https://zapier.com/blog A blog about productivity, workflow automation, company building and how to get things done with less work. Sat, 17 Oct 2026 10:20:16 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps If you want to really follow a publication, writer, or something else online and see everything they publish—not just what some social media algorithm throws your way—the best way to do it is with an RSS reader.  RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication) has been around since the '90s, and it's a way for sites to publish a feed of all their content in a way that can be easily parsed and aggregated by RSS apps. Basically every website offers some kind of RSS feed, even if they don't advertise Harry Guinness Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps https://zapier.com/blog/google-vids I teach classes asynchronously at a local college, which means I spend a lot of time trying to find new ways to create fun and engaging content that students will actually log in to watch. My lectures are all built on Google Slides, so naturally, Google Vids—Google's AI video generator—caught my eye. Vids lets you generate video clips from natural language prompts, complete with narration (from you or an AI avatar), music, and actions. You can even turn snoozetastic slides or Google Docs into a Jessica Lau Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/google-vids https://zapier.com/blog/best-employee-management-software Managing a workforce effectively is a key ingredient to the growth of a business—big or small—and to do this, many businesses turn to employee management software.  Employee management software is a fuzzy-ish category. At its core, it's about streamlining HR work (from both the employer and employee side of things), but depending on who you ask, you'll get a slightly different definition. I decided to turn to the experts to see what employee management software they think is the best of the bunc Kiera Abbamonte Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-employee-management-software https://zapier.com/blog/3r-plumbing-next-gen-zaps A missed call in home services is a missed job. In a Massachusetts October, that can be a five-figure heating replacement going to the next company on Google. Ross Hunt started 3R Plumbing & Mechanical in 2022 out of his garage with one pickup truck. In its early days, the veteran-owned residential HVAC and plumbing company did about $300,000 a year. This year, it's on track for nearly $3.8 million. It now has 15 employees, a shop in Norwell, Massachusetts, and customers in about 21 South Shore Rob Ayre Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/3r-plumbing-next-gen-zaps https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-chatbot You've probably already subscribed to ChatGPT. Maybe your company rolled out Copilot. Your developer friends won't shut up about Claude. All the noise is confusing: which one should you actually use for your work? The answer depends on the actual task. The AI that's perfect for writing may fall flat when fact-checking; the best for coding may be too steerable, requiring you to invest too much time in your prompts; and if you need to tie multiple models into a single workflow, the household names Miguel Rebelo Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-chatbot https://zapier.com/blog/ai-models-on-zapier Staying up to date on the latest AI models is like trying to keep my house vacuumed in the height of my dog's shedding season (a losing battle). New AI models drop practically every week, and it's not exactly obvious which ones deserve a spot in your workflows. This guide is your cheat sheet, with every model you can automate on Zapier right now, sorted by provider. If you just want to cut to the chase and find out which model you should be using for which task, that's what AutomationBench is fo Nicole Replogle Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-models-on-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/claude-vs-chatgpt When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, tech writers (myself included) became obsessed with testing its limits. Could it write poetry? Debug code? Explain quantum physics to a five-year-old? Once Anthropic's Claude entered the scene a few months later, the focus shifted to head-to-head task comparisons (like counting objects or navigating ethical dilemmas) to try to figure out which model was more capable. In 2026—after countless model updates, and with game-changing agentic capabilities now Ryan Kane Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-vs-chatgpt https://zapier.com/blog/human-in-the-loop AI systems can route messages, update records, make decisions, and trigger entire workflows across multiple apps without you touching anything. But as AI shifts more and more from being an assistive tool to powering agentic systems, humans have a new kind of responsibility: making sure nothing goes wrong. Because even the smartest AI systems still struggle to understand nuance, edge cases, or the unwritten rules teams use to make decisions. When automated agents act without that context, small g Juliet John Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/human-in-the-loop