https://zapier.com/blog A blog about productivity, workflow automation, company building and how to get things done with less work. Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:41:24 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-become-a-social-media-influencer As of 2026, the creator economy is on track to reach roughly $480 billion by 2027—and the influencer marketing industry alone is projected to hit around $33 billion this year. That leaves at least a million for you after my dog finally gets the Instagram stardom she deserves. If you're tempted to turn your casual social profile into a consistent income source, be warned: it's not as easy as your favorite influencers make it seem. Standing out, staying organized, and avoiding burnout all take the Nicole Replogle Tue, 21 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-become-a-social-media-influencer https://zapier.com/blog/introducing-automationbench Today we're releasing AutomationBench, an open benchmark that measures whether AI models can complete real business workflows. Current model evaluations tell you whether an LLM can answer math olympiad questions, write code, or reason through a logic puzzle. Those are important, but they don't tell you the thing that matters most to enterprises: whether it can get work done. As in, find the right CRM records, send the right follow-up, update the right systems, and get to a verifiable end state w Anna Marie Clifton Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/introducing-automationbench https://zapier.com/blog/full-page-screenshots-in-chrome Tell me if this sounds familiar: you need to take a screenshot of a whole web page (or, at least, more than one small part of it), so a drag-and-snap screenshot is out. You also need to capture info "below the fold" (content that's only visible after you scroll), so that's another no to your usual screenshot method.  So how can you avoid the painful task of scrolling down a page at a time, capturing one window screenshot again and again, and then cobbling it all together at the end? Well, you co Jessica Lau Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/full-page-screenshots-in-chrome https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-write-business-letter There may be no more comically vague term in the entire business world than the word "business." It means so many things that it really means nothing—and yet here you are, wondering how to write a business letter.  You could argue that any letter composed in a business setting counts as one, and you'd be more or less correct. But with such a wide range of applications, how are you supposed to get it right? Whatever your purpose, there are certain rules, expectations, and formatting specs you nee Bryce Emley Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-write-business-letter https://zapier.com/blog/ai-guardrails-guide When everyone around you is declaring that AI is making and breaking businesses overnight, it's hard not to feel like you need to adapt now—or risk getting left behind. And by all means, build with AI. Just don't forget to protect your business against the risks that come with it, like sensitive data ending up where it shouldn't, harmful content reaching your customers, or bad actors manipulating your AI workflows. AI-generated content isn't the only thing that needs screening. User-generated co Steph Spector Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-guardrails-guide https://zapier.com/blog/gemini-vs-chatgpt ChatGPT had a two-year head start on Gemini, and for a while, it showed. But Google has spent the last couple of years building aggressively and now has a set of models and features that make it a truly competitive alternative to ChatGPT. If you haven't looked at Gemini recently, you might be surprised by what you find.  Both tools are now equally impressive AI assistants in nearly all the ways that matter. Their flagship models are neck and neck on AI benchmarks, and the experience of using eit Ryan Kane Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/gemini-vs-chatgpt https://zapier.com/blog/iphone-automation-ideas I, like many of my fellow millennials, am still on my parents' family phone plan. Sure, I could switch to my own plan, but why would I go out of my way to change phone plans, only to make my bill and my parents' bill more expensive? I'm getting off track. Keep doing your thing, millennials. The monthly Venmo payment I make to my parents is my only recurring payment that doesn't happen automatically, which means I end up sending it late a lot. Luckily my parents don't charge late fees. On my jour Will Harris Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/iphone-automation-ideas https://zapier.com/blog/one-pager-examples My clients are busy people. I'm not deluded enough to think they're reading every single line of the monthly performance report I send their way. That's why I always include an executive summary at the top, which highlights "must-knows" in a few bullet points.  