Category: Business and Making Money

The 8 best Pipedrive alternatives in 2026

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Keeping leads on a pile of index cards might work for a local and decidedly awkward paper salesman like Dwight Schrute, but the rest of us need an actual CRM to keep track of leads. Pipedrive is a great, sales-focused CRM that lets you build a seamless sales pipeline with robust dashboards and reporting. In fact, it’s such a powerful tool that it’s made Zapier’s lists of the best CRMs and the best CRMs for small businesses.

But if Pipedrive isn’t helping you close deals with the ruthless efficiency of a Schrute, you have lots of other options. Zapier’s app testers have spent hundreds of hours testing CRMs, including head-to-head tests comparing Pipedrive to its competitors. Based on all that testing, here are the best Pipedrive alternatives to help you narrow down your options.

The best Pipedrive alternative options

Salesforce Sales Cloud for scalability
HubSpot CRM for versatility
Zoho CRM for all-in-one value
Salesmate for small businesses
NetHunt for Gmail power users
Vtiger for the best free Pipedrive alternative
Attio for an AI-native CRM
monday CRM for mixing pipeline and project management

The best Pipedrive alternatives at a glance

	Best for	Standout features	Pricing	Website
Salesforce Sales Cloud	Scalability	Custom workflows, automation, and AgentExchange marketplace for integrations	From $25/user/month	Visit Salesforce
HubSpot CRM	Versatility	Modular tools for sales, marketing, and content management	Free plan available; paid plans from $7/month	Visit HubSpot
Zoho CRM	All-in-one value	Generous free plan; deep bench of 1,100+ native integrations plus Zoho’s 60-app suite	Free plan for 3 users; paid plans from $14/user/month	Visit Zoho
Salesmate	Small businesses	Automation journeys for visual workflow customization	From $23/user/month	Visit Salesmate
NetHunt CRM	Gmail power users	Seamless integration with Gmail for managing deals and automating workflows	From $24/user/month	Visit NetHunt
Vtiger	Free alternative	Robust CRM features including sales tracking, marketing tools, and inventory management	Free for up to 10 users; paid plans from $12/user/month	Visit Vtiger
Attio	AI-native CRM	Automatic contact enrichment; customizable pipeline with no-code builder	Free for up to 3 users; paid plans from $35/user/month	Visit Attio
monday CRM	Mixing pipeline and project management	One board for deals and delivery; user-friendly; AI sales agents	From $9/seat/month	Visit monday

Best Pipedrive alternative for scalability

Salesforce Sales Cloud (Web, iOS, Android)

Salesforce pros:

Heavily focused on rounding up customer data for increased clarity
Wide range of ambient AI features available in its Einstein Platform, plus agentic capabilities via Agentforce

Salesforce cons:

If you ever want to, it can be hard to migrate out of Salesforce

If your business is growing fast and you need a CRM that can keep up, Salesforce will get the job done. It has a solid set of CRM features as a foundation, but it can evolve with you—with the option to layer on additional tools, automation, and even custom-built extensions. Need advanced marketing automation? More robust reporting? Custom workflows? Salesforce can handle it all.

Pipedrive is designed for a more straightforward sales process, but Salesforce gives you the ability to tailor nearly every aspect of the platform. You can set up custom fields, automate approval processes, and even add smart labels to guide newer sales reps through deals. For example, if a discount exceeds a certain percentage, Salesforce can flag it for manager approval—saving time and keeping your deals structured.

And with Salesforce’s massive AgentExchange marketplace, you can connect to countless other tools, from marketing automation platforms to data visualization dashboards. Plus, as your business moves beyond the mid-market stage, there’s an entire ecosystem of agencies and developers ready to help you customize Salesforce into a specialized powerhouse for your unique workflows.

If you don’t want to wait for that stage, you can use Salesforce’s Zapier integration to start customizing and automating right away. Do things like sending your team Slack notifications for new sales opportunities, or pulling leads from Facebook and Google Ads straight into Salesforce automatically. Learn more about automating Salesforce.

Automate Salesforce

Salesforce Sales Cloud price: From $25/user/month for Starter Suite up to $550/user/month for Max

Best Pipedrive alternative for versatility

HubSpot CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

HubSpot CRM pros:

Lots of well-designed features
Generous free plan

HubSpot CRM cons:

When you need to upgrade, paid plans are confusing

HubSpot is an all-in-one platform designed to grow with you—so if you’re juggling multiple tools and want to consolidate everything in one place, HubSpot is a great fit. It offers a full suite of tools that support not just sales, but also marketing, customer service, content management, and even business operations.

The magic of HubSpot is in its “Hubs,” which cover everything from CRM and sales automation to email marketing, blogging, customer service, and workflow automation. Unlike Pipedrive, which mainly enhances the sales pipeline, HubSpot helps you attract leads, nurture relationships, and manage customers all in one ecosystem. You can create landing pages, schedule social media posts, track email campaigns, and even build a blog—all without needing third-party tools.

HubSpot’s AI-powered tools help you analyze customer interactions, optimize campaigns, and even generate content. Plus, the tool has deep automation capabilities. You can set up marketing sequences, automate sales outreach, and sync data across different departments effortlessly.

And if you don’t find the app you want in HubSpot’s huge marketplace, you can always open the door to thousands of other integrations by connecting HubSpot with Zapier. And if you’re working out of AI assistants like Claude or ChatGPT, you can even use Zapier to pull deal and contact data straight from HubSpot into the chat without switching tabs. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot.

