Zapier, n8n, or Make? A Hong Kong SME Owner's Guide to AI Workflow Automation

It is Monday morning. A new customer enquiry arrives on your business WhatsApp at 8 AM asking about service packages. A second message lands in your email inbox: a quote request from a corporate client. At the same time, a payment clears through your accounting software and needs to be matched to an invoice. Without automation, a staff member handles each task manually, opening three different applications, typing replies, copying data, and updating records. With the right workflow automation tool, all three events trigger an automatic chain of responses within seconds, even while you are still commuting to the office.

The question most Hong Kong business owners arrive at is not whether to automate. It is which tool to use. Three platforms dominate the conversation: Zapier, n8n, and Make (formerly Integromat). They solve the same core problem but are designed for very different businesses, budgets, and technical comfort levels. This guide explains what each does, how they compare on the metrics that matter to an SME, and how to decide which one belongs in your business right now.

What Is AI Workflow Automation?

Workflow automation means linking separate software tools so that an event in one application automatically causes a response in one or more others. The AI layer adds intelligence to these connections: instead of rigid if-then rules, modern platforms can interpret unstructured data — the subject line of an email, the sentiment of a customer message, the category of a product return — and route information accordingly.

For a Hong Kong SME owner, this translates into concrete time savings. A customer fills in your website contact form. Within five seconds: your CRM creates a new lead record, your email service dispatches a personalised acknowledgement, your team receives a WhatsApp notification, and a new row appears in your tracking spreadsheet. A task that previously required five minutes of manual work now completes in five seconds, every time, regardless of whether anyone is at their keyboard.

The three tools that make this accessible to non-technical business owners are Zapier, n8n, and Make. Each takes a different approach to the same problem.

What Is Zapier and How Does It Work?

Zapier launched in 2011 and has since become the default starting point for automation among small businesses globally. Its core mechanic is straightforward: a Zap begins with a trigger (an event that happens in one app) and executes one or more actions in other apps. A typical example: when a new form submission arrives in Typeform, add a row to Google Sheets and send a follow-up email via Gmail.

The platform connects over 7,000 applications. For Hong Kong SMEs, this includes native integrations with tools common in the local business environment: WhatsApp Business API partners, Xero, FreshBooks, Shopify, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and hundreds more. Most Zaps can be configured and live within 30 minutes using the step-by-step guided interface, which walks you through selecting the trigger app, the trigger event, the action app, and the action to execute.

Zapier charges per task — each action step executed counts as one task. The free plan provides 100 tasks per month and supports only single-step Zaps. Multi-step automations require a paid subscription starting at USD 19.99 per month for 750 tasks, scaling to USD 49 per month for 2,000 tasks. For a retail business processing 50 orders per day with a three-step automation per order, monthly task consumption reaches roughly 4,500 — requiring at minimum a professional-tier plan.

Zapier is best suited for: Business owners who need automation operational as quickly as possible, who have no coding background, and who are comfortable with a monthly subscription model. If speed of deployment is your priority, Zapier is the clearest starting point.

What Is n8n and How Does It Work?

n8n occupies a different market position. It was designed for teams that need deeper control over their data and workflow logic: the ability to write JavaScript inside automation steps, handle complex data transformations, branch workflows based on multiple conditions, and connect to any system that exposes an API, even if no native integration exists.

Because n8n is open-source, you can download and run it on your own server at no software cost. This matters significantly for Hong Kong businesses in regulated industries. Financial services firms, healthcare providers, and legal practices that require all customer data to remain within their own infrastructure — rather than on a third-party cloud server overseas — will find n8n self-hosted to be the only viable option among these three tools. The cloud-hosted version for businesses that prefer managed infrastructure starts at USD 24 per month.

The interface is a node-based canvas. You drag workflow nodes onto a visual surface and connect them with lines — each node representing one processing step. Unlike Zapier's guided question-and-answer setup, n8n expects familiarity with API concepts, authentication methods, and JSON data structures. Native integrations cover over 400 applications; any additional system can be connected via the built-in HTTP request node.

n8n is best suited for: Businesses with an in-house IT team member or technical co-founder who can handle the initial configuration, particularly where data privacy requirements are strict or where automation logic exceeds what drag-and-drop platforms can support.

What Is Make and How Does It Work?