One-pagers serve the same function as these executive summaries. They boil down pages of detailed information into a single, concise document, enabling stakeholders or investors to quickly review what matters and make important decisions. Cecilia Gillen Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/one-pager-examples https://zapier.com/blog/celigo-alternatives Everything looks possible on a Saturday morning. Painting the spare bedroom or cleaning out the garage feels like an easy weekend project, but odds are the room will still look like a disaster zone three months later. (This has never happened to me personally, of course. But I've had friends go through it.) Celigo isn't a weekend project, either. It's a complex enterprise integration and automation platform built for connecting ERPs, commerce stacks, finance systems, and the teams around them. A Nicole Replogle Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/celigo-alternatives 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 an internal benchmark built around real automated workflows. That way, we can see how well they actually perform on multi-step, tool-based tasks, not just static prompts. Below, I'll walk through every major AI provider available on Zapier, the models you can plug into your Zaps and Agents Steph Spector Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-models-on-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/open-wifi-login-page You open your laptop in a public space—perhaps an airport, a coffee shop, or your hotel room. You sit down to work, select the correct Wi-Fi network, and ... nothing. Your Wi-Fi icon shows it's connected, but your browser says, "You are not connected to the internet." No matter how hard you try, that pop-up login screen never loads.  We've all been there. As a remote team that has spent a lot of time working from co-working spaces and coffee shops, we at Zapier have wasted far more time than we' Jessica Lau Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/open-wifi-login-page https://zapier.com/blog/claude-ai I've been using Claude long enough to remember when the main selling point was that it was a nicer chatbot to talk to than the alternatives. (That's still true, for what it's worth.) But Claude no longer just talks to you about your work; it also does your work for you. You can give Claude a project, head off to make a coffee, and check in occasionally when questions pop up. For enterprises looking to turn AI hype into real productivity gains, Claude has become the default choice. And Claude is Ryan Kane Thu, 16 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-ai https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-make Start small, then scale. It's good advice when you're automating processes in your business; most enterprise organizations start with a pilot project to figure out how much time they can actually save. But automation pilots tend to be run by technical staff, which means that scaling to non-technical departments is the first "real world" test your workflows will face. What happens next? It depends on your automation platform. If it's intimidating to non-technical users, then rolling out automatio Ryan Kane Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-vs-make https://zapier.com/blog/process-improvement Most "broken" work isn't actually broken. What fails is the process behind it: messy handoffs, slow approvals, unclear ownership, and tasks that sit in inboxes like forgotten produce because nobody knows what the next step is. That's what process improvement is for: looking at a slow workflow and deciding it deserves better than "that's just how we do it." In this post, I'll break down the essentials of process improvement, show how it fixes clunky daily workflows, and provide a practical playbo Nisar Ahmad Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/process-improvement https://zapier.com/blog/api-endpoint Every time two apps share data—like when your email marketing tool pulls in new subscribers from your website, or when your project management app sends you a Slack notification—they use an API endpoint to communicate. Endpoints are the doors, windows, and occasionally the poorly labeled trapdoors of modern software. More specifically, one app acts as the client (the one doing the asking), and the other acts as the server (the one doing the answering). The API endpoint is the address that makes Nisar Ahmad Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/api-endpoint https://zapier.com/blog/make-com-pricing Not to get all "back in my day" about it, but texting etiquette today is so different from when I was in high school. Gen Z seems to have an aversion to long text blocks, so instead, it's multiple messages with one idea per text (sometimes in quick succession). But if you had a cell phone in 2009, you remember phone plans that charged per text, not per month. When you don't have unlimited texting, every message has a cost—so you make sure every text counts. Make's credit model will feel familiar Nicole Replogle Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/make-com-pricing https://zapier.com/blog/best-email-hosting-services Email seems simple as a user, but that's because your email provider is taking care of all the complexity on the back end. If your business is just starting out, you can get by with BusinessName@gmail.com, but as your company grows and you want to give each staff member their own email account, have specific sales email addresses, or just present a more professional