What does Zapier do?

Zapier is a tool that helps business people make custom integrations between their favorite tools, without needing to write any code.

Last updated: July 4, 2025

The TL;DR

Zapier is a tool that helps business people make custom integrations between their favorite tools, without needing to write any code.

Most SaaS tools rely on some sort of integration to get the data you need in the place you need it (e.g. Salesforce data in Hubspot)
Tools have native, built-in integrations for popular stuff, but building custom ones for what you need requires developer time
Zapier lets you create custom integrations – to share data, trigger workflows, and more – without having to code or rely on your engineers
Recently, Zapier has been expanding their product line with a tool to create custom forms + a no-code database

Zapier claims that almost 70% of the Fortune 1,000 use the tool in some capacity, so it’s pretty popular. But to understand Zapier, one must first understand the humble integration.

Terms Mentioned

Companies Mentioned

Stripe

$PRIVATE

Zapier

$PRIVATE

The core Zapier product: integrations

The Zapier product is very simple – it lets you connect a tool to another tool without writing code. Imagine I want to automatically send an email to whoever cancels their subscription, asking them what I could have done better.

With Zapier, I simply choose my trigger (Stripe, in this case, who knows when people cancel) and then use their UI to hook it up to an email workflow.

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With Zapier, you can do all of this without writing a single line of code. There are something in the range of 5,000 different apps on Zapier, some popular and well supported like Stripe and Gmail, and others less so. Some of these apps are built and maintained by Zapier themselves, while others are created by the developers of those apps, and the community.

What’s an integration?

Just about every SaaS tool’s website will, at some point, mention their “integrations” – what are those?

The TL;DR

Zapier is a tool that helps business people make custom integrations between their favorite tools, without needing to write any code.

Most SaaS tools rely on some sort of integration to get the data you need in the place you need it (e.g. Salesforce data in Hubspot)

Tools have native, built-in integrations for popular stuff, but building custom ones for what you need requires developer time

Zapier lets you create custom integrations – to share data, trigger workflows, and more – without having to code or rely on your engineers

Recently, Zapier has been expanding their product line with a tool to create custom forms + a no-code database

Zapier claims that almost 70% of the Fortune 1,000 use the tool in some capacity, so it’s pretty popular. But to understand Zapier, one must first understand the humble integration.

The core Zapier product: integrations

With Zapier, I simply choose my trigger (Stripe, in this case, who knows when people cancel) and then use their UI to hook it up to an email workflow.

Loading image...

What does Zapier do?

The TL;DR

Terms Mentioned

Server

Integration

API

Database

Query

Companies Mentioned

Stripe

Zapier

The core Zapier product: integrations

What’s an integration?

Access the full post in a knowledge base

Analyzing Software Companies

Where to next?

What does Elastic do?

What Does Algolia do?

What does MongoDB do?

What does Zapier do?

The TL;DR

Terms Mentioned

Server

Integration

API

Database

Query

Companies Mentioned

Stripe

Zapier

The core Zapier product: integrations

What’s an integration?

Access the full post in a knowledge base

Analyzing Software Companies

Where to next?

What does Elastic do?

What Does Algolia do?

What does MongoDB do?