Zapier vs Pabbly Connect (Why the Cheaper Option Might Just Be Better!)

Can’t decide between Zapier and Pabbly Connect? One has way more integrations, the other one is way cheaper. So, which is the best tool for automating your business processes and tasks? This detailed comparison between Zapier vs Pabbly Connect to helps you decide which one is right for you.

Zapier and Pabbly Connect are workflow automation tools that connect apps, APIs, and services that help automate digital tasks and help businesses and employees streamline their day without getting bogged down with repetitive and menial work.

Quick summary: Zapier and Pabbly Connect allow you to automate tasks and repeat them across multiple apps. Although they’re comparable in many ways, they both have their individual strengths. The main difference between Zapier and Pabbly Connect is that Zapier comes with more integrations, but Pabbly Connect offers a much cheaper price.

Personally, I prefer, and use, Pabbly Connect because of the huge difference in price. With Pabbly Connect I get 10,000 monthly tasks for $699 (lifetime pricing) but with Zapier I only get 2,000 monthly tasks for $588 (annual pricing).

But just because Zapier and Pabbly Connect do the same thing doesn’t mean that they are identical in every way.

Both have their pros and cons, and in this Zapier vs Pabbly Connect comparison, I’ll examine how they compare to each other and which one is the better tool for your automation needs.

Zapier vs Pabbly Connect

Zapier and Pabbly connect are both automation tools that let you automate work across multiple platforms and free up time for better things.

Let’s dive into the specifics of these tools and see how they stack up against each other.

What Is Pabbly Connect?

Like Zapier, Pabbly Connect is a task automation tool that allows users to repeat tasks across multiple apps effortlessly.

I’m a power user of Pabbly Connect. Check out some of the workflows I use here.

With Pabbly Connect, you can create workflows to automate data sharing across different apps and free yourself from the type of mindless busy work that we all hate.

Pabbly Connect also works using if/then logic, and can be used to perform multi-step tasks in response to different triggers. It’s a fundamentally user-friendly tool that’s easy to set up and doesn’t require any knowledge of coding to use.

Pabbly Connect Pricing

Pabbly Connect offers four payment tiers, starting with a forever-free plan.

Free

With the Pabbly Connect free plan you can create up to 100 tasks every month with unlimited operations, internal tasks, and automation.

This is a decently generous free plan, and may in fact be enough for freelancers and other users looking to automate a relatively small number of tasks.

Standard

The Pabbly Connect Standard plan costs $14 a month if you sign up for a 36-month subscription, and comes with 12,000 tasks per month and unlimited operations and workflows.

Pro

For $29 a month (with a 36-month commitment), you get 24,000 tasks per month with unlimited operations and workflows.

Ultimate

This is Pabbly Connect’s most popular plan, and for a good reason: starting at only $59 a month, you get a sliding scale of tasks per month starting at 50,000 and going up to 3,200,000 (this option costs $3,839 per month, but it’s far beyond what most businesses or individuals would ever need).

Note: All of the prices listed above are the cheapest options that Pabbly Connect offers and require you to sign up for a 36-month commitment.

The price goes up the less time you commit to: for example, the Standard plan with a single-month commitment costs $19/month.

Pabbly Connect Lifetime Deal

Pabbly Connect also offers an incredible one-time, lifetime payment option across all of its plans.

The benefit of getting the Pabbly Connect lifetime deal in 2023 is that you don’t have to pay any monthly or yearly subscription fees. One single payment for lifetime access!

Standard Lifetime Deal

This plan costs $249 (one-time payment) and gives you 3,000 tasks every month, unlimited Operations, and 10 workflows.

Pro Lifetime Deal

This plan costs $499 (one-time payment) and gives you 6,000 tasks every month, unlimited Operations, and 20 workflows.

Pabbly Connect Ultimate Lifetime Deal

This is without a doubt the lifetime plan with the best value for money! This plan costs $699 (one-time payment) and gives you 10,000 tasks every month, unlimited Operations, and unlimited workflows.

The cost for the same features on Zapier is $1,548 EVERY year. With Pabbly, it’s a single payment of $699.

All of Pabbly Connect’s plans, including the free plan, come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and a slew of great features such as:

• multi-step calls
• Formatters
• Delaying and scheduling
• Instant Webhook (a tool that lets you send data in real-time from one app to another in response to specified events)
• The ability to re-execute workflows 
• Folder management
• Two-factor authentication 

and much more. It’s safe to say that Pabbly Connect puts value for money at the forefront of its priorities, to the benefit of their customers.

Pabbly Connect Integrations

At the time of writing, Pabbly Connect is integrated with around 800 apps. This number is noticeably smaller than Zapier’s, but Pabbly Connect says that it’s expanding its app integrations at a rate of 3 to 5 new integrations every single day.

And, considering that it’s already integrated with some of the most commonly used apps, chances are you’ll find that the apps you need and use regularly are already integrated and ready to go. These include:

• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Google Calendar
• Google Sheets
• WordPress
• Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• Mailchimp
• WooCommerce
• Zoom
• Stripe
• Slack
• PayPal

…and many more. 

Here is an example of a workflow I have created in Pabbly Connect.

This workflow creates a Facebook page post whenever a WordPress post is updated, it does the following:

When THIS happens: a WordPress post is updated [is the TRIGGER]
THEN do this: create a 2-minute delay [is an ACTION]
and THEN do this: create a Facebook page post (using WP title – WP permalink – WP excerpt) [is another ACTION]

I use another workflow to create WordPress blog posts from RSS feeds, using Pexels to get a featured image and OpenAI GPT to create the headline and body content.

