Used For

• +**You're copying form submissions to Google Sheets and Slack 20 times a day** → Zapier does it instantly every time someone submits, saves you 2 hours daily
• +**Your sales team misses hot leads buried in email** → New emails from your contact form automatically create CRM records and Slack alerts
• +**You're manually posting social media updates across 5 platforms** → Write once in Google Sheets, auto-posts everywhere on schedule
• +AI Copilot builds workflows from plain English - just describe what you want and it connects the apps
• +Tables store data for free and don't count against your task limits

Best For

• >You're manually moving data between apps for hours every week
• >Your team keeps forgetting to update spreadsheets and CRM records
• >You need apps to work together but have zero coding skills

Not For

• -Teams under 5 people with simple needs — the free tier runs out fast and paid plans are overkill
• -High-volume operations processing 10,000+ tasks monthly — you'll hit expensive overages quickly
• -Enterprises needing instant responses — the 15-minute polling delay on cheaper plans kills real-time workflows

Pairs With

• *Google Sheets (where your data ends up because it's the universal inbox everyone understands)
• *Slack (to get instant notifications when automations trigger or fail)
• *Gmail (the most common trigger — new emails kick off half of all workflows)
• *Salesforce or HubSpot (where leads from forms automatically become proper CRM records)
• *Typeform or Google Forms (to capture leads that Zapier immediately routes everywhere)
• *Dropbox or Google Drive (where files get auto-organized from email attachments)
• *Trello or Asana (where support emails become task cards without manual entry)

The Catch

• !Multi-step automations count as multiple tasks, so your 750 monthly tasks disappear faster than you think
• !The 15-minute delay on lower plans means 'instant' notifications arrive a quarter-hour late
• !Premium app integrations like Salesforce require Professional plans — that $20 starter price jumps to $50+ real quick

Bottom Line

The duct tape of the internet — connects 7,000+ apps so you stop being a human copy-paste machine.