7 Best Automation Software & Tools 2023

Having used many other parsing tools (like Zapier's free email parser), we've found that if you want to consistently extract important data from structured emails, there's no better tool than that of Mailparser.

What makes Mailparser better is the consistency that comes with setting it up properly.

It allows for a deep level of granularity, allowing you to extract the exact data-points that you want from emails. From there, you can easily categorize and pass the data along to other tools, like your CRM.

Zapier's solution on the other hand, while "free", was created as more of a lead magnet for Zapier. It hasn't been updated in years, and attempts to extract data by highlighting data in an email, paired with some incredibly basic machine learning.

What I'm saying, is that it works, until it doesn't. If the email changes in any way, even slightly, your output is a mess of data. Mailparser on the other hand, while paid, allows you to actually make emails a consistent part of your process.

This is very much a category of "you get what you pay for".

Outfunnel is one of the few tools that we use with absolutely every single one of our customers (we also use it internally here at Efficient App).

If you fill out our "Request Audit" form form for example, you'll get an automatic email sent from us + we'll see the various pages you visited on our site all within our CRM.

Features

Outfunnel essentially takes marketing insights and connects it to your CRM. Tie that in with some automated email for follow-up, and you have an entirely automated start to your sales process.

It even connects with other tools like Calendly, and automatically logs booked calendar invites and the form responses right there within your CRM activity section.

What's most amazing is they take all of these insights and role up a clean "lead score", so you can see what prospects and customers are most engaged.

We couldn't run our business without Outfunnel. They are one of just a few software solutions that we'd even say this for.

Watch the video below to see how we automate our business using Outfunnel 🔥

Final Verdict

If integrating tools to your CRM is important to you (as it should be), Outfunnel plays a core role in being that connector for you.

What's great is that Outfunnel is CRM agnostic, so if you're using Copper, Outfunnel works. Using Pipedrive? That works too! HubSpot, Salesforce, and believe it or not, even Airtable! 🤯

Although as a refresher... If you've somehow stumbled upon using Airtable as your company CRM, please read this right now 😅

Secret 👀

Are you using Copper and considering buying the business tier for the "Marketing Tools" feature-set? Would you believe us that they are really just white-labeling Outfunnel on the back-end of that?

Yep! So if you're considering the business tier of Copper, it might just be cheaper going directly to Outfunnel (and if you use our link here, they'll know we sent you and enable the email marketing features for your account)

Whalesync is PieSync reborn and reimagined (sadly it was acquired and shut down by Hubspot).

When it comes to 2-way data syncing between apps, that's where tools like Zapier and Make fall apart.

If you're looking for the most powerful 2-way sync on the market between the apps that Whalesync works best with (e.g. Webflow, Airtable, Notion, and Hubspot, amongst others), then there's no other place to look.

Our Webflow site is actually starting to get so complex, that we're actually using Whalesync to manage all of these apps and listings within Airtable using Whalesync.

Important note: We do not use Whalesync + Airtable for managing/writing blog posts or any in-depth rich text fields, as Airtable does not allow for inline images or code snippets (and Webflow doesn't allow for "open in new tab" links within rich text fields via their API), so if you have those fields enabled, they will overwrite all of your rich text in-line images/code blocks and you will have to do a backup recovery within Webflow (please learn from our mistakes).

Zapier is the most popular integration and automation platform on the market. While they've had competitors arise over the years like Make, Tray, and Workato, they've managed to build one of the most user-friendly interfaces of them all, along with the largest number of deeply supported apps. Not a small feat whatsoever.

If you're using a modern software (take any app listed on our site for the most part), and there's sure to be a Zapier connector. This is pretty baffling when you really think about it.

Competition

When comparing Zapier vs Make for example, Make may look more user-friendly and accessible, but we're here to tell you that isn't the case. Make is more powerful with some inline formulas and other logic power features, but that definitely does not make it easier to use. If anything, it's easy to feel quite overwhelmed when first using Make.

Time and time again, in trying Make, we have found ourselves coming back to Zapier. It really can be bent and molded into what it needs to be.

Final Thoughts

In recent months, Zapier has gone incredibly deep into leveraging AI like OpenAI to rethink and evolve the integration space as a whole. This is something we applaud, and have been quite impressed by.

We're seeing Zapier slowly outgrow even just the integration world, and actually evolve into one of the best no code tools on the market. At the rate they are going with AI, alongside Tables and Interfaces, we wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing Airtable vs Zapier actually come up in the conversation in the future in the No-Code Builder space along with the Database space. For right now though, we'll have to award the winner to Airtable, but that doesn't mean we're not keeping a close eye on what Zapier has up its sleeve.

While at first glance Make may look more user-friendly and visually appealing than that of Zapier with their drag-and-drop interface and animated bubble-like components, it's deceptively complex, yet extremely powerful.

Make is much more than a tool to just pass data from one app to another, it's also a fully-featured data manipulation tool for the data.

Because of that, learning how to use Make effectively is actually like learning a programming language, which is where the initial deception comes from.

The people I know that use Make as their main integration tool, are using it for quite complex data problems, for large companies, and they are often just as technical as a traditional engineer.

If you don't know what an API is, how webhooks function, and how arrays work, you're likely going to struggle with using Make.

If you are considering HubSpot because of price (after hearing things like 50–90% off the first year)—let me stop you right now, you're playing directly into their marketing shtick (you'll see the #1 concern with HubSpot is actually price).

HubSpot was not initially built as a CRM, it was a marketing email automation platform. A powerful (and expensive) one at that—but credit where credit is due. It's just, most companies often need to start with just a CRM to streamline their business operations.

It wasn't until HubSpot realized that acquiring customers for their $20–60k+/yr marketing automation suite was a difficult sell out of the gate, that they decided to built a "free CRM" as a lead magnet (and gateway) to their expensive core product.

So if you're a startup or a team of 20 or less (that will actually be using the CRM day-to-day), we highly recommend looking at a different CRM (we've done a deep-dive on that here). Because after the first year, you will be paying 2-4x more for HubSpot than the competing solutions (even at their proposed "Year 2+ discounts").

Now if your team is quite large and considering Salesforce, we actually do recommend Hubspot in most cases. HubSpot is more user-friendly than Salesforce, and you aren't going to be totally stuck in the expensive enterprise software stack that a tool like Salesforce often requires.

We will also add that we work with HubSpot often, and Copper + Pipedrive have far superior API's to HubSpot (in that we can build the same integration in 1/2 the time), so there is a second-order unseen cost associated to HubSpot.

Important Email Logging Notes

And finally, there's quite a bit that needs to "go right" in order for emails to automatically log from your team's inbox into HubSpot.

Replies to emails will be logged automatically on the contact's timeline if you have connected your personal email and the following is true:

1. The original email was sent through the CRM or sent from your connected email client with the sales email extension or add-in installed and the Log checkbox selected.

2. The original email was not sent to an email address or domain listed in your Never Log list.

3. The email address is still connected when the reply is received.

4. The reply is sent to an individual's email connected by the user who originally started the thread.

5. The sender of the reply is an existing contact in HubSpot.

(Something that most take for granted when working with a CRM like Copper, where everything just logs automatically with no prerequisites—even if the contact doesn't yet exist in the CRM, it'll go back 1 year through your team's email history and retroactively add those emails)