https://zapier.com/blog A blog about productivity, workflow automation, company building and how to get things done with less work. Sun, 16 Aug 2026 19:57:07 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/automate-calendly I have sent probably four hundred emails in my life that just said some version of "does 2pm Thursday work for you?" Calendly exists so none of us has to do that anymore. Invitees see your real availability and pick a slot without the back and forth. That solves the booking problem. It doesn't solve everything else that comes with a new meeting, like syncing it to your team's calendar or logging the invitee in your CRM. That's where a Zap—our word for Zapier's automated workflows—comes in. Conne Jack Beaudoin Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/automate-calendly https://zapier.com/blog/how-does-chatgpt-work ChatGPT started as a chatbot and tech demo for OpenAI's large language models (LLMs). It's now something closer to a general-purpose AI platform—one that can search the web, generate images, write code, reason through complex problems, and execute multi-step actions across apps. As OpenAI has kept pushing ChatGPT forward with new models and features, a question that sounds simple has gotten surprisingly hard to answer: How does ChatGPT work?  Well, I'm going to do my best to answer. Table of con Harry Guinness Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-does-chatgpt-work https://zapier.com/blog/ai-in-worflow-automation My in-laws have wired every light in their house to Alexa. But no one can ever remember if they're sitting in the "living room" or the "family room," so three commands and one accidental playlist later, someone always ends up just leaning over and hitting the light switch. A lot of AI workflows are built the same way—for example, someone calls a model to check if a number is above a threshold. This is something a conditional rule has handled since the early days of Excel. There's no judgment to Jessica Lau Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-in-worflow-automation https://zapier.com/blog/stay-focused-avoid-distractions I find it hard to get work done while watching movies, visiting theme parks, or hanging out with my friends. So why do I think I can get work done online? Yes, the internet is a place where work happens, but distractions are always a click away. You could say this is a matter of discipline, and it is, but the odds aren't in your favor. The internet is a dopamine slot machine. The greatest minds of our generation are working around the clock to "increase engagement," which is a tech term that mea Justin Pot Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:17:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/stay-focused-avoid-distractions https://zapier.com/blog/klaviyo-vs-mailchimp Pull up the websites for Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and you'll notice something right away: each brand targets a vastly different audience. Mailchimp plasters its friendly monkey logo everywhere and uses accessible language like clicks, sales, and customer loyalty. Klaviyo's website is jet black, features Fortune 500 companies like Unilever, and talks about uniform data, agentic commerce, and omnichannel promotions. Simple enough to choose between them, right? Kind of. Under the veneer of its access Ryan Kane Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/klaviyo-vs-mailchimp https://zapier.com/blog/ai-model-flexibility Every AI provider comes with models of varying strengths. I'm a Claude stan because it just gets my writing style, but I'll often reach for Sonnet over the higher-tier models because its results are more consistent for me. And for some tasks, Claude's lineup doesn't cut it at all—when I need to process data at scale, for example, I might reach for Gemini. When I need a versatile generalist for classification or routing, GPT might be my pick. Other people across my team and at Zapier have altoget Steph Spector Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-model-flexibility https://zapier.com/blog/ai-models-on-zapier New AI models launch practically every week, and keeping up with which ones to use for specific workflows is a job in itself. Consider this article your living reference. At Zapier, we run every model through AutomationBench. It's our benchmark for testing how well models carry out multi-step workflows, not just static prompts. Below, I'll walk through every major AI provider available on Zapier, the models you can plug into your Zap workflows today, and what each one is best for based on Zapier Steph Spector Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-models-on-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/google-chat-vs-slack When Slack launched in 2014, it promised a better way of working: fewer emails, async communication, and easier remote collaboration. (Did you know that Slack stands for "Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge"?) It generated serious buzz, quickly gaining millions of users and inspiring competitors like Microsoft Teams. All this was motivation for Google to join the party, too. It repurposed one of its existing consumer apps, Google Hangouts, for business use. Eventually, the app was Ryan Kane Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/google-chat-vs-slack https://zapier.com/blog/claude-code-alternatives Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic