Pipedream vs Zapier vs Relay.app: Which one is better? (2024)

So, it has all come down to Pipedream vs Zapier vs Relay.app - all three amazing solutions can significantly improve your automation game - but here’s the question:

Which workflow automation tool is the best for your specific goals and needs?

We understand how crucial it is to find a platform whose capabilities are tailored to your pain points and requirements.

Also, we are aware that Relay.app isn’t everyone’s ideal choice.

In this article, we won’t try to convince you to choose our solution at all costs. We’ll just provide relevant and unbiased information on all three tools and let you decide for yourself.

In this comprehensive review, we’ll deep-dive into every solution’s:

Key features
Integrations
Pricing structure
User experience

In a nutshell, our research showed that:

Relay.app is the ideal pick if you want to get all the benefits of streamlining your operations while keeping human judgment & creativity an essential part of automation.
Pipedream is a low-code solution built for developers looking to boost their productivity via automation.
Zapier is the perfect platform for users looking for a user-friendly solution with many integrations.

Let’s begin by dissecting each platform’s key features.

👀 Not a fan of reading lengthy articles? Run 100 free automations with Relay.app and see what it can do firsthand.

Features - Relay.app vs Pipedream vs Zapier

Each platform provides a unique user experience thanks to its distinct features and capabilities, which we’ll review here.

We’ll start by breaking down the features that set Relay.app apart from both Pipedream and Zapier.

Relay.app Features

Relay.app differs from other workflow automation tools because it combines human insight, creativity, and teamwork with powerful automation capabilities and a highly intuitive interface ⤵️

The features that allow Relay.app to provide its customers with the best of both worlds include:

Human-in-the-Loop
One-Click AI
Collaborative Workflows

1. Human-in-the-Loop

Automation is a truly amazing thing.

By automating your business and other processes, you save time on repetitive tasks, increase overall productivity, and experience significant efficiency gains.

At the same time, however, you lose on several vital things - human precision, accountability, judgment, creative thinking, etc., as those traits remain beyond any software’s reach, no matter how sophisticated.

Relay.app’s Human-in-the-Loop feature solves this conundrum by letting you keep a human involved in your operations whenever needed while simultaneously automating and streamlining even the most complex workflows.

The magic comes when Relay.app lets you combine time-saving automations and human personalization.

For example, you can ask someone on your to write personalized welcome emails once tasks are automatically created in Asana when new customers are added to Mailchimp 👇

Other examples include:

Task approvals.

Let senior team members review and approve tasks before the automation continues. For example, you could have a manager approve a contract draft once it’s been automatically created as part of the workflow. After the approval, the workflow sends the DocuSign to the customer and waits for completion.

Human decisions.

Although Relay.app’s conditional logic capabilities allow for creating highly complex automations, in some cases, you’ll want a human to make the final decision instead of leaving it to automation. This is perfect for matters requiring contextual insight and understanding, such as customer support requests, where a support rep will decide whether to email the customer or create a support ticket in Zendesk.

Task completion.

Set up tasks and assign them to appropriate team members at any part of the workflow, and the automation will pause until the task is completed. For instance, after a deal is closed according to a CRM update, the sales manager is assigned a Task to create a contract draft. Once the manager drafts the contract, the workflow continues, and the document is shared with the other parties' legal counsel for review.

Manual data input.

A nifty option for all the times you need a pinch of emotional intelligence or original human insights. Use it to personalize email chains (e.g., have a team member manually edit headers or the body of the email for each customer), add personal notes and remarks to shared content, etc.

Why is the Human-in-the-Loop Feature Important?

If you’ve ever used workflow automation tools before, you know how frustrating it can be to:

Monitor automations to ensure everything is running as it should.
Bother with manually pausing workflows to add changes when needed.
Struggle with personalizing complex workflows, etc.

Human-in-the-Loop lets you configure workflows without compromising on customer experience, allowing you to strike the right balance between operational speed and human contextual awareness.

Result? Get critical human inputs without disrupting or manually pausing workflows.

Expect significant improvements in overall efficiency and more customer wins.

Here’s a simple real-life example to help you get a better idea of this feature’s perks 👇

2. One-Click AI

AI is the next big thing in workflow automation, and for a good reason - it can make it even faster, easier to deploy, and more efficient.

