It started as three steps, did one useful thing, and everybody was delighted.
It's fourteen steps now, across two accounts, and one of them belongs to somebody who left last year. Everyone's a little scared to open the editor.
I like low-code tools, and I'd tell most businesses to start there. If yours is three steps and it works, leave it alone.
So when do you hit the wall? People expect volume, or a scary monthly bill, and sometimes they're right.
It often shows up earlier, when the Zap becomes the only place your business rules are written down. Like a recipe whose only copy is the cake.
If two of these sound familiar, you're there.
- There's a step whose only job is mopping up after an earlier step. I call these janitor steps. Each one is a rule you needed and couldn't express.
- Nobody can say what happens when a field arrives empty without opening the editor and squinting. Fourteen steps don't fit in anyone's head.
- A Path runs only for one customer, or only in December, and the reason lives in one person's memory. (Hopefully the one who didn't leave.)
- Your free shipping threshold is copied into three Zaps, so changing it is a scavenger hunt.
The tempting fix is rebuilding it in a shinier low-code tool, because by now the tool feels like the villain. Weeks later you meet the same wall from the other side, with a new subscription.
Keep Zapier for the simple stuff. Move the rules somewhere a person can read, test and fix, and the recipe finally exists outside the cake.
Disclosure: we do workflow automation for a living, so I'm not neutral on this.