Automate HubSpot

HubSpot price: Free plan available; paid plans start at $7/month.

Check out the full comparison of HubSpot vs. Pipedrive.

Best Pipedrive alternative for all-in-one value

Zoho CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

Zoho CRM pros:

Free plan available, with paid plans starting lower than most competitors
Deep bench of 1,100+ native integrations plus Zoho’s own 60-app suite

Zoho CRM cons:

Interface feels more crowded than Pipedrive’s, especially once you bring in other Zoho apps

Zoho CRM doesn’t ask you to choose between power and price. It handles the entire breadth of sales work—including leads, deals, multi-channel outreach, automation, and reporting. And because Zoho builds pricing to scale with you instead of punishing you for growing, you get forecasting and reporting depth that regularly beats what Pipedrive offers at the same tier.

That value isn’t just about the CRM in isolation, either. Because Zoho makes over 60 business apps, the CRM is really an entry point into a much bigger suite with marketing, support, finance, and more, all under one subscription instead of stitching together a dozen different tools. The tradeoff is that Zoho can’t be best-in-class at all 60 of those things, and most people end up using a fraction of what they’re paying for. But if you want a CRM that keeps unlocking more value as your business grows, it’s hard to beat.

Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, backs that up with real substance: it cleans up your contact data, flags the leads most likely to convert, catches anomalies like unusual drops in closed deals, and figures out the best time to call a given prospect. Zia also offers an AI agent builder, where you can deploy pre-built agents or build your own from scratch—pick from a range of hosted LLMs, including Zoho’s own model and several Qwen options, or bring your own API key. Just know it’s not the smoothest AI experience on this list yet; some of the agent features are still buggy. Zoho also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to your broader tech stack without waiting on Zoho’s native roadmap to catch up.

Automate Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM price: Free plan available for 3 users and up to 5,000 records. Paid plans, which add features like sales forecasting, custom reports, and more marketing automation features, start at $14/user/month (billed annually).

Check out the full comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zoho.

Best Pipedrive alternative for small businesses

Salesmate (Web, iOS, Android)

Salesmate pros:

Wide range of features
Intuitive user interface

Salesmate cons:

Building new modules comes with a learning curve

Unlike Pipedrive, which gates many of its best features behind pricey add-ons, Salesmate includes essential tools like workflow automation, email sequences, meeting scheduling, and email tracking even at its lower-tier plans. Upgrade to Pro, and you also get built-in collaboration tools like a Team Inbox for seamless communication among sales reps, which Pipedrive reserves for its more expensive plans. For small businesses trying to maximize their budget, these built-in features can make a huge difference.

Salesmate backs that up with real phone and SMS functionality, too. You’ll need to fill out a form and get your company approved first, and call rates apply on top of your subscription, but once that’s done, you can send and receive SMS directly inside the platform, with every message logged to the contact’s activity history. Calls can start right from the dashboard, or—more usefully—straight from a deal card in your pipeline, and when a call comes in, that contact’s page pulls up automatically so you’re never scrambling for context mid-conversation.

Salesmate’s automation tools are also a big win. While Pipedrive requires an upgrade to unlock automation, Salesmate lets you set up workflows on any plan—though more advanced features like email scheduling and bulk messaging come with higher tiers. And if you want a more visual, flexible automation experience, Salesmate’s drag-and-drop automation journey builder is a game-changer, helping you build and refine your sales process with an intuitive, flowchart-like builder. If you upgrade to a Pro plan or above, you get access to Sandy AI, the AI assistant that can do things like book calls, draft emails, and create tasks.

You can also connect Salesmate to Zapier and integrate your CRM with the rest of your tech stack to automate all your CRM workflows.

Automate Salesmate

Salesmate price: From $23/user/month for contact, company, and deal management; the Pro plan is $39/user/month and adds email sequences, Team Inbox, and Sandy AI.

Check out the full comparison of Pipedrive vs. Salesmate.

Best Pipedrive alternative for Gmail power users

NetHunt CRM (Gmail, Web, iOS, Android)

NetHunt CRM pros:

Easy Gmail integration
Keeps your CRM data clean with robust validation

NetHunt CRM cons:

Has a bit of a learning curve

If you live in Gmail and wish your inbox could double as a CRM, NetHunt is here to grant your wildest dreams. While Pipedrive is a standalone CRM built for managing sales pipelines, NetHunt takes a different approach—it seamlessly integrates right into your Gmail workspace, letting you manage leads, track deals, and automate workflows without ever leaving your inbox. It doesn’t stop at email, either: NetHunt connects to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and Viber, funneling every one of those conversations into a single Chats section right alongside your inbox.

Once you install the extension, your inbox gets an upgrade: deals, contacts, and companies are organized in folders, and your sales pipeline appears as a Kanban board. No more bouncing between tabs or copying data into another CRM—everything you need is right where you’re already working. And since most sales conversations start with an email, having a CRM built directly into Gmail just makes sense.

NetHunt also helps automate your workflow. You can set up triggers to update lead statuses as emails come in or go out, saving you the hassle of manual data entry. And if you need even more automation, you can connect NetHunt to Zapier to sync data across your entire tech stack.