However, getting AI to work as needed isn’t necessarily the easiest thing for non-technical teams.

Figuring out prompts is time-consuming and frustrating, as it requires employing the good, old, trial-and-error method.

With Relay.app’s pre-built contextual AI features, you can harness the full power of AI with a single click.

It allows for operations like:

Summarizing different content (e.g., meeting notes, Notion guides, etc.)
Generating in-context sentences and entire paragraphs to create various content even faster.
Extracting relevant data from various sources such as emails, notes, etc.

What’s more, these AI-driven features can also help you detect errors in workflows and fix them without any coding skills.

3. Collaborative Workflows

Some projects can be completed in silos. Others require continuous teamwork.

Relay.app’s got options for both types of users and projects, enabling you to manage individual and collaborative workflows with equal ease and efficacy.

With dynamic role assignments, you can assign tasks to team members without disrupting the automated flow.

For example, you can automate and streamline processes such as:

Forwarding customer support requests to the appropriate representative.
Getting approval from specific decision-makers before sending contracts to clients.
Assigning tasks to the most adequate Account Manager and more.

This way, the most competent person will handle each workflow step and task while ensuring that the entire team is on the same page.

Pipedream Features

Pipedream is a low-code automation and app integration platform designed for developers.

Since they’re geared toward its target users, Pipedream’s features are quite specific and require technical knowledge, including:

1. Access to npm & PyPI packages.

This is a dream feature for developers using JavaScript and Python, as it enables using most of npm's 400,000+ packages (for all the non-developers here, npm is a package manager for JavaScript), allowing advanced developers to become full-stack engineers with a single platform.

2. Workflow templates. Pipedream includes a solid library of pre-built automation templates if you don’t want to build automations from scratch.

Thanks to templates, users can deploy the needed automation in minutes. These templates are also based on community contributions, meaning every user can share their custom code for various automation processes.

3. AI-powered workflow builder. Based on conversational AI models, this feature allows users to build custom workflows and manage complex data automation by explaining what they want to do in plain English.

Zapier Features

Zapier pioneered workflow automation and is known for its user-friendly interface, minimal learning curve, and versatile use cases.

Several features are contributing to Zapier’s popularity:

1. A visual workflow builder. Zapier is a no-code platform like Relay.app. It has an equally intuitive visual workflow builder that allows users to create custom workflows easily via a drag-and-drop interface.

2. Tables and Interfaces. Tables allow for collecting, sorting, storing, and pulling data from various apps and sources through a single platform.

Interfaces enable building simpler apps, custom dashboards, webpages, custom forms, etc. Keep in mind, though, that Zapier’s automation plans provide access only to the basic features of these tools.

3. AI assistant. Similarly to Pipedream, Zapier also has an AI-powered automation assistant that allows users to create simple and complex workflows by explaining what they need in natural language.

4. A library of 70+ ready-made automation templates. It includes ready-made automations, ranging from basic tasks to custom logic-based workflows. Enjoy the benefits of event-driven automation even if you’re not a workflow automation expert.

Integrations - Relay.app vs Zapier vs Pipedream

Relay.app

Relay.app currently integrates with a wide range of apps, including those that most users need for their daily tasks, such as:

Apollo
Google Suite
Airtable
Notion
Slack, etc.

While Relay.app doesn’t have as many integrations as Zapier, our team is dedicated to frequently adding new apps, at the same time ensuring that all the existing integrations are robust and easy to deploy and support across workflows.

Pipedream

Pipedream supports about 2,000 different apps, with new ones being added regularly.

Some of its notable integrations include business apps such as Stripe and WooComerce,as well as those designed for developers, such as Node, Firebase Admin SDK, etc.

If the app you need isn’t included in Pipedream’s library, you can create custom integrations.

Zapier

Zapier is a market leader in integrations, with a library of over 7,000 apps that includes everything an average user may need.

However, keep in mind that not all integrations work equally well. The popular and widely used apps are usually better integrated and supported than some more obscure ones.

Integrations in a nutshell

If your focus is on the number of integrations first and foremost, Zapier is the winner in this category, boasting the largest integration library.

Relay.app, on the other hand, doesn’t have as many integrations, but all the apps it does support work seamlessly across levels and workflows.

Finally, Pipedream has a decent range of integrations, emphasizing developer-designated apps.