https://zapier.com/blog/hellosign-vs-docusign Sometimes it feels like every time I blink, technology transports me into the future at blistering speeds, and it's all I can do to keep up. Then someone asks me to sign something on paper and I remember: we're not quite living in Star Trek yet. I once signed a lease in front of a notary (in triplicate, of course, initialing every page); DHL-ed it to my co-signer in another city to be signed and notarized again; then bundled everything together to submit it. "Kafkaesque" doesn't begin to describ Ryan Kane Tue, 13 Oct 2026 06:30:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/hellosign-vs-docusign https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-dots ChatGPT dots don't come as a surprise. Always-on agents have been the next frontier AI since OpenClaw caused a run on Mac minis back in January 2026. OpenAI even hired OpenClaw's developer, Peter Steinberger. And OpenAI isn't alone in this: Meta has Muse, Gemini has Spark, and Anthropic is presumably developing something else pretty similar. I have a ChatGPT Pro account, so I was able to dive right in myself and see what ChatGPT dots bring to the table. Here's what I learned after letting a dot Harry Guinness Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/chatgpt-dots https://zapier.com/blog/powerpoint-online-guide My toxic trait is forcing my friends and family into having PowerPoint parties—which are really just an excuse for me to do a full-blown slideshow on why Samwise Gamgee is the best character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you haven't been roped into a PowerPoint party yet, trust me, it's around the corner.  I can't come up with a topic for you, but I can definitely help you with the whole creating a PowerPoint part. Even if you just need to use PowerPoint for work (which, while much less f Jessica Lau Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/powerpoint-online-guide https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-video-generator Consuming video is easy. Producing good video is not. Putting together a script, getting all the footage, and editing everything to perfection—or as close as possible—can eat up enormous chunks of your time. As it does for everything right now, AI has a few solutions to slash the time it takes to go from idea to MP4. I went in search of the best AI tools for creating videos, and as it turns out, there are already a ton of amazing options. From smart video editing software to generative text-to-v Miguel Rebelo Fri, 09 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-video-generator https://zapier.com/blog/writing-editing-apps At any given moment, I have a different writing app open for every task I'm actively procrastinating on: my Notes app for collaborating with my partner on a never-ending list of to-dos, Notion for trip planning, Google Docs for the article I'm supposed to be writing right now, and a rotating cast of other free writing tools I've convinced myself are essential to the process.  This is to say nothing about the AI writing generators I use to help me create content or edit at scale—that's a differe Jessica Lau Fri, 09 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/writing-editing-apps https://zapier.com/blog/ai-adoption I have two voices in my head when it comes to new tech. One is the wide-eyed optimist who wants to try every tool and click every AI button. The other wants to delete every app on my phone, move to a cabin in the woods, and write by candlelight. There's no doubt AI is exciting. It's already helping teams save time, be more creative, and get through the workday with fewer repetitive headaches. But it's also introducing new challenges: messy rollouts, tool overload, unclear guidelines, and real qu Nicole Replogle Thu, 08 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/ai-adoption 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 get real productivity gains from AI, Claude has become the default choice. And Claude is equall Ryan Kane Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-ai https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-newsletters As a writer covering technology and AI, I spend plenty of time separating useful information from the hype. A good AI newsletter can help cut through that noise. But the best newsletter depends on what you need. Someone making AI strategy decisions needs different coverage than someone looking for an AI workflow they can try this afternoon. To find the best AI newsletters, I started by researching my options and looking at what other folks were recommending. Then I signed up for anything that lo Sara J. Nguyen Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-newsletters https://zapier.com/blog/claude-models Anthropic's Claude family has four primary models: Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, and Fable. (There's also Mythos, but the general public doesn't have access to that.) All four Claude models are incredibly capable. Even the smallest model, Haiku, is better than the best frontier models from two years ago. This makes teasing out the differences between them a challenge.  