How to Setup your Zapier Account - Zapier Beginners Guide

Welcome to the world of Digital Automation! It’s an exciting and emerging technology, once the domain of huge corporations, now available to everyone. Whether you’re a small retailer, multi-city growing business, or 1,000-person multinational, you can benefit from this incredible automation movement.

What is digital automation?

Digital automation is utilising online tools and software to run tasks and actions automatically. For example, rather than copying new client data into a spreadsheet each time they send you an email, you can automatically extract key data from the email and then sync it to your sales database, marketing database, accounting tool, and many others. It can also trigger follow-up actions as well, such as the creation of accounts or reports for team heads. That means that you can spend time on higher-value tasks to grow your business and less time distracted with small, straightforward, repetitive (and annoying) tasks. The same applies to your team and business. More time means a competitive advantage in your market or more time to spend doing things you enjoy outside of the office.

What is Zapier?

Zapier is an online platform that helps you connect and set rules for all your digital software. It uses APIs, which are like secure gateways between different websites, to communicate and send instructions. There are a few similar platforms out there, but Zapier is the best at this and as a result, is growing rapidly.

How do I set up Zapier for my business?

Setting up Zapier is super easy as it’s designed to be used by less-technical people. There is no coding involved and can be done in just a few minutes. You can set up a new account without a credit card and get 14-days free at the Professional tier level at no cost. Then later you can decide if you want to pay or stay at the free tier level. I’ve outlined the steps below and also made a quick video for those that prefer to watch rather than read.

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STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1. Go to zapier.com and create an account.

2. Sign up with your email or Google/Facebook account.

3. In the next screen, select your role in your company

4. Then select some apps you commonly use (this will help Zapier suggest some example workflows)

Zapier Tier Levels and Pricing

Creating an account is free and it comes with a 14-day trial of the professional tier so you can explore all the functionality.

The different pricing plans of Zapier includes the following functionalities:

• Free (US$0/month) - Allows you to test Zapier with up to five 2-step zaps.

• Starter (US$25/month) - Starter tier is fine for most small businesses when they start using Zapier as it allows up to 20 multi-step workflows/zaps (including 1,000 tasks), and almost all functionality.

• Professional (US$62.50/month) - Professional tier will be necessary as your business starts to grow and increase the amount of automation. It allows up to 50 multi-step workflows/zaps (including 3,000 tasks), which will run more frequently. You can also utilise 'Autoreplay' (zaps re-run automatically if there is an error related to an integration) and Paths (can split actions depending on the results of different steps).

• Professional Plus (US$156.25/month) - This is the same as Professional tier but with up to 125 workflows/zaps (including 10,000 tasks).

Then you also have some additional tiers for companies that have more significant use of Zapier. 

• Team (US$312.50/month) - Allows unlimited workflows/zaps (including 50,000 tasks) and a few collaboration features such as members of a team, shared folders and ability to control permissions.
  

• Company (US$750/month) - The same as Team but with 100,000 tasks per month and some other useful features for companies like Single Sign-on and Data Retention.
  

For most companies and organisations the Starter tier will be perfect for you as it’s very affordable but comes with most of the features. Then in time when your business is saving money and growing, you can upgrade as needed.

Now you’ve created your account, let’s go ahead and create your first zap. Continue to the next article and video to see how!