Konnectify VS Zapier

Introduction

‍

The iPaaS software market has seen a meteoric rise over the last few years, owing to the growing demand for rapid data deployment and improving business workflows across the organization's tech stack.

The market size for iPaaS is projected to exceed $13.9 billion in 2026, and a handful of software players own a major piece of the pie. Zapier, one of the fast-growing iPaaS products, clocks an annual revenue of $231.8 million — making it a strong contender among other heavyweights like IBM, SAP, MuleSoft, Boomi, and Workato.

But is Zapier the best iPaaS solution out there? Can Zapier help you automate complex workflows? Or does Konnectify — an up-and-coming Zapier alternative — better-suited for your long-term integration needs?

If you are in the market for an affordable and scalable integration platform and are second-guessing Zapier, this blog is for you. We will give you all the information you need to compare Zapier vs. Konnectify and to help you make an informed buying decision.

Zapier vs. Konnectify Main Differences

Like most iPaaS solutions, Zapier offers two important capabilities: app integrations and automation. Zapier lets you connect two or more apps from its app library of 5000+ different apps that it integrates with.

On the automation front, Zapier lets you choose two or more apps, specify the action that you want to trigger from an app, and set the automation rules for the desired action to be carried out in another app. Zapier calls this automation as ‘Zaps.’

From the end users’ point of view, Zapier comes with its fair share of flaws. Zapier was founded in 2011. For a company that had such a headstart to build all kinds of features, Zapier still doesn’t offer a mobile app capability. And that’s a big dent for a company that wants to be synonymous with productivity and efficiency.

It also doesn’t offer an embedded iPaaS solution — the functionality that enables SaaS companies to integrate with other apps natively. 

Zapier also offers an extremely limited free plan — with just 100 tasks per month and zero customer support. On the other hand, Konnectify offers 2000 tasks a month, SSO login, and email support — all in its free plan. Given that Konnectify launched in 2022, it’s already on a path to building powerful capabilities that are useful for the ideal iPaaS users.

Admittedly, Konnectify doesn’t have a massive app directory — yet. But its integration and automation capabilities are as good, if not better, than Zapier. Konnectify has ‘Konnectors’ — the equivalent of Zaps — that lets you integrate between a wide range of apps without writing a single line of code.

Konnectify’s pre-defined, ready-to-use templates let you automate workflows specific to your unique requirements. You can modify the pre-coded templates to configure your processes to your liking. Konnectify makes up for its lack of apps with nifty features like a drag-and-drop Form Builder, a feature that’s lacking in other iPaaS apps like Zapier, Make, or Workato. More on that later.

Konnectify also offers an embedded iPaaS solution at an affordable cost, which means it gives you twice the value for money than tools like Zapier and Cyclr combined. In short, Zapier and Konnectify are strong contenders in their own right.

Key Evaluation Criteria

When you are evaluating two or more SaaS products, it’s always better to inspect them from four critical lenses. These are criteria that most buyers use to gauge a product’s worth thoroughly and objectively:

‍

1. Ease Of Use

It’s important for you to consider the ease of using an iPaaS solution since it determines the product’s user adoption in your organization.

When evaluating for ease of use, ask questions like:

• Are you able to figure out how the product works on your own?
• Do you need a dedicated person to administer the tool?
• How good is the product UI and UX?
• How easy is it to set up the tool?
• Is it a low-code, no-code platform?

2. Product Capabilities

The core capabilities of a product are of top priority for every team buying a software. While different iPaaS platforms offer varying degrees of product features and capabilities, some functionalities should be table stakes. Look for answers to these questions:

• Which market is the app primarily marketed to?
• How many apps does it integrate with?
• What other features does it offer?
• How big is its app marketplace?
• What are their flagship features?

3. Pricing

Budgeting for buying a new software is always a top-of-mind concern for growing startups. An ideal iPaaS tool is affordable for your organization, offers you the highest return on investment (ROI), and is worthy of a long-term subscription.

When considering the price of an iPaaS solution, ask yourself:

• Is the product priced fairly?
• Are there any hidden costs?
• Are the pricing plans easy to understand?
• Is it aimed at startups, SMBs, or enterprises?
• Do they offer free trials or a freemium subscription?
• Do they have flexible monthly and yearly annual plans?

4. Scalability

When you're buying any software, you're not just buying it to solve your pressing needs today. You are investing in a tool that will grow with your future needs.