Automate NetHunt

NetHunt CRM Price: From $24/user/month (billed annually)

Best free Pipedrive alternative

Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android)

Vtiger pros:

Robust features across the board
Well-organized mega menu

Vtiger cons:

Mobile apps are hard to use

Good news for cash-strapped small businesses everywhere: you don’t actually have to pay to use an out-of-the-box CRM platform. While Pipedrive requires a paid subscription from the start, Vtiger offers a generous free plan that supports up to 10 users, 3,000 contacts, and 1,000 email sends per month. It’s an excellent choice for businesses that need a powerful CRM without the upfront cost.

The platform offers a streamlined, easy-to-navigate interface that doesn’t overwhelm you with buttons and menus. But don’t let its clean design fool you—Vtiger packs in a full CRM suite, complete with contact management, sales tracking, marketing tools, and even inventory management. It also comes with built-in email marketing, letting you create campaigns, segment contacts, and track basic analytics without needing a separate tool.

Another thing that sets Vtiger apart is its thoughtful onboarding. It walks you through a step-by-step onboarding checklist to help you get familiar with the platform, and every time you visit a new screen, a helpful video tutorial pops up. Whether you’re new to CRMs or just want a smooth transition from another tool, Vtiger makes the learning process effortless.

And while the free plan is impressive, Vtiger’s paid plans are structured in a way that can save you money as your team grows. Instead of charging a flat rate per user like Pipedrive, Vtiger lets you assign different levels of access—users with full CRM privileges pay more, while those who only need limited access get a discount. It’s a cost-effective option for businesses with multiple departments that don’t all need the same level of CRM functionality.

Connect Vtiger to Zapier so it can talk to all the other apps your team uses. Do things like automatically adding leads from Facebook ad clicks or updating your Google Ads contact lists from new leads in Vtiger. Learn more about how to automate Vtiger.

Automate Vtiger

Vtiger price: Generous free plan; One Growth plan starts at $12/user/month.

Best Pipedrive alternative for an AI-native CRM

Attio (Web, iOS, Android)

Attio pros:

AI-native CRM
Flexible data model

Attio cons:

AI and automation consume the same monthly credit pool; you’ll have to buy a credit package if you’re using both heavily

Pipedrive is a solid pipeline tool, but it wasn’t built AI-first. Attio was, and that affects how fast you can get moving. Most CRMs take teams months to reach peak productivity, while Attio compresses that timeline into one to two weeks. Customize the data model, build your core AI workflows, and iterate as your sales process evolves.

That AI focus pays off first in manual data entry. Attio automatically enriches the contacts and companies you add to your workspace, and you can set up AI autofill fields on any object to summarize information, reason on buying signals, or pull in web data. So instead of logging every activity by hand at the end of the day, you can get straight to work qualifying leads and working deals.

The data model itself breaks from CRM convention, too. You’re not locked into the standard contact-company-deal chain; you can define whatever object types actually matter to your business, whether that’s investors, partnerships, or hiring pipelines, and decide field by field whether the data is static or AI-generated. All of it is no-code, so you can have a custom-built pipeline ready in a few hours without filing an IT ticket. Connect Attio to Zapier, and those workflows extend across the rest of your stack, too.

Automate Attio

Attio price: Free plan for up to 3 seats. Plus plan starts at $35/user/month (billed annually).

Best Pipedrive alternative for mixing pipeline and project management

monday CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

monday CRM pros:

Same boards handle deals and delivery
Visual enough that reps actually use it
AI sales agents from the Standard plan

monday CRM cons:

Less CRM depth than purpose-built tools
Automations capped on some plans

No matter how hard a deal was to close, the work doesn’t end there. Somebody still has to onboard the client, deliver what you promised in the pitch, and hit every deadline along the way. Most CRMs expect you to export closed deals to a separate project management or customer service tool (and hope all the context survives the trip). But monday lets you track your deals beyond the traditional pipeline.

The pipeline itself is a board, with deals as “items,” stages as “groups,” and you drag between them. Columns hold whatever you want—like deal value, close date, owner, or even a formula—and the centralized comms hub pulls every email, call, and meeting for a contact into one timeline. You can send quotes and invoices from inside it too, capped at 50/month on the Standard plan and 250 on Pro.

The AI is more built-out than you might expect at monday’s price point. The Standard plan includes an outreach caller agent that qualifies leads and logs call summaries back to the CRM, a lead sourcer agent that finds and enriches prospects matching your profile, and a meeting prep agent that briefs you before customer calls. You can build your own agents too, all running on AI credits included with each plan.

Where monday mainly comes up short is depth. If your sales process needs territory rules or multi-rep credit splits, this isn’t the tool for you. Every plan also starts at three seats, so a two-person team pays for three. But if pipeline and delivery living together sounds appealing, monday is worth a look.

Plus, you can connect monday.com with Zapier to pull leads from multiple sources, connect your pipeline with other sales and marketing tools, and access your CRM data straight from your AI chat window. Learn more about automating monday.com.

Automate monday

monday CRM price: Basic starts at $12/seat/month, Standard is $17/seat/month, Pro is $28/seat/month, and Ultimate is custom-priced.

Which Pipedrive alternative should you use?

Picking a Pipedrive alternative is all about what matters most to you. Do you want a tool that’ll scale with your business? In that case, go with Salesforce. Are you looking for a versatile option? Pick HubSpot. If you need a free option with robust sales features, go with Vtiger.

