AI Automation Platforms Compared

Make vs Zapier vs n8n vs Gumloop. Which one fits your business?

🟠 Make (formerly Integromat)

  • Visual drag-and-drop — great for beginners & pros
  • Handles complex workflows with branching logic
  • Hundreds of integrations (API-heavy apps included)
  • Scenario scheduling & error handling built-in
  • Affordable for advanced use cases
  • Steep learning curve at first
  • UI gets slow/buggy with large scenarios
  • Limited support for niche tools
  • Docs aren't always beginner-friendly

    • 🟠 Zapier

  • Easiest for beginners — very intuitive
  • 5,000+ app integrations
  • Reliable and well-documented
  • Pre-built templates for common workflows
  • Great for simple quick automations
  • Gets expensive fast as usage scales
  • Limited free plan functionality
  • Not ideal for complex logic or branching
  • No true visual editor like Make or n8n
  • Delayed triggers on lower-tier plans

    • 🔴 n8n

  • Open-source & self-hostable (full control)
  • Powerful for developers & technical users
  • No hard app limits — build anything via API
  • Advanced logic & conditional branching
  • Free for personal/small team use
  • Steeper learning curve for beginners
  • Self-hosting requires server knowledge
  • Interface less polished than competitors
  • Limited native integrations out of box
  • Cloud version gets pricey

    • 🟢 Gumloop

  • Built specifically for AI automation
  • Simple UI for AI workflows
  • Native GPT-based agents & prompts
  • Fast setup for basic automations
  • Affordable with generous limits
  • Very new — features still limited
  • Not ideal for non-AI workflows
  • Fewer integrations than competitors
  • Small community & growing support
  • May lack flexibility for custom APIs

    • 🏆 What We Actually Use (and don't)

    Using: n8n (all agents), ChatGPT (memory + CustomGPTs), Hermes (24/7 agents), HeyGen (AI videos), Descript (editing), OpenRouter (free APIs), Fathom (AI meeting notes — every sales call recorded, summarised, action items extracted)

    Not using: Make/Zapier (n8n is more powerful), Claude/Gemini (ChatGPT memory wins), other super-agents (Genspark replaced them)

    Our Actual Stack (What We Use)

    🤖

    Hermes Agent

    8 agents running 24/7 — content, leads, monitoring

    🧠

    ChatGPT

    CustomGPTs, memory-trained, VEO 3 video, image gen

    🔄

    n8n

    2 production workflows — video + voice agent

    🎥

    HeyGen

    AI avatar videos for content marketing

    🎙️

    Descript

    Audio generation, podcast editing, subtitles

    📞

    Fathom

    Call recording + transcripts for coaching. Free AI notetaker — summaries + action items on every call.

    🤝 Fathom + Zapier — Meeting Notes That Do the Follow-Up

    Fathom records your call and produces a summary with action items automatically. Zapier then takes that output and pushes it where it needs to go.

    The workflow from the tutorial:

    Trigger: New Fathom call summary
    Action 1: Create CRM contact (name, company, summary)
    Action 2: Log action items to your task list
    Action 3: Send follow-up email drafted from the summary
    Action 4: Notify your team in Slack/Telegram

    Result: every sales call automatically logs itself — no manual notes, no forgotten follow-ups, no lost action items. The call ends, the system takes over.

    📄 OCR → Sheets — Paper Documents That Type Themselves

    From the Boardroom's OCR session: handwritten notes, manifests, and invoices can go straight into your spreadsheets with no typing.

    The workflow (n8n):

    Trigger: Image/PDF dropped in a folder
    Action 1: OCR node reads the text (Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best tested — 5/5 on handwriting)
    Action 2: AI structures it (dates, names, quantities)
    Action 3: Google Sheets row created per document
    Action 4: Human review flag for anything critical

    The lesson from the session: OCR accuracy varies wildly by model — Gemini 2.5 Pro beat GPT-5 badly on handwriting (5/5 vs 2/5). Always add a human check for invoices and IDs, and prompt explicitly for the output format you want.

    Result: a stack of paper becomes a clean spreadsheet, every time, without typing.

    See our n8n workflows →

    CustomGPT templates → · ROI calculator →