Make was rebranded from Integromat in 2022. It occupies a valuable middle ground: more capable than Zapier when workflows involve complex branching logic, and more accessible than n8n for business owners who are not developers.

Make calls its automations "scenarios." On the visual canvas, you connect coloured application icons representing each processing step. Make's defining advantage over Zapier is its native support for routing: sending different data down different processing paths based on conditions. An e-commerce operation can route a VIP customer order through one sequence of actions and a standard order through another, all within a single scenario. Zapier can approximate this, but Make handles it more elegantly and at a lower cost per execution.

Make's pricing is operations-based rather than task-based. One operation equals one module bundle executed during a scenario run. The free plan provides 1,000 operations per month. Paid plans start at USD 9 per month for 10,000 operations, a considerably lower entry point than Zapier for businesses with moderate automation volume. Make connects natively to over 1,500 applications, with HTTP and webhook modules enabling connections to custom APIs.

Make is best suited for: Business owners who have outgrown Zapier's linear logic, need conditional routing or data transformation, and want a lower monthly cost without taking on the technical complexity of self-hosting n8n.

Zapier vs n8n vs Make: A Direct Comparison

Which Tool Is Right for Your Hong Kong SME?

The decision comes down to three practical factors: your team's technical skill level, your monthly budget, and how your business handles sensitive data.

For a restaurant owner, a retail shop manager, or a service business operator with no coding background, Zapier is the clearest starting point. The setup process is guided, the documentation is extensive, and the 7,000-app integration library means your existing tools are almost certainly covered. Critically, when something goes wrong — and eventually something will — Zapier's customer support is the most accessible of the three.

For a property agency, insurance broker, or logistics coordinator whose workflows involve multiple conditional paths — routing enquiries by district, client tier, or deal value — Make handles this branching logic more cleanly than Zapier and at a fraction of the cost. A workflow that costs USD 49 per month on Zapier might run for USD 9 per month on Make at the same volume. The interface requires slightly more learning time, but the investment repays itself quickly.

For a law firm, medical practice, fintech company, or any business where customer data must remain within a specific jurisdiction, n8n self-hosted is the only option on this list that delivers on that requirement. You run the software on your own server in Hong Kong, and your data never passes through a third-party cloud. The configuration requires technical knowledge, but for the right business type, the compliance value alone justifies the investment.

What Most Business Owners Get Wrong About Automation

The first misconception is that automation requires a significant upfront investment. For straightforward use cases — connecting two or three apps in a linear sequence — Zapier and Make can be operational within a single working day at no cost on their free tiers. Complexity ceilings exist, but most small businesses never approach them.

The second misconception is treating automation as a technology project. It is a business decision. The right trigger for building an automation is not "we now have access to a platform." It is "this task consumes three hours per week, the steps are always the same, and it does not require human judgment to complete." When both conditions are met, any of these three tools will return its cost within the first billing cycle.

The third misconception is that automation eliminates jobs. The pattern that consistently emerges among Hong Kong SMEs is the reverse: the team member who previously spent three hours on data entry now spends three hours on customer relationships, problem-solving, or revenue-generating work. Automation redirects human effort. It rarely eliminates it.

How to Start Your First Automation This Week

The most effective first automation is almost always a notification workflow. When something happens in App A, send a message in App B. For a retail business: when a new Shopify order arrives, send a WhatsApp notification to the manager on duty. For a service business: when a client completes the booking form, add their details to Google Sheets and send an email summary. No conditional logic, no branching — just a reliable connection between two tools.

Once that runs without issue for two weeks, add a second action to the same trigger. You now have a three-step automation handling what previously required manual effort. After 30 days, review which repetitive tasks still consume your team's time and build the next automation around those. The businesses that extract the most value from these platforms are consistently the ones that built three tight, reliable automations, let them run for 90 days, measured the hours saved, and then decided what to build next.

Workflow automation is one layer of a broader shift toward AI-powered business operations. The tools are more accessible and affordable than at any point in their history. The question for every Hong Kong SME owner is not whether automation belongs in their business. It is which task to start with.

Now that you understand what separates Zapier, n8n, and Make, the next step is finding the right AI solution for your specific workflow. The UD team will walk you through it step by step — from identifying where automation saves you the most time, to deploying a solution that runs reliably from day one.