Therefore, ask yourself:

• How easy is it to add more users to the platform?
• How frequently do they ship new features?
• Does it offer enterprise-level features?
• Are the functionalities customizable?
• Do they have a product roadmap?

Zapier vs. Konnectify In-Depth Comparison

Ease of Use: Zapier

‍

Zapier has come a long way from having a clunky app interface to having an impressively slick design. It has a score of 8.6 (out of 10) in G2’s user ratings.

Zapier’s present-day interface is pretty clean — except for the annoying navigation bar and banner right at the top of the page. Not the best in-app experience, especially if you are a first-time user.

Getting started with Zapier is easy too. You just need to sign up for a free trial using your work email or a Google, Facebook, or Microsoft account. If you find it difficult to get started with Zapier or want a walkthrough, you can request a demo with the sales team.

There are a couple of other downsides to its user experience. If you are signing up with your email, Zapier requires you to enter a work email address. If you are planning to use your personal email to try Zapier, tough luck.

Zapier is great for simple, if/else kind of workflow automation. However, setting up complex automation rules in Zapier can be pretty frustrating, especially for non-tech users.

Ease of Use: Konnectify

Konnectify has an edge over Zapier because its interface is dead simple and intuitive. Since Konnectify is a pretty young product, it doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of buttons or banners in its interface.

Konnectify’s UI is way less noisy and has only four choices in the left panel sidebar: Konnectors, Apps, Event Logs, and Billing.

Konnectify is a truly no-code platform that offers a simple drag-and-drop, click-and-done design which is easy for even non-technical users to understand. It has Freshworks’ Freshchat right within the app in case you need technical support.

Konnectify offers a 7-day free trial with three pricing tiers: Free Forever, Starter, and Growth. You can sign up using your Google, Microsoft, or email address — no restrictions against your personal email.

Product Functionality: Zapier

Between task automation and app integration, Zapier packs a ton of functionalities in its platform. At its very core, Zapier helps you connect two or more apps together to let them talk to each other.

The tool lets you build custom workflows based on logic, conditions, or filters. On the automation front, it offers six simple features:

Zaps

A “Zap” is Zapier’s word for automated workflows. It’s a functionality that lets users connect two apps together. Turning on a Zap requires you to specify a trigger and a desired action, like getting a notification on Slack for an upcoming event in your Google Calendar.

Paths

Paths are Zaps built for conditional workflows that use if/then logic. If you need to automate different email responses to different kinds of customer support queries, for instance, you can use Paths to automate the conditional response.

Filters

Filters are useful when you need to trigger an action only if a desired condition is met. Let’s say you want to automatically create a new lead in your CRM when someone submits a form on your website. But you can create a filter so that only users with a work email are created as contacts.

Schedule

The schedule functionality lets you perform an automation at a specific time, like creating a new Trello card every Monday at 10 a.m.

Formatter

Formatter helps you easily format text data, currency, contact lists, and dates the way you want. This could be useful when copying the mailing list of your Substack subscribers to HubSpot CRM or changing the DD-MM-YYYY to MM-DD-YYYY date format.

Webhooks

The webhooks in Zapier allow users to automate messages between two apps without any coding. For example — every time a customer makes a payment, Stripe uses webhooks to communicate with Quickbooks about the new transaction.

‍

The good news is that Zapier’s features are easy to understand. The bad news — you might find it oversimplified if you are looking to automate advanced, more complex workflows.

Zapier has over 5000 apps in its app directory, although many customers complain that Zapier takes a long time to build new integrations to their app suite. Their technical support is slow and unresponsive — perhaps due to the large volume of integration requests and bug reports they get on a regular basis.

Product Functionality: Konnectify

Konnectify is an up-and-coming integration platform with plenty of useful features in its arsenal, including an embedded iPaaS offering. Konnectify’s product team has added a lot of firepower to its existing capabilities since its launch.

In the past couple of years, Konnectify has already delivered more than 500 public and custom integration applications and acquired over 200+ customers worldwide — including big brands like Freshworks, Zee5, TCS, and ATAG.

As an integration solution provider, Konnectify is segmented into two main categories: iPaaS and KOEMP (short for Konnectify Embedded Marketplace).

As an iPaaS provider, Konnectify offers six core features:

Pre-defined Templates

Konnectify has “Konnector” — the functionality that enables you to create automated workflows. To make it easy for you to build automated processes, Konnectify offers an exhaustive list of ready-to-use and pre-defined templates that you can choose from or modify to suit your use cases.