Once you’ve chosen the right tool for you, you’ll be ready to get to work (mustard-colored shirt optional) and say: “I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me.”

Related reading:

This article was originally published in March 2025. The most recent update was in October 2026.

October 2, 2026

AI in IT: How artificial intelligence is transforming IT operations
A few months ago, a smoke detector started chirping while I was trying to sleep. I cursed a little too loudly, plodded out of bed, changed the battery, and… heard the beep again eight minutes later. It turned out to be a different smoke detector in another room that was the problem the whole time.

That same kind of situation happens a lot in IT. An alert or notification fires, it tells you the basics (but never really enough about where or why), and someone has to dig around to find the solution.

AI in IT can help you find which smoke detector to fix and what kind of batteries you need so your team can go back to bed. It can decipher all the messy tickets, group the alerts that belong together, and hand a human the version of the problem they can act on.

Here, I dive deeper into what AI in IT really does, plus seven use cases that you can bring to your team today.

Table of contents:
What is AI in IT?

AI in IT is the use of machine learning, language models, and autonomous agents to run and maintain technology. These systems can interpret unstructured input and decide what to do with it—sometimes even fixing the issue autonomously—rather than just passing the problem along to you.

It’s not as vague as it sounds, though, and can show up in a few different ways. AI in IT could mean setting up a workflow that interprets IT help desk tickets, answers what it can, and then automatically routes anything it can’t handle to the right agent. Or it can mean getting an alert that tells you which service is down and what to do about it before you even start digging into the problem. Someone typically still has to do some work (annoying, I know), but it arrives closer to a solution than it used to.

To see more examples, jump ahead to my roundup of the top use cases for AI in IT.

What kind of AI is used in IT?

Four technologies typically do most of the work:
- Machine learning (ML): Trained on your historical data, ML finds patterns at a volume no person can track. So when someone logs in at 2 a.m. and starts poking around in places that the account never goes, ML is what notices.
- Natural language processing (NLP): NLP reads the unstructured text your systems generate, from ticket descriptions to log lines. It’s what allows your intern to type in “my computer is being weird again” and get back an IT help desk ticket with a category and a queue.
- Large language models and generative AI: LLMs produce text and code on demand, which, in IT, usually means writing what nobody wants to write. You can have a draft of both incident summaries and knowledge base articles, for example, before the incident is even closed.
- AI agents: Agents take actions instead of only producing text. One can read an alert, decide it’s a real problem, and page the on-call engineer.
Why IT teams are adopting AI

The modern IT team is like the gigantic oak tree in my backyard, each branch sprawling with new data, tickets, and problems. More tools in your tech stack don’t necessarily mean less work. Usually, it just means more chances for things to go wrong.

For a growing company, staying on top of IT issues used to mean increasing headcount. Now, AI can take a lot of that on, and your team gets to spend their day on something more interesting than password resets.

Here are some of the top reasons IT teams are opting for AI:
- Incident resolution: Correlated alerts and AI-drafted context remove the painful fact-finding stage of every incident, saving engineers countless hours and gray hairs. So they spend less time firing passive-aggressive Slack messages at each other and more time fixing the problem.
- Data accuracy: AI catches duplicates, gaps, and anomalies as they happen instead of during a scheduled cleanup (which never seems to happen anyway). That beats learning your asset inventory was wrong when an auditor asks about a laptop that left the building two years ago.
- Cost control: Ticket deflection and self-healing infrastructure reduce the ticket volume that would otherwise call for a hiring spree. AI agents and workflow automations can resolve basic inquiries, so your IT support team only needs to handle the tickets that need a human touch.
- Employee experience: An employee with a basic problem pings IT, waits, and eventually gets asked whether they’ve tried restarting it. Nobody in that exchange is happy. The same question to a chatbot gets an answer in seconds.
Top 7 use cases for AI in IT

How you’ll use AI in IT depends on everything from your industry to your company size to the product or service you’re selling. These use cases should give you a sense of how you can bring AI into your IT ops.

IT service management (ITSM)

Most of ITSM is glorified routing work. A problem or incident comes in, somebody decides the best way to handle it, and it goes somewhere. An AI model can do all this: read an incoming request, determine what it is, assign a priority, and send it to where it belongs before a human has opened it.

Zapier’s AI Workflow Index found that 44% of IT teams’ AI workflows have AI writing for people, and 30% have it extracting information and updating records. Approvals and anything that grants access should still stop at a person, but a lot of the easy stuff can and should be automated.

Some examples:
- Change approval workflows: Accelerate change decisions with automated approval routing, stakeholder alerts, and status updates, with AI reading adding reasoning to each decision along the way.
- IT onboarding and offboarding: Automated account provisioning, ticket routing, and deprovisioning tasks can use AI to flag access anomalies and alert the right people at the right time.
- IT ticketing: AI can respond to tickets automatically, route issues that require a human, and fix issues autonomously.
Automate ITSM

Identity and access management (IAM)

A big chunk of any IT team’s week goes to the same few access questions, like why someone can’t log in to a crucial app or whether the new hire has everything they need. AI can sort those out without breaking a sweat, and when it can’t, it hands the situation to a person with a summary already attached.

You’ll notice it right away. Per the AI Workflow Index, 76% of runs for AI decision steps land outside business hours. A lot of that is routing calls getting made at 2 a.m., so the access request waiting for your team in the morning is already sorted, and the person who filed it didn’t spend the night wondering whether anyone had seen it.