coding tool, is very good at what it does. Its AI models are consistently ranked at the top of leaderboards, it's used daily by engineers at a long list of companies you've heard of, its step-by-step reasoning makes big refactors feel manageable, and even the loading messages are charming. But over the past couple of years, a lot of Claude Code alternatives have been giving it a run for its money. And depending on what you're trying to do, one of them might make Nicole Replogle Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-code-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/task-automation-tools My dog, Grandpa, has a bedtime protocol. Every night around 10:30, the following sequence must occur in this exact order: final trip outside, water bowl inspection, one (1) dental chew, followed by three ceremonial spins before he lowers himself into sleep. Most of us have a work version of Grandpa's bedtime protocol. Download the CSV. Rename the CSV. Paste the CSV into the other tool. Notify the person who will not read the notification. None of it is hard (which is precisely what makes it so s Allisa Boulette Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/task-automation-tools https://zapier.com/blog/best-pdf-editor-apps Once upon a time, if I wanted to edit a PDF, the only (free) method at my disposal was to essentially recreate the file in Microsoft Word, make any necessary edits, and then save it as a new PDF.  PDF editor apps have come a long way since then. Nowadays, the best apps let you easily edit every element of a PDF, including text and form fields, and convert files into other formats like .docx, .xlsx, and .txt. I've tested a lot of different PDF editors—free and paid—throughout my career. And I've Jessica Lau Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-pdf-editor-apps https://zapier.com/blog/gmail-signature-template When you work in email marketing (which I do), you get a lot of emails. And when you get a lot of emails, you see a wide variety of email sign-offs, signatures, and email disclosures, many of which are…not good.  A personal favorite of mine: ("I send it when I'm available, you send it when you're available" is pretty much just how emails work, right? Also: email scheduling is a thing for exactly this reason.) The conclusion I've drawn from my years in the email marketing trenches is that no one Amanda Pell Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/gmail-signature-template https://zapier.com/blog/google-gemini Google has been in its "Gemini era" for a couple years now, and while the confusing rebrandings have slowed, everything else continues to improve at a rapid pace. Gemini is the name Google gave to its current generation family of multimodal AI models, but in typical Google fashion, it also applies to basically everything else that's related to AI. It can get a touch confusing since, by my reckoning, Google has: Google Gemini, a family of multimodal AI models. The latest is the 3.7 series, thoug Harry Guinness Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/google-gemini https://zapier.com/blog/compare-two-word-documents I used to compare two documents by positioning them side by side on one small screen and then manually scanning for errors, sentence by sentence. As you'd expect, that method morphed my face into an alarming scrunch, and more importantly, it was ripe for human error.  Then I learned that every word processing app I use has a built-in tool to do exactly this.  If you're straining your eyes to spot the difference between two documents, here's how to compare two Word documents in the desktop app. N Jessica Lau Wed, 12 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/compare-two-word-documents https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-airtable Databases used to be intimidating to anyone except SQL developers. Airtable changed that: its databases feel like spreadsheets, complete with color coding and drag-and-drop layouts, while still offering advanced features like linked records, lookup fields, and rollups. Non-technical users can easily use Airtable to create apps that would've required expensive custom solutions a decade or so ago. But as powerful as Airtable is for data, it's not always the best solution for cross-platform automat Ryan Kane Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-airtable https://zapier.com/blog/ethos-examples-in-ads To the uninitiated, advertising is full of Mad Men-esque mystery. But as a writer and creative lead, I'm here to tell you that advertising is just fancy persuasion. At its most fundamental, an ad is trying to get you to think, feel, or do something (usually, purchase a product).  