Three platforms dominate the Australian automation market. Each has a different philosophy, pricing model, and ideal use case. Here's how to choose — without the vendor bias.
I build on all three of these platforms for LeadLasso clients. Each one is the right choice in some situations and the wrong choice in others. Here's the honest breakdown.
The most well-known automation platform. Easiest to get started with, most integrations, but most expensive at scale — and the least powerful for complex logic.
The visual workflow builder that balances power and accessibility. The platform LeadLasso uses most for SMB clients — it handles complex logic without requiring code, and pricing is much more reasonable at scale.
Open source and self-hostable, n8n offers maximum flexibility and data sovereignty — at the cost of requiring technical capability to deploy and maintain.
For most Australian SMBs: start with Make.com. It has the right balance of capability, pricing, and manageability for the automations that deliver the fastest ROI — lead capture, CRM integration, follow-up sequences, and document processing.
For businesses with specific data sovereignty requirements — healthcare, legal, or finance — n8n self-hosted is worth the additional setup complexity. For simple, low-volume automations where a non-technical team member needs to make changes without training, Zapier's simplicity may justify the cost premium.
The platform question is genuinely secondary to the question of what you need to automate and why. That's what the AI Success Assessment is for.