Workflow automation, APIs & webhooks

Picking the tool

There's no single right answer, but the trade-offs are predictable:

• Zapier: fastest to build simple flows, huge app catalogue, gets expensive at high volume.
• Make: visual and flexible with branching and iteration, cheaper per operation than many alternatives.
• n8n: can be self-hosted, allows code steps, good for higher volumes and data you'd rather keep in-house.
• Code (a serverless function or small service): best for heavy volume, complex logic, or when you need tests and version control.
• Rule of thumb: start no-code to learn the process, then move the hot path to code once volume or complexity demands it.

Make every step safe to repeat

Webhooks are often delivered more than once, and retries re-run steps. Design for it. Look up before you create (find contact by email; create only if missing). Store an idempotency key, such as the event ID, and skip events you've already processed. Prefer "set field to X" over "increment field". Then a retry is harmless.

Failures are part of the design

For each step, decide what happens when it fails. Temporary errors (timeouts, 429s, 5xx) get retried with growing delays and a cap. Permanent errors (bad input, missing record) go to an error branch that logs the payload and alerts a channel someone watches. Keep failed items somewhere you can replay them from after fixing the cause, instead of rebuilding them by hand.

Leave it maintainable

Before calling a workflow done:

• Connections use a shared service account, not your personal login.
• A short doc says what triggers it, what it changes, who owns it and how to pause it.
• Run history is kept long enough to debug last week's problem.
• There's an alert when it stops running entirely, not just when a step errors.