How to Use Make (Integromat) to Automate Your Australian Small Business

Zapier gets most of the attention, but Make: formerly known as Integromat: handles more complex automations, has a more generous free plan, and gives you far more control over how your workflows run. For Australian small businesses that have outgrown simple two-step Zaps, Make is worth knowing about.

Make vs Zapier. The Short Version

Zapier is easier to set up and better for simple workflows. Make is more powerful, cheaper at volume, and better when you need branching logic, loops, or complex data transformations. If you’ve hit Zapier’s limits, Make is the natural next step.

Make’s free plan gives you 1,000 operations per month: enough to run meaningful automations for a small business without paying anything.

Getting Started

Sign up at make.com (no credit card required for the free plan). Make’s interface is visual: you build “scenarios” by connecting app modules with lines, which makes complex workflows easier to follow than Zapier’s list format.

Key concepts:

• Scenario: the equivalent of a Zap: a complete automation workflow
• Module: an individual step (trigger, action, or transformer)
• Operation: each time a module processes data: this is what counts toward your plan limit

Three Practical Examples for Australian Businesses

1. Invoice-to-Xero with error handling

When a new invoice arrives by email (trigger), Make extracts the data using its built-in text parser, creates a bill in Xero (action), and if the extraction fails: say the format was unexpected: it routes the email to a folder for manual review instead of silently failing. Zapier can’t do that branching without a premium plan.

2. Multi-channel customer enquiry routing

A new enquiry comes in via your website form. Make checks the enquiry type (set in a form dropdown), routes sales enquiries to your CRM, support requests to your helpdesk, and job applications to a Google Sheet. One trigger, three different outcomes based on a condition.

3. Weekly reporting from multiple sources

Every Monday at 7am, Make pulls data from your Shopify store (last week’s orders), your Xero account (payments received), and your Google Analytics (top pages), combines them into a formatted summary, and emails it to you. No logging in, no copying numbers.

Where to Start

Pick one repetitive task that involves copying data between two apps. Build that first. Make’s template library has hundreds of pre-built scenarios: search for your apps before building from scratch.

Related: Zapier and AI: Automation for Australian Small Business | AI + Xero Deep Dive

Related: How to Build an AI-Powered Customer Onboarding Workflow for Australian Business | How to Connect Xero, Gmail and ChatGPT with Zapier (No Code)

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