front, you'll need to invest in a dedicated email hosting service. Attempts to kill email have failed. Slack is a great tool and re Harry Guinness Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-email-hosting-services https://zapier.com/blog/which-is-the-best-value-zapier-vs-make My dad unexpectedly lost his job when I was little. After a few frantic months, he finally found a new one a few states away—and it even paid more. My parents were initially thrilled…only to realize, after we'd moved, that the cost of living in Chicago is much higher than in Oklahoma. (But I'll be forever grateful that my young parents' naiveté let me grow up in a much cooler place. No offense to any Oklahomans reading this.) When evaluating automation platforms, it's best to apply the lesson my Nicole Replogle Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/which-is-the-best-value-zapier-vs-make https://zapier.com/blog/data-enrichment There's a moment in every police procedural when a detective squints at a blurry security clip and shouts, "Enhance!" A technician taps a few keys, and suddenly the image sharpens, the license plate becomes readable, a reflection of the suspect's distinctive tattoo is visible in a conveniently placed spoon, and the case basically solves itself. (Ignore the laws of physics; we are storytelling.) Data enrichment is the closest thing to that button you get in business systems. You already have the Humna Ghufran Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/data-enrichment https://zapier.com/blog/jira-alternatives Jira users are a diverse bunch. Some use Jira Software Cloud for Agile project management and software development projects. You might find them tracking bugs, doing sprint planning, or managing a backlog. Then there's Jira Service Management, the IT side of things, like coordinating incident responses and managing changes for internal and external clients. For all its uses, though, Jira isn't the only platform in town. Depending on the use case (and budget), there are a number of Jira alternati Jessica Lau Tue, 14 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/jira-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-trello I once tried to manage a social media content calendar using Post-its on my office wall. It was perfectly color-coordinated and laid out week by week. Then #ThrowbackTuesdays stopped performing (fair), I couldn't create the content we needed for #MotivationMondays fast enough, and after a few rounds of rearranging, the Post-its stopped being sticky. So I pivoted.  I still needed something visual, where I could see the whole plan at a glance, and could rearrange on the fly. It just needed not to Jessica Lau Tue, 14 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-trello https://zapier.com/blog/ai-agent-frameworks Over the last year, I've seen a shift in how teams talk about AI. Chatbots, once the center of attention, are no longer the primary focus. Instead, more businesses are moving toward autonomous AI systems. AI agents are what you reach for when you want a system that can break down a task, make decisions, interact with tools, and learn from its mistakes (unlike me). Designing and integrating these complex systems with external tools isn't straightforward. AI agent frameworks, which offer pre-built Avdhoot Vadghule Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-agent-frameworks https://zapier.com/blog/ai-agent-evaluation You roll out a promising AI agent that looks flawless in demos. It picks the right tools, executes the correct steps, and closes the loop without errors. Then you drop that same agent into your actual workflow and (surprise!) it immediately forgets how reality works. It chooses the wrong tool, loops endlessly, or hallucinates outputs. Sandbox tests don't reveal the entire picture. So before you let an agent loose on real customers (or real data), you need a way to test how it behaves against mes Avdhoot Vadghule Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-agent-evaluation https://zapier.com/blog/revenue-intelligence-platform Here's a fun game. Go ask three people on your sales team what your projected revenue is for next quarter. Chances are you'll get three completely different numbers, delivered with three completely different levels of unearned confidence, backed by three completely different methodologies that mostly boil down to "I eyeballed it." This is the exact dysfunction that revenue intelligence software exists to fix. These tools ingest every call, email, and interaction, then tell you what's really happ Allisa Boulette Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/revenue-intelligence-platform https://zapier.com/blog/crm-system-examples Every Monday morning, a sales manager asks their team, "Where do we stand?" and every single person in that meeting lies. Not maliciously, but because they genuinely don't know. Their data lives in four different places. Their last touchpoints are scattered across email, Trello, Slack, and one guy's actual physical memory, which, respectfully, is not a database. This is the entire reason CRMs were invented—not to create more dashboards nobody reads, but to make "where do we stand?" a question wi Trent Fowler Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/crm-system-examples