Zapier is one of the best automation tools available today. In fact, it’s a favorite here at Smith.ai — of all of our integrations, our virtual receptionists seem to like this one more than most. It’s simple, effective, and makes automation something you don’t even have to think about, which is the whole point. Of course, Zapier comes with several different apps and tools that you can integrate for business use. They all have their own perks and uses, but you might be in the market for something specific.
What if, however, you’re just looking for the best Zapier apps for the small business owner or manager? Well, fortunately, you’re in the right place. In the list below, we’ll review the top Zapier premium apps and solutions that can help your small business automate anything and everything, from email marketing to payment collection, appointments, and more.
Business automation helps brands get more done with less effort and can lighten the load when the staff is small or the budget is tight. These tools can be used for functions, notifications and reminders, and more. You rely on a lot of software, tools, and mediums to keep your business running and stay in touch with your clients, and it’s up to you to figure out how to integrate (read: juggle) everything so that you can spend less time on the behind-the-scenes work and more time with your clients or customers.
Creating automated workflows is a fairly simple process. Using automation, you can tell various apps, software, and other technology exactly how you want it to work, when you want it to work, and even how often you want the various tasks to be performed or how frequently you want reminder notifications. With Zapier, you can create all kinds of custom workflows and leave them running in the background and spend less time on tedious and repetitive tasks.
Why? That’s also a question that you’ll have to ask yourself. If you can find the “why” for any task that proves the case for automation, add it to your list of Zapier apps to check out automation tools for (and don’t worry, there are more than 3,000 available from the brand). By learning how to add automation, you’ll be able to get back more of your time and get more out of your daily business tasks and routines.
(And if you want to take your automation to the next level, ask how our dedicated virtual receptionists can provide you with assistance for 24/7 call answering and live website chat, appointment booking and lead intake, payment collection, overflow calling, and other mission-critical services.)
Although we could easily spend days going over all of the thousands of apps and integrations that Zapier offers, there are definitely some key players that should be on everyone’s radar. After all the years of working with this automation platform and seeing what all it has to offer, we’ve collected the top 20 that we think everyone can use.
Typeform is a great tool that allows you to create forms and then turn those forms into Google Docs, collect information from digital forms instead of paper, and improve participation by giving people a better way to communicate with your brand. Typeform can be connected to Google Docs and other tools with Zaps, too.
Like Typeform, Google Forms is a great tool for collecting information and data. From surveys and customer satisfaction inquiries to general intake forms and more, this app is great to integrate with Zapier to automate collecting data and help save time and reduce the risk of human error. You can set up Zaps to generate surveys after a transaction is complete, auto-send forms to new members, and so forth.
Squarespace is a dedicated platform for total e-commerce business management. It’s also a blogging platform, website builder, and hosting service, in addition to accepting payments and other solutions. Squarespace can integrate with Mailchimp, email services, marketing automation tools like HubSpot, and more. This platform can be used in several ways to bolster your business and automation with Zapier takes it one step further.
If you’re looking to generate surveys, SurveyMonkey is a great app to have on your Zapier list. You can create a Zap to send surveys to users based on certain information that they input, by request, or even when they perform an action like emailing customer service or completing a purchase. Using Zaps, you can make all kinds of actions happen with this tool.
Slack is a messaging and productivity tool that is designed for team collaboration. In addition to robust messaging features, there’s also the option to share files and docs, integrate with Gmail and other services, and even connect Slack to your marketing software like HubSpot and others for total automation of your collaborative efforts. You can even create a Zap to notify everyone of a new Slack message when you post, and more.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email tools available today. This app makes email marketing easy and gives you the tools you need to stay in touch. It can also integrate with several of the other apps here and you can generate Zaps to handle tasks like generating emails from landing page sign-ups, creating email newsletters, and launching drip campaigns based on certain actions. You can import subscribers from Typeform and Facebook Ads, export to Google Sheets, and more.
HubSpot is a marketing automation and CRM platform that gives you all of the tools that your business needs. It’s a standalone tool that works wonders on its own, but integrating it with Zapier will allow you to connect new subscribers to your email campaigns via Mailchimp and others, export data to Google Sheets, link new marketing communications to the team in Slack, and perform other tasks to keep your marketing running smoothly. There are thousands of guided workflows available.
Facebook Pages makes it easy to connect with followers and customers, share content, create events, and run targeted Facebook ad campaigns. When combined with Zapier and the other tools and apps available today, you can share new Instagram posts directly to Facebook, post new RSS items, generate new WordPress posts, and have them automatically posted to Facebook, and more. You can also share pages on Slack and LinkedIn, and more.
