zapier-vs-self-made.md

📊 Zapier vs. Self-made Solution for Event Processing

Factor	Zapier	Self-made	Notes
Advanced level of customization	✘	✔	Self-made solution provides 100% flexibility in logic, architecture, and integrations.
Debugging/fixing issues/customer support cost	✘	✔	Zapier gives limited logs and debugging tools; self-made allows full control, observability, and in-house fixes.
Data consistency guarantee (exactly-once delivery)	✘	✔	Zapier does not guarantee exactly-once delivery. Self-made can enforce at-least-once / exactly-once semantics.
Seeing first results (time to market)	✔	✘	Zapier workflows can be launched in hours. Self-made requires weeks of design and setup.
Data protection & ownership	✘	✔	Zapier processes data in their cloud; with self-made, you fully own and control the data flow.
Long-run maintenance cost	✘	✔	Zapier cost scales linearly with usage. Self-made has upfront cost but scales more efficiently over time.
Ability to scale infinitely	✘	✔	Zapier has limits on tasks and throughput. Self-made can scale to millions of events.
Hosting cost	✔	✔	Zapier hides infra cost inside pricing. Self-made requires servers/cloud infra, but cost per event decreases at scale.
Ease of finding/replacing a developer	✘	✔	Self-made code/config lives in version control. Zapier is harder for newcomers due to opaque workflows.
Latency (real-time processing)	✘	✔	Zapier workflows may take seconds–minutes. Self-made can deliver near real-time (milliseconds).
Batch processing & throughput	✘	✔	Zapier processes one event per trigger. Self-made can batch, parallelize, and optimize API usage.
Monitoring & observability	Limited	✔	Zapier provides minimal logs. Self-made can integrate metrics, tracing, and dashboards.
Vendor lock-in risk	High	Low	Zapier is proprietary; migration is costly. Self-made can use open standards and portable infra.
Integration availability	✔	Depends	Zapier offers thousands of ready connectors. Self-made requires building or adapting APIs.
Compliance & certifications	Limited	✔	Zapier offers some compliance at enterprise tiers. Self-made can be designed to meet HIPAA, PCI, GDPR, SOC2, etc.
Error handling & retries	Limited	✔	Zapier has basic retry logic. Self-made can define custom retry policies, dead-letter queues, and alerting.
Cost structure	Linear with usage	Economies of scale	Zapier = pay-per-task. Self-made = upfront investment, then marginal cost per event drops significantly at scale.

📊 Decision Matrix: Zapier vs. Self-made Solution

Factor	Zapier (1–5)	Self-made (1–5)
Advanced customization	2	5
Debugging & support	2	5
Data consistency (exactly-once delivery)	1	5
Time to first results	5	2
Data protection & ownership	2	5
Long-run maintenance cost	2	4
Scalability (infinite growth)	2	5
Hosting cost	4	3
Ease of onboarding/replacing developer	2	4
Latency (real-time)	2	5
Batch processing & throughput	1	5
Monitoring & observability	2	5
Vendor lock-in risk	1	5
Integration availability	5	3
Compliance & certifications	3	5
Error handling & retries	2	5
Cost structure	2	5

🔎 Totals

Zapier score = 40 / 85

Self-made score = 76 / 85

Conclusion:

• Zapier wins for speed to market and integration availability.
• Self-made dominates in scalability, cost efficiency, compliance, and long-term flexibility.