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Zapier is a software platform that lets people connect different apps together so they can pass data and trigger actions automatically, without writing any code.
Zapier is a workflow automation company. It lets people stitch together the apps they already use — email, spreadsheets, chat tools, payment systems, customer databases — so that an action in one app automatically triggers an action in another, with no programming required. You build a "Zap" by picking a trigger ("a new row appears in this spreadsheet") and an action ("send a message to that chat channel"), and Zapier runs it for you in the background.
The company makes money by selling subscriptions. There's a free tier for people who just want to try it or automate a couple of small tasks, and paid plans scale up based on how many automated tasks you run per month and how many steps each automation has. Its customers range from solo freelancers and small businesses to large companies — anyone drowning in repetitive copy-paste work between tools that don't otherwise talk to each other. Zapier's edge is breadth: it connects thousands of different apps, so it's often the simplest glue available, and once a business has built its automations on Zapier, switching away means rebuilding all of them. Zapier is privately held, meaning its shares don't trade on a stock exchange, so there's no ticker and no public share price. The company was founded in 2011 by Wade Foster, Bryan Helmig, and Mike Knoop, and it grew largely through word-of-mouth and content marketing rather than big ad spending. It has stayed profitable and independent, which is unusual for a software company of its size — it didn't need to raise piles of venture money or sell itself to a bigger firm.
The bigger picture is that Zapier sits in a crowded and fast-moving market. Competitors include newer automation tools and the built-in integrations that big software platforms now ship themselves — for example, Microsoft bundles automation into its Power Platform, and Salesforce owns MuleSoft for connecting systems. Zapier's bet is that being the neutral, app-agnostic middleman — the one place that connects everything to everything — keeps it valuable even as the giants build their own pipes. Whether that holds up as artificial intelligence makes it easier to automate work is the key question hanging over the business.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026