IBM App Connect vs Zapier comparison

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IBM App Connect

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM App Connect and Zapier based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Data Integration solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM App Connect vs. Zapier Report (Updated: October 2024).

IBM App Connect vs. Zapier

October 2024

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Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM App Connect

Ranking in Cloud Data Integration

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zapier

Ranking in Cloud Data Integration

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM App Connect is 3.6%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zapier is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Offers flexible adapters, good scalability but logging can be difficult at times

There is room for improvement in the logging messages. Sometimes, if you put someone new into App Connect, they can abandon it the same day. The logging is really painful. However, IBM has made efforts to integrate with Elasticsearch for logging, so that's an improvement. Overall, the logging can be difficult at times. One more important point is that if IBM improves its CI/CD capabilities, it will make a big difference. Right now, I have to create my own CI/CD setup from scratch for every client, which is inefficient. Back in 2013, I worked with Sonic ESB, and even then, it had CI/CD with Maven. With App Connect, you need to build everything yourself when using tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, or CircleCI. IBM really needs to provide official support for this.

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FrankHo

Analyst at MSXI

Though the tool offers a visually appealing UI, it needs to improve its documentation

With Zapier, improvements are required in the areas of concerns like bugs, ease of use, and documentation. The product has many bugs, so users have to wait for a period ranging from five minutes to an hour to see where the Zap went. In Zapier, Zaps aren't very understandable owing to the way they work. As a user, you would think that in Zapier, a Zap works in a particular way once you set it up, but it won't happen. At times, some Zaps can interfere with each other, because of which there might be infinite loops that may occur, owing to which multiple Zaps continue to run or break down in general, after which nothing would run in your environment. You would not be notified about the breakdown of Zaps. The bugs in the product may be considered to understand or get an explanation of how Zaps works between software systems, so for something between Gmail and HubSpot, Zapier would explain through better documentation what would work and what wouldn't work. Maybe if Zapier had better functionality with Python or any other coding language in general, it would make the product a lot better.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Technical support is good."

"The most valuable feature is the user-friendliness of the application."

"I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's likely an adapter for that."

"It has an efficient design flow."

"We use IBM App Connect for the integration between the applications."

"Very scalable, flexible, and user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the security."

"Provides good security features."

More IBM App Connect pros

"The initial setup is pretty easy to do."

"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."

"With the previous CRM we were using – the Google Ads landing pages we had – we were collecting leads manually. That process was not efficient and took a sales team a lot of time to insert these leads manually. Currently, the process is smooth and we use Zapier to collect the leads for us."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is very intuitive and has a very flat learning curve."

"Zapier is user friendly and makes it easy to integrate different tools. It has a drag and drop functionality which makes it easy to connect environments."

"The ability to connect web applications to trigger actions in another app after having enriched, formatted, delayed, grouped, and filtered is really valuable for many businesses."

"The solution is a SaaS and does not require a complex setup."

"We find it effortless to set up. We really don't have to do anything other than finding the application in the Zapier catalog. And as long as the application has been re-integrated into Zapier, they're able to then just provide the connection details and hook it up."

More Zapier pros

Cons

"The addition of string functionality would be a benefit, particularly in the ESQL space that IBM already uses internally."

"The product should improve its support."

"The setup time for App Connect could be improved."

"The installation of containers could be simplified, as it currently requires a senior-level installer."

"More connectors could be available for the product as some of the third-party software doesn't have default connectors."

"It is not easy to deploy. It requires someone with a high level of knowledge in the solution to deploy it, not just anyone can do it."

"The interface could be better."

"I've been using IBM App Connect for about twenty-five years, and while I like it, there are some areas for improvement. The trace policy is ridiculous, and the biggest issue is the cost—it's expensive. People would use it much more if the price point weren't so high."

More IBM App Connect cons

"The solution does not work properly when we apply filters and we get errors."