Two places you could start:
- User provisioning: When a new hire or role change hits your HR system, AI can read the record and work out which apps and permissions that role needs.
- User access reviews: Nobody wants to comb through a spreadsheet of 400 permissions. AI can flag the ones that look off, like an intern with admin rights or a contractor who hasn’t logged in since spring, so reviewers only spend time on what matters.
Automate IAM

IT operations (AIOps)

AIOps, short for artificial intelligence for IT operations, is the practice of applying machine learning and NLP to optimize your IT processes. The point is to turn the hundreds of IT alerts and signals you get every day into an action plan for your human staff—or fix the issues itself so your human staff is off the hook.

In a roundabout way, AIOps is a broad enough umbrella that it kind of includes everything you’ve considered “AI in IT.” But a good way to think about it is by focusing on alert fatigue.

Here’s where AI can help:
- Server management: Instance alerts fire constantly, and most of them are just an annoyance. AI can read each one, group the alerts tied to the same issue, and route only what actually needs a human.
- Runbook execution: When a known issue pops up, AI can match it to the right runbook and kick off the first steps on its own.
- Backup management: A failed backup job is easy to miss in a sea of green checkmarks. AI can flag the failures that matter (like a critical system that’s missed two runs in a row) and open a follow-up task before anyone needs that backup.
Automate IT ops

Security operations

A wave of early 2000s media depicting actors smashing a keyboard and loudly proclaiming “I’m in!” no doubt spawned a generation of cybercriminals, or so I’d like to think. Those cybercriminals are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in your systems, which means AI security is a real part of the job for every IT team.

AI can watch log volume, incident timelines, and other detection measures that spotlight potential problems before you ever realize anything is wrong.

Here are a few you could start with:
- Cloud security: A misconfigured storage bucket doesn’t announce itself. AI can review cloud risk findings as they come in, work out which ones are exposed, and send those to the right team first.
- Data security management: When a file gets shared outside the company or a credential changes at an odd hour, AI can check whether that’s normal for the account and flag it if it isn’t.
- Firewall management: A risky rule change can hide among dozens of routine edits. AI can read each change, spot the ones that open up more than they should, and send them for review.
Automate security ops

Vulnerability management

Coding assistants are everywhere now: a Zapier survey found that 34% of people shipping software using AI tools have no formal programming background. And at least once a week, I’ll see a post on social media about how a senior dev has to clean up lines and lines of a junior’s AI coding slop (and yes, that’s true; I may have stumbled into a weird TikTok algorithm).

The code looks right, it compiles, and then it costs more to debug than writing it yourself would have. Worse, sometimes it ships with a vulnerability nobody caught—the simple fix is making sure every change gets scanned, and every finding gets tracked.

Here are two ways to do that:
- Vulnerability scanning & reporting: Scanners are great at finding things and terrible at telling you which ones matter. AI can read each report, rank findings by actual risk, and send the critical ones to the right team instead of dumping 300 results into a Slack channel.
- Remediation tracking: Finding a vulnerability is only half the job. AI can match each finding to the right owner, watch for fixes that stall, and escalate before a due date slips.
Automate vulnerability management

Software license management

Bad data was expensive long before anyone put an AI agent on top of it. Now, every new agent you add to your workflows inherits whatever mess is already lurking inside your data sources, giving cheerful yet incorrect answers at every turn.

AI does the cleanup that even the most stringent IT manager wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. Software licenses are a good place to see it because that’s typically where you’ll find seats still assigned to people who left months ago, or renewals that auto-charge before anyone checks usage.

A few areas to get you started:
- License provisioning: When someone requests a tool, AI can check whether you already pay for an unused seat and reassign it before anyone buys a new one.
- License renewal tracking: Before a renewal hits, AI can pull usage data and flag licenses nobody’s touched in months.
Automate software license management

Security compliance

According to Zapier’s AI Governance report, 85% of U.S. executives at companies with 500+ employees say AI is running critical or mission-critical workflows. And nearly 4 in 5 say their employees bypass governance processes to deploy those workflows faster.

Those two stats highlight the duality of AI: people are using it everywhere, and a lot of them are going around you to do it. AI systems don’t scan your employee handbook before processing requests, so ungoverned apps and shadow AI can cause serious data concerns.

Zapier sits between your agents and the apps they’re reaching into. Connections go through OAuth, so nobody’s pasting an API key into a chat window; you set permissions in one place instead of app by app; and every action an agent takes shows up in a log you can actually go read. That comes in handy when an auditor asks how your AI workflows are controlled.

A few ways to make audit season less painful:
- Compliance evidence collection: Audit prep usually means weeks of screenshots and approval messages. AI can pull evidence from tickets, logs, and docs as it’s created, match it to the right control, and flag what’s still missing.
- SOC 2 compliance: Controls drift quietly between audits. AI can track which approvals are overdue, summarize what changed, and keep the audit record current, so SOC 2 prep isn’t a last-minute scramble.
- ISO 27001 compliance: AI can remind owners when reviews come due and draft the update notes auditors will ask for, so no one has to reconstruct a year of decisions from memory.
Automate security compliance

Bring AI to your IT processes with Zapier

AI in IT can mean letting the bots triage tickets, correlate alerts, review code, and clean data. That raises some valid concerns about governance and access control, because the more AI tools that have access to your data, the greater the potential for misuse and breaches. The teams getting value out of AI in IT are working on both at the same time.