When THIS happens: there’s a new Item in an RSS feed [TRIGGER]
THEN do this: [ACTIONS]
Pabbly Text formatter to remove UTM parameters from RSS feed URL
Pexels API to find an image relevant to the RSS feed title
OpenAI to create a different title relevant to the RSS feed title
OpenAI to create the body content relevant to the RSS feed title
Pabbly Text formatter to remove various HTML entities
Publish as a draft WordPress post (category, tags, heading, featured image, body text)

Pabbly Connect Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Fantastic one-time payment lifetime plan with unbeatable prices
• Very user-friendly, and no installation is required
• No limits on the number of automation workflows allowed

Cons:

• Only integrated with 800+ apps at the time of writing

What Is Zapier?

Zapier is a workplace automation tool that, according to their website, lets you automate work ranging from your to-do list and your busy work to your side hustle and data entry.

More specifically, you can automate any tasks that will be repeated on two or more different apps without needing to write code to accomplish the task. When a task or action occurs on one app, Zapier will repeat the task across all other linked apps.

Zapier can automate tasks including daily notifications and reminders, data migration between apps, and basically any other task that doesn’t require critical thinking or discernment (fortunately, these are not yet automatable qualities).

However, even if Zapier can’t yet think critically, it can follow if/then logic. You can create automated workflows that include up to 100 steps and add customizable if/then cues that work automatically and allow Zapier to accomplish more complex tasks.

Actions on Zapier are called “Zaps.” Each Zap can include up to 100 individual actions and can be scheduled to run at specific times or in response to specific conditions.

In terms of data migration, Zapier makes a formerly tedious task totally effortless. Not only can you fully automate it, but you can even add a formatting step to your Zap.

So that when data is being transferred from one app to another, it changes the formatting to be compatible with the new app before importing it.

Zapier Pricing

Zapier offers five paid plans that offer different variations of its basic features. Let’s take a look at what each of these plans includes.

Free

Zapier’s free forever plan allows you to automate 100 tasks per month. You can create 5 single-step Zaps (with one trigger and one action) with an update check time set for every 15 minutes.

Starter

For $19.99 a month (billed annually) or $29.99 a month billed monthly, you can automate 750 tasks per month, create 20 multi-step Zaps, and get access to 3 premium apps.

You also get access to filters and formatters, as well as connections via Webhooks, a tool that allows you to build your own custom integrations. Like the free plan, you can set your update check time to 15 minutes.

Professional

For $49.99 a month billed annually or $73.50 billed monthly, you can automate up to 2,000 tasks per month, build unlimited multi-step Zaps, set update times to every 2 minutes, and get access to unlimited premium apps.

You also get auto-replay and a feature called custom logic-paths, which allows you to create more advanced workflows that respond to conditions you set and run various actions using branching logic.

Team

For a pretty serious price jump of $299 a month billed annually or $448.50 a month billed monthly, you can automate up to 50,000 tasks per month, create unlimited multi-step Zaps, set a 1-minute update check time, and gain access to unlimited premium apps.

You can also have unlimited users, making this plan (as the name suggests) the best option for businesses with multiple team members. You can create a shared workspace and shared app connections and set folder permissions to regulate who can edit shared Zaps and access specific folders. 

Company

At the highest-paid tier of $599.99 per month billed yearly or $895.50 billed month-to-month, the company plan is only realistic for larger businesses looking for serious automation options.

With the company plan, you can automate up to 100,000 tasks per month, create unlimited multi-step Zaps, set a 1-minute update check time, and get access to all other features.

Plus you get advanced admin permissions, custom data retention, account consolidation, user provisioning, and more.

Note: All of the paid plans also come with the option to increase your monthly number of tasks (with a slight price increase, of course) without having to upgrade to a higher plan. 

For example, the Starter plan allows 750 tasks per month for $19.99, or you can choose to upgrade to $39 per month to automate up to 1,500 tasks.

This is a nice feature that allows for some flexibility, but overall, Zapier’s plans are definitely a bit pricey compared to their main competitor, Pabbly Connect (more on that later).

Zapier Integrations

Zapier integrates with over 4,000 apps and software tools, including some of the biggest productivity tools such as:

• Google Sheets
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Mailchimp
• Slack
• Twitter
• Trello

…and literally thousands more. What this means is that your routine actions on these apps can be automated and duplicated across basically any other app, saving you the time and hassle of having to perform these functions yourself.

Zapier Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Seriously impressive number of app integrations (over 4,000)
• Makes it easy to perform recurring tasks across multiple platforms
• User-friendly interface with no knowledge of coding or web development necessary

Cons:

• Relatively small number of tasks allowed per subscription
• Access to certain “premium” apps is limited to the Professional plan and up.
• Expensive compared to Pabbly Connect

FAQ

Summary: Which is Better, Pabbly Connect vs Zapier?

Pabbly Connect and Zapier are comparable tools in many ways. Both are workflow automation tools that help you automate repetitive, boring tasks between two or more apps and save you time and effort in the process.

Both also offer signup deals and discounts based on how many months you’re willing to subscribe for.

In other words, Pabbly Connect and Zapier are fairly similar in terms of what you can do with them, although Zapier has a slightly more sophisticated range of features.

Pabbly Connect markets itself as the cheaper, common-sense alternative to Zapier, and in many ways, that’s a fair characterization.

Although it doesn’t come with the impressive number of integrations that Zapier boasts, Pabbly Connect is a sufficient tool for most people’s needs when it comes to task automation.

However, if you’re a business looking to scale quickly or needing a higher range of customizability when it comes to automatic repetitive tasks, Zapier might be the better fit for you.

Ultimately, it comes down to your individual needs and budget constraints. If you have the funds and are looking for more integrations, Zapier is the best choice for you.

However, if you’re looking for a solid automation tool at a great onetime-payment price, Pabbly Connect is definitely your best option.