Because ads are just a form of persuasion, they often take their cues from the world of rhetoric and communications—including concepts like ethos. A little bit of rhetorical theory can unlock why some ads work and othe Hannah Herman Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ethos-examples-in-ads https://zapier.com/blog/automate-google-sheets Google Sheets is an industry-agnostic powerhouse. Like Google Docs, it's built for collaboration—and you can use it for just about anything that can be organized into rows and columns. Manage your freelancer roster. Track your quarterly budget. Monitor inventory levels across warehouses. Whatever needs tracking, Sheets can probably handle it. But as versatile as the tool is, your spreadsheets can quickly get messy, especially when you're manually copying and pasting information from different to Steph Spector Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/automate-google-sheets https://zapier.com/blog/enterprise-workflow-automation I married into a big family that loves to camp, and quite a few trips die in the group chat. The usual suspect is the handoffs. Camping spaces aren't booked until the headcount is confirmed, which depends on checking school and work schedules. Meanwhile, someone (looking at you, Terry) hasn't checked the group chat since March. Everyone means well; the details just have to pass through too many hands before anyone can act. At enterprise companies, every single handoff is a chance for your workfl Ben Lyso Tue, 11 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/enterprise-workflow-automation https://zapier.com/blog/best-virtual-phone-voip Reports of the landline phone's demise are only slightly exaggerated. No, this apparatus isn't gone yet, but it will likely join the fax, floppy disk, and Rolodex in the business graveyard within the next decade.  Today you can make calls using FaceTime, Messenger, WhatsApp, or dozens of other call apps, and virtual phone systems do the same for your office number. Virtual phone systems, also known as VoIP (voice over internet protocol) and cloud phones, are simply better options than a landline Allisa Boulette Tue, 11 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-virtual-phone-voip https://zapier.com/blog/claude-connectors Claude is generally considered to be the best chatbot for almost everything: marketers will tell you it writes better than other chatbots; developers will tell you it codes better; and people who inexplicably think it's a good idea to use AI as a therapist will tell you it's kinder than other models. It's all grounded in reality: Claude is particularly good at reasoning through hard problems, creating original content, and surfacing insights from whatever you throw at it. But if you're using it Nicole Replogle Tue, 11 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-connectors https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-connectors ChatGPT was born, and named, to chat. It's scarily good at it, but if you're using it for real work, you want to actually do something from the chat window: update a record based on ChatGPT's research, send a message with the genius idea it beat you to the punch on, or just log the output somewhere so you don't lose it.  There are a lot of ways to connect ChatGPT to other apps. But the terminology is a mess, the options overlap, and it's not always obvious which approach is the right one for wha Nicole Replogle Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-connectors https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-chatgpt I've been using ChatGPT since it launched, and now, it barely resembles the tool I started with. At this point it's less of a chatbot and more of a full work assistant—one I can use for everything from research to writing to running tasks across my other apps. If you're eager to put ChatGPT to work but not sure where to start, you're in the right place. Here's everything you need to know about how to use ChatGPT. Table of contents: What is ChatGPT? How to use ChatGPT How to customize ChatGPT H Jessica Lau Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-chatgpt https://zapier.com/blog/deterministic-ai We haven't exactly worked out all of AI's kinks yet. The same prompt can return a different, sometimes unhinged, answer every time. It's just the nature of probabilistic systems. That variability's fine for brainstorming and exploration, but it becomes a problem when you embed AI in real workflows where your team needs consistency and control. It's also why enterprises are getting more cautious. Many teams have started pulling back on AI-only workflows and shifting toward deterministic AI—predic Nicole Replogle Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/deterministic-ai https://zapier.com/blog/ai-job-search From writing your resume for you to automating networking emails, there are tons of ways AI can help streamline your job search. But more importantly, AI can also help you cut through the noise, secure interviews, and impress hiring managers—as long as you use it well. According to a survey from Software Finder, 75% of job seekers use AI tools as part of their job search, with 14% using AI throughout the entire application process. Those who did were more likely to secure a higher-paying job tha Kiera Abbamonte Sun, 09 Aug 2026 22:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-job-search https://zapier.com/blog/autotorino-lead-intake-inbound-call-automation Autotorino manages sales and after-sales across 74 locations and 23 brands, with customer requests arriving through web forms, lead-gen tools, email, and a high volume of phone calls. The challenge was routing: getting every interaction into the right system, in the right shape, fast enough to matter. That meant solving two problems at once. The first was digital lead flow: routing leads from many sources into Salesforce without asking people to spend their days copying, pasting, and checking re Rob Ayre Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/autotorino-lead-intake-inbound-call-automation