Zapier is built for that. Anyone in an organization can securely create workflows across 9,000+ apps, with IT in full control of what those workflows can reach, and who can reach them. Set the rules once, and everybody else can go build end-to-end processes without you having to watch over their shoulder.

Try Zapier

Related reading
October 2, 2026
Gemini connectors: How to connect Gemini Enterprise to the rest of your tech stack
Gemini is everywhere in Google apps: it can read your emails, pull in data from your calendar, and find that file you accidentally saved to your work Drive. But no matter how much of your work is in Google, there are always other apps you’ll need Gemini to access: things like your CRM, project management tool, marketing automation platform, and help desk, to name a few.

Gemini connectors add a few of those apps into the mix, and with Zapier, you can securely extend that reach to 9,000+ apps across your tech stack. Here’s everything you need to know about Gemini connectors, including how to set them up, what they can do, and how to make the most of them.

Note: Gemini Enterprise connectors are different from the connected apps in the personal Gemini app. If you’re a personal Google user looking to access your personal intelligence from gemini.google.com, here’s a guide to Gemini apps.

Table of contents:
What are Gemini connectors?

Gemini connectors are integrations for Gemini Enterprise that pull from enterprise sources like Confluence, Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft SharePoint, and dozens more. They’re designed for organizations that want Gemini grounded in their internal business data—not just public information or personal accounts.

Gemini Enterprise is a paid product (separate from Google AI Pro or AI Ultra), administered by IT, and accessed through a different interface. If you’re a regular Gemini user at work via Google Workspace, this likely isn’t your product—unless your organization has explicitly licensed and deployed it.

What can you do with Gemini connectors?

The specifics depend on the app you’re connecting to, but you’re generally working in two modes:
- Read (retrieve): Gemini can pull information from connected apps to give you more relevant, personalized answers. Ask it to summarize your unread emails, find a lead in your CRM, or update a ticket in your project management tool—and it’ll reach in and get it, rather than asking you to paste everything in yourself. Click Connectors in the chat box to toggle which sources Gemini can draw on, or let it figure out which connected service is relevant on its own.
- Write (take action): Some connectors let Gemini do things, not just read. That means you can do things like create tasks, send messages, and update records. The range varies by app—each one has a defined set of supported actions.
That means you could do something like ask Gemini to check your Gmail for a customer’s latest message, draft a reply, and add a follow-up task to your project management app—all from one conversation.

How to set up Gemini connectors

Gemini connectors are set up by admins, not individual users.
1. In the Gemini Enterprise app admin console, click Settings & help (cog icon).
2. Click your team name, then select Manage team.
3. Click Connected apps.
4. Toggle the switch next to the app you want.
5. Authenticate with the source system and setting permissions when prompted.
Once an admin has configured a connector, employees can search and interact with that data through the Gemini Enterprise app interface—asking natural-language questions that draw on the connected sources while respecting each user’s underlying permissions.

Gemini Enterprise currently has over 100 connectors, covering Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams), Atlassian (Jira, Confluence), Zapier, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Zendesk, GitHub, Dropbox, and more. It also supports custom connectors for data sources outside the catalog.

If you’re evaluating whether Gemini Enterprise is right for your organization, the Gemini Enterprise connectors directory has the full list, broken down by edition (Business vs. Standard/Plus).

How to add a custom connector or MCP server
1. In the Gemini Enterprise app admin console, click Settings & help (cog icon).
2. Click your team name, then select Manage team.
3. Click Connected apps.
4. Click Add MCP Server.
5. Under MCP info, enter the MCP server URL and a name.
6. Under Authentication settings, enter your Authorization URL, Token URL, Client ID, Client Secret, and Scopes.
7. Click Add and enable the connection.
Once configured, the custom connector is available to users just like any other connector.

Connect Gemini to 9,000+ apps with Zapier

Native Gemini connectors cover a solid range of popular apps. But plenty of your stack won’t be in the catalog; and even for apps that are, native connectors have limits on what they can actually do. Zapier lets you securely connect Gemini Enterprise to 9,000+ apps—and you can bring the power of Gemini straight into your existing workflows.

Build deterministic workflows and add AI only when you need it

Zapier’s automation platform lets you build workflows that run in the background: a trigger event happens in one app, and Zapier automatically takes action in another app as a result. But that’s the basic version. You can stack in filters, formatters, conditional paths, error handling, and other customizable nodes to build complex systems across your tech stack.

Wherever those workflows need reasoning, generation, or classification, you can use AI by Zapier to add Gemini steps to the automation—while the rest of the workflow runs without burning tokens on tasks that don’t need intelligence. You can choose from a variety of Gemini models (costing Zapier tasks, not tokens), or bring your own API key.

Zapier lets you blend AI with deterministic automation, giving you the kind of precision that isn’t possible with conversational connectors.

Try Zapier

Access 9,000+ apps directly in Gemini via Zapier’s Gemini connector

If you add the Zapier connector to Gemini Enterprise, you’ll give your team governed access to 9,000+ apps directly from their Gemini chat window.