Schedule by Zapier is a native app that can be used for recurring tasks and events. You can create Zaps to trigger certain events or tasks, sync your calendars, and even send daily emails, create Trello cards based on schedules, generate daily reminders, and other task-related streamlining and automation. There is a lot to love in this compact scheduling app, which can integrate with tons of tools and software.
Airtable is an organizational database that makes it fast and easy to create tables to track sales, leads, inventory management, vacation schedules, and more. If you need a table for it, Airtable can help. It integrates with thousands of apps and has several Zaps available, including creating Google Calendar events from Airtable records, adding new Typeform entries, sending email notifications, and even importing new events from Google Calendar and other tools.
Calendly is one of our favorite scheduling tools that help eliminate the back-and-forth that scheduling hassles are known for. It saves time and ensures that everything is streamlined. You can even integrate Calendly with your website and set up Zaps to connect new appointments to your Google or Outlook calendar or other tools that you use. Calendly can also integrate with Typeform and other tools to generate forms for appointments and intake and more.
Salesforce is, by and large, one of the best marketing and customer relationship management platforms available today. It has several iterations for industries of all kinds, and it integrates seamlessly with thousands of different apps and tools. using Zapier, you can create Zaps to manage Salesforce for things like creating Slack messages for new leads, adding new Typeform entries directly to Salesforce, and even adding Facebook and other leads to the platform with Gravity Forms and other tools.
Stripe is an online payment processing tool that makes it easy for businesses of all kinds to accept online payments. You can use Zapier to create a Zap to send people an invoice after a service is completed, for example, or even to set up automated reminders so that people pay their bills on time and more. Stripe can also be set up with Zaps to export billing files and invoices to Google Sheets or other destinations.
Asana is an information management and collaboration tool that helps businesses organize tasks and people effectively. It can be used to change the way people work together, create better collaborations, and even integrates with Gmail, Google Sheets, Trello and Slack, and other tools to improve productivity with automation. You can generate Zaps to notify people via email when new tasks or cards are posted on Trello, for example, or engage any of the dozens of other Zaps.
Most people are familiar with WordPress, the blogging and website platform that allows people to create open-source websites and includes several extensions, integrations, and tools for total customization. WordPress can be integrated with productivity Zaps, or you can even create Zaps to post content to your blog, and more.
ActiveCampaign is a marketing and campaign management tool that makes it easy for you to streamline your marketing campaigns and manage everything in one place. You can use Zaps to sync contacts, add and update information, export details to Google Sheets, connect with customers via Mailchimp when certain actions occur, and more. This tool includes several of its own features for marketing automation, too.
ClickFunnels is a marketing funnel tool that allows you to create landing pages that are sure to convert. This tool can be integrated with Zapier to create Zaps to send Gmail messages or update subscribers on Mailchimp when they sign up at the site. you can even add new contacts and purchases from ClickFunnels to Google Sheets, ActiveCampaign, and other platforms with just a few clicks when you set up the Zap.
Designed as an all-in-one voice and text chat service for gamers, Discord has become a popular chat tool for several companies, organizations, and groups that need a better way. You can link Discord to YouTube to send new videos in the messaging feature or combine the RSS by Zapier to create RSS feeds in the Discord app, and more. Discord might have been designed for gamers, but today it’s one of the hottest chat servers around for business and others.
Dropbox is a file sharing platform that makes collaboration easy. People can rely on this tool to share files and documents and help their business run more smoothly. With Zapier, you can generate Zaps that can sync files with Google Drive, send notifications via Slack, or even duplicate file sharing on Trello and other boards. Guided workflows make it easy to sync and share files with Zaps so that it’s a hands-off experience.
YouTube is a great app to use with Zapier, and it can be incorporated in several ways. You can set up links to publish to social media when new YouTube videos go live so that the Zap does all the work, or even collect traffic data from YouTube follow links, send videos via email, and more. Create Zaps that integrate with WordPress, Salesforce, Discord, and more.
Of course, although a phone answering app for Zapier is a great choice, 24/7 live virtual receptionists is a better one—and that’s where we come into play. Any of the tools on this list will serve to automate your business and streamline your efforts, but they are not all created equally. Take things one step further and take the stress of choosing the best tools off your own hands by letting us help.
At Smith.ai, we can integrate with hundreds, if not thousands, of apps and tools that you use every day to automate and streamline basic tasks. This will give you more time to focus on your customers while trusting that we’re doing the behind-the-scenes work of fielding customer queries, setting up new automations, and more.
Schedule a live chat consultation today to learn more about how the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can take your automation to the next level. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.
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