All platforms have their unique value proposition and they excel in specific use cases. In other words, choosing which platform to use comes down to your specific needs.

People mostly compare Outfunnel with Zapier and Make but both platforms cater to different use cases and we mostly see businesses using both at the same time.

Zapier and Make are popular generalist automation platforms that allow users to create simple automations between apps that start from a trigger and then follow a set of actions that are created by the user.

Outfunnel is a no-code data syncing platform that's purpose-built for sales and marketing workflows. This means that each object is in a two-way relationship and changes sync bi-directionally. This way your data is always up to date and you can create cross-app workflows and reduce time spent on admin work to ultimately close more revenue for your business.

❌ With Zapier/Make, you have to build workflows from scratch which takes a long time and often needs a consultant (read: dragging together 8 modules/steps and hoping nothing breaks).

✅ Outfunnel offers plug-and-play, purpose-built connectors with built-in logic for CRMs + marketing tools—saving hours of setup.

❌ Zapier/Make create workflows with a clear beginning and an end so it's not possible to listen to changes of a specific field and compare it to existing data to action the changes.

✅ Outfunnel creates bi-directional links between objects so changes on either end are found automatically and synced in real-time.

❌ Zapier/Make bill for each step which can get expensive and makes it hard to forecast spend. For example, if you'd like to build a field change tracking by listening to an "Contact updated" trigger then you'd consume a lot of zaps even if there are no changes that are relevant. You could set up an additional step to compare the source app trigger data to the destination app data but you'd still consume zaps without any changes.

✅ Outfunnel charges based on the number of active contacts and we allow unlimited changes.

As an example, let's say you are looking to sync contacts and field updates between HubSpot and Klaviyo bi-directionally.

In Zapier when you add a contact to HubSpot then this will create a contact in Klaviyo but they won't be linked. This means that if you later update this contact in HubSpot or Klaviyo the changes won't populate to the other app. In other words, it's a one-way street that's limited to a very specific use case.

As a workaround you could create additional workflows that also cover updates and sync data in the other direction but this is extremely tedious, prone to errors, and expensive (you'd have to create search steps to avoid duplicates, add logic if an existing contact is found, handle different field updates, pull in organization/deal objects to sync these fields, etc.).

In Outfunnel, when you choose to sync contacts between HubSpot and Klaviyo, we'll automatically create a two-way relationship so that data changes on either app will populate to the other app. The sync comes with built-in deduplication, data merging, contact/organization fields, and error handling. In other words, all the logic is already built into the core system so you don't have to build this from scratch.

To summarise Zapier and Make create a one-way path whereas Outfunnel creates a two-way relationship between your objects.

If you have a simple use case like enriching a lead or syncing a form submission and want to have a wide variety of apps to interconnect then Zapier/Make are great choices. While more complex flows can also be created it requires a complicated setup, takes lots of time and can get pricey.

If you need to create two-way links between objects, need to record marketing engagement to your CRM and want a platform that specialises in sales and marketing use cases then Outfunnel is the better option.