Some examples of what this looks like in practice:
- Pull data from your CRM, analyze pipeline health, and push a summary to a Slack channel—without leaving Gemini.
- Ask Gemini to catch you up on what happened across your apps while you were out, surface action items, and draft replies.
- Pull project notes and transcripts from tools across your stack, generate a status update, and drop it wherever your team expects it.
You decide which apps and actions Gemini can access, so you stay in control the entire time. And you’re not tied to Gemini: If you want to run the same workflow through Claude or ChatGPT next quarter, Zapier works across all of them.

Try Zapier MCP

Gemini connectors FAQ

Are Gemini connectors free?

No. Connected Apps (personal Gemini) are free to use with any Google account (though some third-party apps in the directory require their own paid subscription). But Gemini Enterprise connectors are part of the Gemini Enterprise plan, which is a paid enterprise product.

What’s the difference between Connected Apps and Gemini Enterprise connectors?

Connected Apps are for personal Gemini (gemini.google.com)—they connect your individual accounts to apps like Spotify, Gmail, GitHub, etc. Gemini Enterprise connectors are for the Gemini Enterprise app, an enterprise platform that connects Gemini to organizational data sources like Confluence, Salesforce, and SharePoint. It’s a completely different product.

How many connectors does Gemini have?

Gemini Enterprise has over 100 pre-built enterprise connectors and supports custom connectors for anything outside that list. For anything not natively covered on either side, Zapier gives you access to 9,000+ apps via a single connection.

Are Gemini connectors safe?

Yes. Gemini Enterprise enforces user-level access controls—Gemini can only surface data you’re permitted to see in the connected source. If you use Zapier, you get the same OAuth-managed, governed authentication model across 9,000+ apps.

What happened to Google Agentspace?

Google Agentspace was renamed Gemini Enterprise in mid-2026. It’s the same product with the same connector infrastructure—the rebrand brought it under the Gemini umbrella. Existing Agentspace customers can continue using their current setup without changes.

Related reading:
October 2, 2026
AI for GTM: Benefits and 7 key use cases
Two years ago, I took my wife on a wine tour in Fredericksburg, which some people call the Napa Valley of Texas (a claim I find aggressive). After a few too many samples, I started reading the literature and realized I had no idea what white wine actually is. I thought it meant green or yellow grapes, when it really comes down to what the winemaker does with the skins.

I learned that day that white wine slots into that group of “everyone knows what it is, but no one really knows what it is,” next to escrow, gluten, and go-to-market (GTM) teams. Good news for you: I understand one of those things, and it’s the one this article is about.

There’s a lot of manual work attached to GTM. The information you need is spread across a CRM, a marketing automation platform, call recordings, and whatever’s buried in your internal docs. AI for GTM can synthesize, summarize, analyze, and take action across all of that—as long as you know how to set it up. And once AI is involved, your team can spend more of its time on revenue-generating work and, occasionally, wine sampling.

Here’s everything you need to know about AI for GTM, and how you can bring the technology to your team.

Table of contents:
What is AI in GTM?

GTM (go-to-market) is a cross-functional action plan that businesses use to identify product demand, launch products, and drive revenue—typically, it overlaps with marketing, sales, RevOps, and customer success, but lots of other teams can be involved. AI in GTM just means injecting AI and automation into that process.

So instead of manually scouring your CRM, scoring and routing leads, or drafting follow-up messages, you can build AI workflows that handle all of that and more. That work still runs on your existing systems and processes, but it takes over the steps that previously needed somebody to read, decide, or write. A person only has to step in when a decision needs a brain instead of a motherboard.

Types of AI that GTM teams use

GTM AI covers a few different technologies, and in practice, they usually run together in the same workflow. Here’s what you can expect to see as you add AI to your GTM workflows:
- Generative AI: Gen AI produces new content from a prompt and whatever context you hand it. In GTM, that covers a lot of ground, including account briefs, outbound drafts, campaign recaps, creative assets, and meeting notes turned into CRM fields.
- Predictive models: Predictive models are trained on your own historical outcomes to estimate what happens next—think lead fit scores, deal risk flags, churn likelihood, and forecast ranges. These are only as good as your data.
- AI agents: Agents are technological helpers that can work autonomously to pursue a goal. They can take a series of steps on their own rather than answering a single prompt; you could, for example, use one to pull a lead record, search your docs, build a sales deck, and route it for approval.
- Workflow automation: Automation is the rules-based part of things that handles repeatable tasks in the software you already use every day.
That’s all nice and vague, so let’s take a look at how AI in GTM actually looks in practice.

7 ways GTM teams are using AI

Here are some of the most common ways we’ve seen AI adopted in GTM processes—from the Zapier team, Zapier customers, and in the non-Zapier wild.

Sales intelligence

Account research is mostly reading and writing. Someone opens a CRM record, a news page, three call transcripts, and a competitor battlecard, and writes two paragraphs summarizing the client. Then a sales rep skims that summary four minutes before the call.

Research is a good place to start because the output is a draft, so a wrong detail doesn’t (usually) cause a cataclysmic chain of errors. In fact, per the Zapier AI Workflow Index, 37% of sales AI workflows have AI writing for people—so you’ll fit right in with some well-placed AI here.

