n8n vs Make vs Zapier vs Lindy — What's best to make AI marketing workflows?

My perspective as both a (former) dev and a (current) marketer.

Note: This is the first newsletter edition under the new name Copymator. I promise I don’t send emails to non-subscribed email addresses. You have subscribed to my newsletter in the past, when the name was Customer Fitted.

I started to use n8n because people around me were recommending it.

But it’s geared towards developers. n8n felt pretty easy to start with as a (former) dev. But not the easiest I would have thought.

The tweet above made me realized that people around me are devs so they don’t really mind the way n8n is structured.

But are other workflow tools better?

I decided to try some alternatives with 3 questions for each one:

• Do I like it?

• Am I more productive with it?

• Can I still easily share my workflows with my audience?

TL;DR

• Zapier has the best UX but it’s too expensive

• n8n workflows fit the mental model of technical people the best but has some quirks

• Lindy has built-in AI so you don’t need to bring your own API keys but that means extra cost

• Make is probably the right middle ground between Zapier and n8n

Zapier

I like the UX the most out of all the other tools, but too many things are rubbing me the wrong way to consider it.

• No rich text in Tables, but with markdown that’s kinda ok, just not the best for marketers.

• A lot of features are available in free tiers in alternatives but not in Zapier

  • Just 2-step Zaps

  • No linked records in Tables

  • Access to some actions are restricted

• I like the UX though. Setting up actions felt easier and quicker than Make and n8n.

• Iterating over items wasn’t easy before, they’ve added the feature now but I wonder if it’s that well integrated compared to n8n and Make.

• It’s expensive: Zapier’s Pro is $29 for Zaps, $20 for Tables add-on, $20 for Interfaces add-on, $20 for Chatbots add-on. For the Tables, I get more features for free with Airtable. For the workflows, I pay less for n8n and Make is even lower. Make and n8n have unlimited members, Zapier’s Pro is single user.

Lindy

It has potential but it’s too much for “non-tech savvy people” for me. Instead of bringing your own API keys for AI actions, Lindy handles everything. But that means extra cost (the first paid plan is $49/mo).

• You can still use HTTP requests to use your own API keys for OpenAI, Claude, etc… But Lindy doesn’t have any value compared to the other tools in that configuration.

• It’s possible to share the workflows as template, it might make it the easiest option to share my workflows without the need to set up other tools for AI calls. But again it comes at an extra cost.

Make

I really liked Make. Will use it for a couple of workflows in the next few weeks and probably move everything to it if I continue to like it.

• I rebuilt one of my workflows pretty quickly without knowing anything about the platform.

• The iteration over items is linear which for my developer brain is a bit weird but probably simpler for non-tech people: one action to start the iteration, then some actions, then an aggregator to close the iteration.

• I don’t like the UI as much as Zapier or n8n. But the UX is pretty good.

• The free version is good enough that people can try my workflows for free and pay for the subscription once they’ve gotten value from my workflows.

n8n

Then there’s n8n that I’ve been using the longest.

I find n8n easier to inject a little bit of code here and there to transform data without adding a dedicated action. Which simplify complex workflows.

Looping over items is also more logical with n8n in my developer brain. Contrary to Make, it’s just a clear and visible loop.

But there are also some small quirks.

For some reason, Airtable triggers don’t have select lists to choose the database or table. But other Airtable actions do. Don’t know why. I’m sure it’s not unique to Airtable and I’ll find more things like that in the future.

Also, at first I didn’t find the Apify actions (that I use for scraping) but that’s because it’s a community node and I needed to enable them manually.

What I’m using n8n for? July edition

I have just a few worfklows made with n8n — I talked about them last time — but I’ve been able to use it for a lot of things. Especially my content repurposing workflow.

So I thought I’d share the main things I did in July:

• Email sequence updates: I’ve used my workflows to rewrite an onboarding email sequence with it. Put my past sequences, best practice cheatsheet, product’s documentation, and more in context. Pretty satisfied with the result.

• Blog post refreshes: I’ve started updating blog posts to AI SEO best practices for a client, using my workflows in the process. It’s also good for SEO as traffic from Google and Bing are up so far.

• Customer story repurposing: I’m currently using my content repurposer to merge all the customer stories from a client to create new use case assets (e.g. all quotes in all stories about a specific use case).

• Newsletter generation: I’ve now switched to using mostly AI for my newsletter about Japan. I’m researching the topic to find the right angle and good sources, then edit a bit manually at the end. That’s it. I don’t struggle with the publishing schedule now.

If you want to buy my workflows, contact me and I’ll give you the payment link (with a BIG discount).

It comes with the n8n workflow templates, Airtable templates, and I’m currently adding content templates and recipes to use my workflows for some of the use cases I’ve just mentioned and more.

My assistant loves using the workflows!