Your Facebook leads land in a spreadsheet nobody checks. Your website form emails go to an inbox nobody watches on weekends. Your missed-call texts live in a different app from your customer list. Every tool works; none of them talk to each other. That's the job of the automation glue — Zapier or Make — and picking the wrong one means rebuilding every workflow in a year.
Start with the complete missed-call text-back guide (Pillar A) and speed to lead for why instant lead routing matters. This post is the plumbing between the tools — and it sits inside the 8-system framework, alongside the other pillar guides: estimate follow-up, reviews, and scheduling.
What the "automation glue" actually does
Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat) do the same core job: when something happens in Tool A, do something in Tool B — automatically. For a contractor, the workflows that matter are:
- New Facebook lead → instant text + owner notification. The speed-to-lead play: a lead that waits in a spreadsheet is a lead that hires your competitor.
- New website form → create contact + notify + start follow-up. One submission fans out to every system that needs it.
- New Google review → log it + notify the owner. So you can respond fast (89% of consumers expect responses — BrightLocal 2026).
- Missed call → log to CRM + notify. The backup when your texting tool's native logging isn't enough.
Zapier: the simple, expensive default
- Easiest to learn. If you can use a smartphone, you can build a Zapier workflow in an afternoon. The interface is the friendliest in the category.
- Most integrations. The largest app directory — if a tool connects to anything, it connects to Zapier.
- The free tier is a teaser. Free plans are tightly limited (around 100 tasks/month, single-step workflows on the free plan historically). A shop doing real lead volume outgrows free fast — and paid tiers scale with task count, which punishes high-volume shops.
- Multi-step logic costs more. Anything beyond "when X, do Y" — filters, branching, delays — pushes you up the pricing ladder.
Make: the powerful, cheaper alternative
- More power per dollar. Make's visual scenario builder handles branching, filters, routers, and error handling that Zapier reserves for higher tiers — at lower price points.
- Generous free tier. Make's free plan historically offers far more operations per month than Zapier's free tier — enough for a small shop's core workflows (lead routing, notifications) at $0.
- Steeper learning curve. The visual builder is powerful but less hand-holdy. Budget a weekend of learning, or one afternoon with someone who's done it.
- Smaller app directory. Covers all the major tools (Facebook, Google Sheets, Gmail, most CRMs) but occasionally lacks the obscure integration Zapier has.
The honest pick (by shop profile)
- Pick Make if: you're cost-conscious, your workflows need branching logic (triage, routing), or you want the free tier to actually cover real work. This is most 1–5 truck shops.
- Pick Zapier if: you need an obscure integration only Zapier has, you want the absolute simplest builder, or someone on your team already knows it. The premium is a convenience tax — sometimes worth paying.
- Pick neither yet if: your core tools already connect natively. Check first — many field-service software platforms (field-service software = field service management software) and GoHighLevel have built-in integrations that make the glue unnecessary. The "check what you own first" audit walks through this.
Three workflows to build first (either tool)
Don't automate everything. Build these three, in order:
- Facebook/website lead → instant owner text. Trigger: new lead. Actions: text the owner the lead details, create the contact in your CRM, send the instant auto-response. Target: under 60 seconds from submission to your pocket. (The MIT/Oldroyd research: 5-minute response makes you 21x more likely to qualify the lead — HBR 2011.)
- Missed call → CRM log + notification. Trigger: missed call (via your call tracking or texting tool). Actions: create/update the contact, notify the owner with the number. The safety net under the safety net.
- New Google review → notification. Trigger: new review. Action: text/email the owner. So the response goes out the same day, not next month.
Each of these is a 30-minute build in either tool. Together they're the nervous system of Pillar A.
Cost modeling: what you'll actually pay at real volumes
The free tiers are real, but let's model what happens when the shop grows — because the pricing models punish different things:
- At ~50 leads/month: both tools likely stay free. A handful of workflows (lead routing, notifications, review alerts) fit comfortably in either free tier. Winner: tie — pick on features, not price.
- At ~200 leads/month with multi-step workflows: Zapier's task-based pricing starts biting — every step of every workflow counts as tasks, and 200 leads × 4 steps × retries adds up fast. Make's operations-based pricing stretches further at the same volume. Winner: Make, usually by a wide margin.
- At ~500+ leads/month: you're on a paid tier either way. Make's paid tiers still typically cost less for equivalent volume — but at this point, ask whether the workflows should live natively in your CRM/field-service software instead. Five hundred leads a month routed through a third-party glue tool is a dependency worth questioning.
- The hidden cost driver: polling intervals. Free/low tiers check for new data every 15 minutes; paid tiers check every 1–5 minutes. For speed-to-lead workflows, the 15-minute poll defeats the purpose — a "free" workflow that responds in 15 minutes isn't a speed system. Budget the paid tier for anything time-sensitive, or use webhooks (instant triggers) where the tools support them.
Bottom line: model on your lead volume and your speed requirements, not the advertised free tier. The free tier is for learning; production speed-to-lead usually needs a paid plan on either tool.
The maintenance nobody mentions
- Workflows break when tools change. A Facebook permissions update, a CRM field rename — and your lead routing silently stops. Check workflow run histories monthly.
- Document what each workflow does. One page per workflow: trigger, actions, what "working" looks like. When it breaks at 9pm, future-you will be grateful.
- Start with the tool's native options. Every workflow you build in Zapier/Make is a workflow you maintain. If the native integration exists, use it.
Related guides in this series
For the lead-routing strategy these workflows serve, read new lead notifications and Facebook lead ads auto-response. For the $0 version of all of this, the $0 automation stack shows what's achievable free. And the framework is the 8-system framework.