/blog/ai-subscriptions When Open AI first launched its $200/month ChatGPT Pro subscription back at the end of 2024, I laughed. I didn't even sign up and test it for the article I wrote about it here on Zapier—it offered so little extra benefit over a $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription that I didn't think there was much point. Wow, have things changed.  Over the past six months, AI coding tools and AI agents have crossed an important threshold. They've gone from mostly doing what you want most of the time to almost al Harry Guinness Mon, 04 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-subscriptions https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-chatgpt-workspace-agents Wasn't AI supposed to swoop in and save the workday by giving us all less to do? I don't know about you, but writing prompts and refining them (and refining them…again) is giving me more work than I had in the pre-AI ages. That's why I try to build agents whenever I can. But choosing the right platform to build them on matters just as much as deciding to use them in the first place. OpenAI is rolling out its Codex-powered version of AI agents, called workspace agents. They're a lot like Zapier A Steph Spector Fri, 01 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-chatgpt-workspace-agents https://zapier.com/blog/best-web-browser Our web browser is no longer just another app on our computers. It's where we spend most of our time, from collaborating on productivity tools to shopping to streaming movies to even autonomously getting our online chores done. And yet we tend to default to whatever's there or popular without really thinking about our workflows. Your options aren't restricted to browsers made by tech giants like Apple and Google either—though, as you'll see, I think those are great options. New startups, like Br Shubham Agarwal Fri, 01 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-web-browser https://zapier.com/blog/what-is-mulesoft I'm not an engineer, but I like building overly nerdy systems that can talk to each other without any handholding. Even years ago, I leaned on Zapier to automate administrative tasks at the small law firm where I worked. Now, as a Zapier employee, I still reach for Zapier to speed up my workflows so I can spend more time on the parts of my job I actually like (like discussing the latest Survivor episode in Slack). Zapier makes it easy for everyone, from engineers to extremely right-brained emplo Nicole Replogle Fri, 01 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/what-is-mulesoft