Of course, you can also use Konnector to create customer workflows from scratch.

Rule Engine

Konnectify's Rule Engine lets you create conditional logic and build custom protocols for handling data between two or more workflows. It lets you implement factors, filters, and transformations passing through your automation.

Smart Forms

This is a functionality where Konnectify outshines Zappier. Konnectify’s drag-and-drop Smart Forms lets you build custom forms from a wide range of elements like text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, file uploads, etc.

Once the form is ready, you can embed it in your CRM, CMS, or other customer-facing touchpoint to improve your lead generation or customer support experience. No need to buy a new form builder at an additional cost.

Zapier integrates with a handful of form builders like Google Forms, Jotform, and Typeform — but it doesn’t have a form builder feature of its own. You either have to use free form builders like Google Forms with limited capabilities or pay extra to embed a third-party form builder app.

Parse Engine

Konnectify’s Parse Engine helps you retrieve specific data such as email, SMS, or web form submissions from a massive database in an application.

Once you enter the data that you want to retrieve from an app, the Parse Engine runs a query within the app and extracts the information in no time. You can use the parsed data in your workflows to trigger events or perform specific actions.

Lookups

In the array of data integration features offered by Konnectify, the "Lookups" function stands out as a vital component. This functionality facilitates the precise exploration of designated data elements within both source and target applications, based on specific criteria. Beyond its search capabilities, Lookups play a pivotal role in Konnectify by enabling the seamless integration of the extracted data. This integrated data can subsequently be harnessed to execute targeted actions through the platform's Konnectors.

Webhooks

Konnectify's robust engine possesses the advanced capability to both send and receive webhook requests. This empowers you to seamlessly gather real-time data from any application you opt for. Furthermore, the engine enables you to dispatch outbound webhook post requests effortlessly.

Konnectify Embedded Marketplace 

Unlike many iPaaS vendors that stop at providing app integration capabilities, Konnectify also has its own embedded integration marketplace — Konnectify Embedded Marketplace or KOEMP. Konnecity’s rationale behind KOEMP is simple: With the growing popularity of app marketplaces, fast-growing businesses today want native integrations.

In today’s age, building a tech product without integration capabilities is like building a resort on an isolated island and expecting people in hordes — it’s a fool’s errand. Brands want to offer their customers a unified experience across multiple adjacent products and API-based integrations prove to be time-consuming, expensive, and complicated.

As an alternative, more and more businesses want to build deep product integrations across their industry and an app marketplace of their own — and KOEMP helps them achieve that.

Most of the embedded integration marketplaces are either expensive or come with complex coding requirements. KOEMP tackles these problems head-on and offers a zero-code app development model at an affordable cost.

KOEMP’s white-label marketplace integration service lets you build native integration with other products, create your own app directory, and customize it to match your brand’s UI.

Despite its size and financial success, Zapier doesn’t have an embedded marketplace offering in its platform. With its iPaaS capabilities combined with an embedded integration marketplace, Konnectify’s end-to-end integration platform offers you a higher return on investment.

As a fast-growing tech startup, Konnectify also takes an agile approach to developing better product capabilities and responding to customer queries. The product team adds new apps and integrations to its platform based on customer requests and ships the functionalities live within less than three days. This is yet another area where Konnectify outshines Zapier.

"Our platform goes beyond mere application connections; it's about linking potentials. We're not solely streamlining workflows; we're magnifying prospects."

- Karthik Veluswamy, Founder & CEO, Konnectify

Pricing: Zapier

Zapier has five different pricing tiers — ranging from a forever free plan to a Company plan (for enterprises). With just 100 tasks a month, single-step Zaps, and no code — the Free plan feels extremely limiting in its offerings. And its paid plans are on the higher side given their restrictive nature.

The paid plans start from $19.99 a month and offer only 750 tasks plus a few more additional features than the Free plan. Zapier caps the number of tasks to 2000 a month even if you upgrade to a higher plan. The other alternative is to pay extra to add more tasks to your plan.

Honestly, Zapier’s high price doesn’t justify the value that each of its plans offers — and that’s a gripe many customers have about its cost. If you comb through G2 user reviews for Zapier, you will find quite a few users complaining about its high cost in their answer to G2’s question: What do you dislike about Zapier?

“Zapier needs a more affordable pricing plan for businesses operating in developing countries.”

- David Suescun, CEO/Founder, Synergetic DEV

“I don´t really like the pricing based in task.”

