Regarding parsing, Integromat has a dedicated module that is quite powerful if you have a good knowledge of regex. Otherwise, it is not very useful. On the other hand, Zapier has a few basic parsing functions in the formatter that are easy to use. They do have a really cool tool to parse emails that act both as a trigger and an easy to use parser. Very handy.

Winner: Integromat ... so much power

6. Error Handling & Logs

Error handling is critical when building integrations between apps. So many things can go wrong that a good system is required to keep the automations running smoothly. There is nothing worse than building automations to save time and money and end up spending time and money to fix a mess created by that automation.

There are a few reasons for an automation to fail. First is when a third party throws an error like time-out, 5XX error, ...Or it could be an error in the format of the data being fed to a module. A classic is when an automation tries to create or update a record with a dropdown field with a value that is not supported by the destination app.

Zapier is very easy to handle the first type of errors. They have an option to auto-replay and they will try until it works. Integromat, on the other hand, will stop the scenario by default which can be a problem if a small error stops an entire automation until an administrator fixes it. However, Integromat offers many granular features to handle errors. The builder can decide exactly what to do when an error happens: retry, ignore, .. even create an entirely new path with several modules! For example, in a simple scenario that sends a text, it is possible to specify that if the send text fails because the text service is down then an email will be sent instead. For people coming from Zapier error handling will be a challenge at first because it is so granular that it is overwhelming.

One big issue with Zapier is that if a zap is turned off it will not queue the webhooks. So if your scenario that sends email confirmation to your customer when they make a purchase is turned off in the middle of the night you will have no easy way to send those emails to the clients that made a purchase while the zap was off. This can be disastrous.

Last thing but not least, Integromat has this amazing feature that allows the user to replay a scenario from the error point using a modified scenario. Let's say there is a complex integration that adds a new Shopify order into an ERP and that a step fails because the customer entered an unsupported character into a custom field. In Zapier the zap will fail and the administrator will have to either re-trigger the zap manually or enter the data manually in the destination app(s). This can be very cumbersome. In Integromat the administrator can just replay that execution after removing the dynamic mapping for that field and paste the customer entry without the special characters. This can be done in minutes instead of sometimes hours in Zapier for complex integrations.

Winner: Integromat

7. Logs

When it comes to troubleshooting an automation issue, logs are critical. Both Zapier and Integromat store historical data for 30 days. They both offer similarity in terms of seeing the data that came in and out of each module/step but Zapier offers filters and search that makes it extremely easy to find a specific task that failed. Integromat UX in that regard is pretty bad. Find a specific execution feels like finding a needle in a haystack on a scenario that processes a lot of data.

Winner: Zapier

Pricing

It is always hard to compare apples and carrots, and rarely wise. There are many parameters to answer precisely which one offers the best value. As I write this a sure thing is that for most use cases Integromat is much cheaper than Zapier. Zapier prices have hiked quite a bit since I started using it back in 2015. Their product is mature and despite the cost, they can still deliver decent ROI to their customers but the trend is concerning.

A few things to take into account when you compare pricing between Zapier and Integromat:

Set-up cost: Integromat is more Granular so it tends to take longer to build the same simple workflows. For complex workflows, it is often the opposite.
The number of modules/steps per workflow. Because Integromat is more powerful it often allows building the same workflow with fewer modules hence lowering the number of operations/tasks required for each cycle. Some of the workflows that I moved over from Zapier to Integromat use 25-30% fewer operations/tasks than previously.
Cost per task/Operation

Pricing Comparison Integromat vs Zapier: volume of operations/tasks per dollar amount