"Being able to share Zaps and organize them with teammates would allow sharing and refining scenarios and even combining steps that require different people's credentials."

"I think that this solution should have more apps connected to it."

"System-to-system is fine, but when it comes to system-to-user, where Zapier is helping to communicate to a user, that's a one-way communication. If that user has to perform some action on that notification, the action isn't handled by Zapier. So there's no way to orchestrate that and it's very cumbersome."

"It could support various languages along with Python."

"It is not worth the money if you have a little bit of a technical mind...Zapier is not able to set up different modules. When automation doesn't work, it's not that easy to find why it didn't work."

"I would like to see them improve the Quickbase integration. Currently, it only allows triggering actions when records are added, but it would be more useful if we could also trigger actions when records are modified or deleted."

"Some apps are not available yet. For instance, a connection with Joomla! would be great. In general, all the most-used apps are available, but I bumped into Joomla! with a client."

More Zapier cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive if we want to scale."

"The price could be better."

"Initially, App Connect was quite expensive because the cost was based on the number of processors we used. However, it's now based on containers, which means we can be more specific about our consumption and get a better price."

"The cost depends upon the consumer."

"App Connect is not cheap."

"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."

"The solution's pricing isn't cheap, but you can get good discounts based on your competitive deal."

"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."

"It's very affordable."

"Zapier is a paid service. Its license renews monthly, and Zapier will downgrade your subscription to the free version when your credit card doesn't have funds. That significantly impacts your service because everything halts completely. Zapier doesn't have any hidden costs."

"Per task, there is a monthly plan involving 15 euros...Also, in different forms, they just give you the ability to use different features. They charge 18.58 euros for the first standard plan, which includes 750 tasks. So, it is about 25 cents per task."

"It's very straightforward licensing. There's only one cost you have to pay, and if you want a relevant pricing plan, I think you have two or three different models or packages which include the number of notifications or Zaps, as they call it, that you can program."

"The price of Zapier is approximately $75 monthly."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"There is a free plan that is, of course, limited. However, it allows you to understand and check true scenarios for a while."

"Think your Zaps through to make sure you don't use more Zaps than you need."

More Zapier pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.

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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

University

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM App Connect?

I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's like...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?

IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products.

What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?

Our company has a big project for delivery and e-commerce sites. We use IBM App Connect to deliver information to our end users after they buy our products. We get information from many places, suc...

What do you like most about Zapier?

The product's most valuable feature is automation.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zapier?

The pricing is suitable. It's not cheap, but not expensive.

What needs improvement with Zapier?

The pricing could be a little cheaper.

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Product Reports

Download IBM App Connect product report

IBM App Connect

November 2024

Download Zapier product report

October 2024

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron

No data available

Learn More

IBM

Overview

Rapidly connect public clouds, private clouds and on-premises application

App Connect Professional is IBM’s cloud integration offering which delivers an integration solution
• With ease-of-use, flexibility and increased responsiveness to the evolving business needs, while removing the daunting complexities of integration.
• Provides the powerful combination of a ‘simple integration experience’ for business users looking to automate how their applications talk to each other; coupled with a ‘configuration based integration’ approach for IT.
• App Connect Professional is for the teams and integration developers who need to solve more complex problems and need powerful tooling for integration scenarios

Zapier is a tool for primarily non-technical users to connect together web apps.

An integration between two apps is called a Zap. A Zap is made up of a Trigger and one or more Actions or Searches.

Whenever the trigger happens in one app, Zapier will automatically perform the actions or searches in another app in order.

Zaps are very lightweight and easy to set up. Zaps do not import or export old data (they only operate on new items created after the Zap is enabled). Zaps are also not kept in sync ("two way syncing") after the Zap is triggered.

Zaps are deceivingly simple if you're used to dealing with complex and difficult integrations. Their simplicity is what enables anyone to create them.

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.

BuzzFeed, Groupon, Spotify, Columbia University, FOX