- Camilo Honorato, Marketing Analyst, Frogmi

“I don’t like Zapier’s price, free tier restriction, and few endpoints for tools like Notion.”

- Ivan Donchenko, CEO, company unknown

Zapier is a high-maintenance tool if you’re looking for an app integration software that you can stick to for long term. But if you can afford Zapier’s plans, you can trial most of its paid plans free for 14 days, except its Company plan.

Pricing: Konnectify

Konnectify wins the pricing round hands-down. And not just because it’s priced more reasonably but also because it packs a lot of punch in its value offerings.

Konnectify has three pricing plans: Free, Startup, and Growth. It’s a lot less information to process and much less intimidating to upgrade.

The free forever plan allows you to work with 2000 tasks a month — the equivalent of Zapier’s $69 a month subscription! The Free plan also offers many other functionalities such as email support, event logs, lookups, and conditional workflows — most things you won’t get in Zapier’s free version.

The Startup plan is priced at $14.99 a month and the Growth plan is priced at $39.99 a month respectively. You can also trial the Startup and Growth plan free for seven days.

The paid plans are fairly priced to reflect the value offering that you would get out of them. For instance, the Startup plan gives you 7500 tasks a month while the Growth plan offers 25K tasks a month — with an option to buy more tasks at an extra cost.

With most of the leading iPaaS platforms as costly — if not costlier — as Zapier, it’s a no-brainer for you to choose Konnectify as your long-term app integration partner.

Scalability: Zapier

By its own admission, Zapier uses a pretty standard tech stack to power its platform. It uses React, Babel, and CodeMirror for frontend development. Python and Django for the backend. MySQL and AWS Redshift for processing data. And so on. Zapier is built on the shoulders of giants and has a solid engineering architecture.

And that begs the million-dollar question: Is Zapier really scalable?

Sure, you can use Zapier as a backend engine to build a SaaS app if you want. But if you look at the big picture and factor in the limitations, scalability becomes an issue with Zapier.

Zapier users have a litany of charges against the platform. The Zaps don’t work when you want them to, the platform lacks QC on how to build apps, and getting it to work beyond if-then scenarios is a nightmare you don’t want.

Besides its lack of platform scalability beyond a certain point, Zapier’s limited offerings in its subscription plans and high cost are also hindrances to long-term scalability. You would be paying a bomb (an extra $189 a month), for example, if you had to upgrade to 25000 tasks a month when your requirements grow.

Scalability: Konnectify

Unlike other platforms like Zapier, where product companies are required to independently develop their applications to be listed on the marketplace, Konnectify streamlines this process significantly. In the case of Konnectify, the responsibility of listing an app within their app ecosystem is handled entirely by their team. This eliminates the need for product companies or customers to engage in the intricate development process. All that is necessary is for the concerned parties to send an email to Konnectify, and from that point onward, Konnectify takes on the complete task of managing the process.

Despite its small size and still-emerging product capabilities, Konnectify offers a lot of scalability potential. To start with, scaling the tasks per month is not an issue with Konnectify.

If your business needs to automate 80000 tasks a month, it would still cost you under $129.98. This makes it easy (and affordable) for you to add new seats/users to a plan without breaking the bank.

In theory, Konnectify doesn’t offer an enterprise plan. But the value it packs in its paid plans, the customizations it offers for the end users, and the rate at which they are building new apps and capabilities — all make Konnectify a reliable enterprise-ready iPaaS vendor.

If you were to chart a Value Matrix based on pricing and features, Zapier pales in comparison to Konnectify. And it shows in how customers talk about Konnectify.

The Verdict

Buying a B2B SaaS app is often a tricky job — you mostly fall for a product’s hype and get locked into an annual (or worse, multi-year) contract. The irony is that it’s even more difficult to do your own research, trial a product, and make an informed decision.

There’s no denying that Zapier has built an enviable brand for itself and has earned itself a leading position in the iPaaS market. But all that glitters is not gold and Zapier has a lot of work to do to make itself an affordable, reliable, and scalable integration tool.

In contrast, Konnectify is little-known and obscure in its branding. But it offers solid capabilities at an affordable cost that justifies the ROI.

Most importantly, its speed of execution is its competitive edge against iPaaS incumbents like Zapier. Konnectify listens to its customers and goes the extra mile in adding new apps and relevant capabilities to its platform.

If you want to justify your software investment and find an integration partner that grows with your business, choose Konnectify over Zapier. Give it a try for free.

‍