Most small organisations lose hours every week to copying data between systems: website form to spreadsheet, spreadsheet to CRM, CRM to email list, payments to accounts. Automation tools can do that work for you, reliably and around the clock.
The three names you’ll hear most are Zapier, Make and n8n. They all connect apps together and run workflows automatically, but they differ a lot in price, flexibility and where your data goes. This guide compares them for UK charities, membership bodies and small businesses.
The short answer
- Zapier is the easiest to start with and connects to almost everything, but it gets expensive as volumes grow.
- Make offers more power for the money, with a visual builder that handles more complex logic.
- n8n is the most flexible and can be hosted on your own UK server, which keeps costs predictable and helps with GDPR, but it benefits from technical set-up.
How they charge
Pricing is where the three really differ, because each counts usage differently:
| Zapier | Make | n8n | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Tasks: each action, for each item | Operations (credits): each step, for each item | Executions: each complete workflow run |
| Free option | 100 tasks a month | 1,000 credits a month | Free if you host it yourself (Community Edition) |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud only | Cloud, or your own server |
The difference adds up quickly. A workflow that imports 500 new supporters and does three things with each one counts as 1,500 tasks in Zapier, but a single execution in n8n.
As a rough guide at the time of writing, for around 10,000 actions a month you might pay roughly $129 a month on Zapier’s Professional plan (billed annually), from about $9 a month on Make’s Core plan, or about €50 a month on n8n’s Pro cloud plan. Self-hosting n8n costs only the server it runs on. Prices change often, so check each provider’s current pricing before deciding.
Ease of use
Zapier is the friendliest. You pick a trigger (“new form submission”) and an action (“create contact”), and it guides you through. Staff with no technical background can build simple workflows themselves.
Make uses a visual canvas where you drag modules together. It handles branching, loops and data transformation better than Zapier, but takes a little longer to learn.
n8n also uses a visual canvas and is very capable, including custom code where needed. It is best set up by someone technical, after which staff can use and adjust workflows.
Connecting to CiviCRM and other charity tools
All three connect to the common tools charities use, such as Mailchimp, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe and Eventbrite. For CiviCRM, you’ll usually connect through CiviCRM’s API using a web request step, which all three support. That lets a workflow create or update contacts, record contributions, add people to groups or log activities.
For anything that happens entirely inside CiviCRM, such as a renewal reminder or a welcome email, CiviCRM’s own scheduled reminders and the CiviRules extension are often simpler than an external tool. We cover those in five admin jobs charities can automate with CiviCRM.
Data protection and GDPR
Automation tools process personal data, so they need the same care as any other supplier:
- Zapier and Make are cloud services. Check where data is processed, sign their data processing agreements and list them in your privacy notice. Make offers EU hosting.
- n8n can run on your own server in a UK data centre, so supporter data never leaves infrastructure you control. For many charities this is the deciding factor.
- Whichever you choose, only pass the data a workflow actually needs, and avoid sending sensitive information such as health details through automations unless you’ve assessed the risk.
Which should you choose?
Choose Zapier if you want to automate a handful of simple tasks quickly and volumes are low.
Choose Make if your workflows involve several steps or decisions and you want better value than Zapier.
Choose n8n if you have regular, higher-volume workflows, want predictable costs, or want to keep data on UK servers. It’s also the best fit when automations need to talk to CiviCRM in detail.
Many organisations start with one simple workflow, see the time it saves, and build from there.
Where to start
Pick one repetitive task that happens every week, write down each step, and count the time it takes. That is usually the best first automation.
We design and build automations with n8n, Make, Zapier and Power Automate for UK charities and small organisations, often connected to CiviCRM. See our automation and AI services, or book a free 30-minute automation review and we’ll identify two or three tasks that could run themselves.