Benchmarks are one tool to help. Zapier's AutomationBench, for example, tests AI agents on end-to-end workflow execution using real tools Harry Guinness Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/claude-models https://zapier.com/blog/online-course-platforms Anyone can share knowledge as quickly and easily as you can upload a video to YouTube. But to explore a topic in depth, build a community, earn an income, or grow your business by selling online courses? That takes a more robust setup to help you design course pages, build out a curriculum, and promote your course. I've been updating this article for several years, and this year, after researching and nearly 80 apps for creating and selling online courses—and testing all the top contenders—these Kiera Abbamonte Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/online-course-platforms https://zapier.com/blog/yahoo-vs-gmail Gmail and Yahoo Mail (a.k.a. Yahoo! Mail a.k.a. Ymail) are two of the biggest email providers. While the stats are hard to verify and seldom updated, Google's Gmail is reportedly responsible for over a third of opened emails and has 3 billion active users, while the partially Verizon-owned Yahoo Mail—despite launching in 1997—apparently has around 225 million active users per month. Whatever way you slice it, they both serve huge numbers of people. But what about you? If you're setting up a new Ryan Kane Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/yahoo-vs-gmail https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-google-gemini Gemini, Google's AI chatbot, offers all the same features you'd expect from any AI chatbot: it can browse the web, conduct in-depth research, analyze and visualize data, generate AI images and videos—you name it, it can do it.  But, for my money, the best thing about Gemini is that it integrates deeply with other Google products. Want to search your Gmail file jungle with one prompt? Or summarize files inside your Google Drive? You can do it all without leaving your Gemini chat.  Here's everyth Jessica Lau Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-google-gemini https://zapier.com/blog/automate-google-ai-studio Anyone who lives in the Google ecosystem has probably used Gemini for a quick draft or a fast answer. (Or if you're like me, you've been driven to your limit by the Google Docs popups encouraging you to use AI whenever your cursor strays too close to the bottom of the screen.) But a chat window is just the beginning of what Gemini can do. Its real power shows up when you connect it to the rest of your apps and let it do work on your behalf. All of Gemini's models are available in Zapier, so you Nicole Replogle Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/automate-google-ai-studio https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-agents-is-now-ai-by-zapier Every capability that made Zapier Agents powerful—tool calling, reasoning, autonomous action—now lives inside a single AI step in the Zap editor, using AI by Zapier. Here, I'll map each Zapier Agents feature to its equivalent in AI by Zapier, so if you're coming from Zapier Agents, you know exactly where to click. What's changed between Zapier Agents and AI by Zapier Zapier Agents consisted of four things: a prompt, a set of tools, a trigger, and permission to act. That bundle worked, but it sat Ruchira Kulkarni Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-agents-is-now-ai-by-zapier https://zapier.com/blog/asana-alternatives Picking a project management app is like wandering through the story of Goldilocks—there are so many options and no perfect fit. It feels like you'll always be sampling scalding porridge and trying to get comfy in a doll-sized bed. Asana is a quality option (so much so that it's made Zapier's list of the best free, small business, and enterprise project management apps), but that doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work for you. That's why I rounded up eleven of the best alternatives to Asana, so yo Nicole Replogle Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/asana-alternatives https://zapier.com/blog/inbox-zero Confession time: I'm a chronic email avoider. If you've emailed me in the past few months, rest assured that I still haven't opened it. At some point, I realized I'd rather get slowly buried under an avalanche of Kohl's marketing emails and Amazon delivery updates than deal with my inbox like an adult. But you don't have to share my fate. After all, email doesn't stop coming just because you're tired of dealing with it. And there are probably some important meeting invites (and decent coupons) b Nicole Replogle Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/inbox-zero https://zapier.com/blog/best-video-editing-software The best tool for video editing depends on a lot of factors: your technical ability and desire to learn, your budget, and the complexity of what you're hoping to accomplish. There's no one-size-fits-all video editor, but that's ok—the field is flooded with good options, regardless of your platform of choice or level of expertise. In fact, some of the best video editing software is completely free, even if you're looking for more advanced features. And premium editors range from industry-standard Tim Brookes Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT https://zapier.com/blog/best-video-editing-software