Here are three areas you could start with:
- Account research: AI collects the signals, enriches the account, and writes it all up in one summary. That’s a lot easier for a rep to get through than fifteen open tabs.
- Buyer intent tracking: Capturing intent signals is the easy part. AI can monitor those signals and flag which spike is worth a set of human eyeballs.
- Competitive deal intelligence: Competitor names usually turn up in call notes and form fields, which aren’t exactly easy to search. AI can catch every time a prospect brings one up and update the right sales docs.
Automate sales intelligence

Outbound sales

Outbound is a volume problem with teams trying their best to mix in personalization. Reps get asked to send a hundred emails, each written as if for one person, which never works. AI helps here because it can write a personalized draft for each of those hundred emails.

Where to start:
- Cold email outreach: Enrich the lead first, then let AI draft from that record instead of a template. That way, the first email actually mentions something specific about them, and you’re not sending another boilerplate message that reeks of desperation.
- Sales sequencing: Every reply gets classified before a rep sees it, so genuine interest, a brush-off, and an out-of-office all route to different areas.
- Account-based outreach: Most of this runs on enrichment and CRM updates. The AI’s role is to pull everything you know about the account into one place before anyone reaches out.
Automate outbound sales

Email marketing

You can spend a week crafting email copy that would make Shakespeare weep, yet still fail because of a poorly segmented list. Most of the work in email marketing is deciding who gets which message, and when, based on what they did.

In Zapier’s research, 35% of marketing AI workflows have AI extracting information and updating records, and 34% have it writing for people. That means as many marketers are using it to create content as they are for the less glamorous stuff, like keeping segments up to date and updating the records that decide who gets the next email.

The workflows that do the most here:
- Subscriber segmentation: Someone’s behavior changes, and their category or segment follows, because AI is reading clicks, purchases, and form fills as they happen, then making decisions based on all that aggregated data.
- Drip marketing management: Instead of dropping every new lead into the same nurture track, AI can pick the sequence that fits the prospect’s source and product interest.
- Email campaign management: Your automations can take care of scheduling and audience updates. Where AI helps is looking at your campaign results and telling you which ones are worth changing something about.
Automate email marketing

Lead management

Lead routing is the first place on this list where the AI has the freedom to make a judgment call. A lead arrives, the system determines fit and intent, and it’s swept off to the right rep at the right time.

These decision-making workflows can also run around the clock, and per the Zapier AI Workflow Index, 76% of those runs happen outside business hours. So, the lead that lands at 11 p.m. Saturday gets scored and assigned before Monday.

What teams typically build:
- Lead scoring: Your rules cover the obvious signals, like job title or company size. An AI model can weigh the ones that you haven’t written a rule for, and scores can get more accurate with more data.
- Lead routing: A lot of lead routing is handled by your predefined rules. When it doesn’t, AI picks the owner and alerts them before the lead cools.
- Lead qualification: With AI, a model can analyze the form text and call notes to determine whether a lead is sales-ready.
Automate lead management

Pipeline management

If you have just a handful of deals in the pipeline, and one hasn’t moved in three weeks, that’s pretty easy to see on your own. It gets a lot harder when you have to keep track of hundreds every month. An AI model can keep a watchful eye on your pipeline, flag a stalled deal, and summarize why it looks stuck.

A few examples:
- Deal tracking: If a deal goes a little quieter than you’d like, a workflow can flag it before the Monday pipeline review does, with a short AI summary of what’s been going on (or not going on) with it.
- Sales forecasting: Pipeline shifts daily, so a model monitors value, stage, and close-date changes and flags any abnormalities.
- Win-loss analysis: AI can read closed-lost notes in bulk to surface patterns nobody has time to tally by hand.
Automate pipeline management

Data hygiene

Duplicate contacts, six formats for phone numbers, and empty source fields happen to even the most careful sales teams, and your lead scoring and forecasting are working off that same messy data.

This is arguably the most common job AI does in sales workflows. It’s boring work, but everything else on this list depends on it, which is why many RevOps tools emphasize data quality.

Three jobs to hand over:
- CRM hygiene and deduplication: An exact-match rule sees Bob’s Burgers and Bob’s Burgers Inc. as two companies. A model doesn’t, and it normalizes the fields around them.
- CRM data enrichment: If a form asks for four fields but your reps need twelve, AI can fill the gaps and update your records.
- CRM data entry: AI can summarize and log call notes and email threads, giving CRM fields additional context that would otherwise need a sales rep to hunt down.
Automate CRM management

RevOps reporting and forecasting

It’s Thursday, and the forecast call is tomorrow morning. So somebody exports your current pipeline data, cross-checks it against last week, chases two reps about deals that look wrong, and rebuilds the same deck as last Thursday. By Monday, half of it is stale again.

Reporting suits automation because it’s really never over. AI can keep writing up what’s changing in your numbers as it happens, so you’re not rebuilding the whole thing from scratch every Thursday.

Here are a couple things you could try:
- Pipeline reporting: AI turns stage and forecast changes into a single paragraph, so key decision-makers get a written summary rather than another dashboard link.
- Sales performance tracking: Metrics change every day, and a lot of it is just noise. AI can flag the changes that you determine need an extra conversation.
Automate sales reporting

Benefits of AI in GTM

Once you start implementing AI in GTM, you’ll find benefits everywhere you look. Sure, a few of your reps will save 30 minutes here and there that they can use for longer (wine-free) lunch breaks, but the bigger wins look more like this:
- Faster response times: An AI workflow scores, routes, and enriches around the clock, weekends included. So a new lead doesn’t sit there untouched until someone’s back at their desk.
- Steadier output: Every brief or piece of content comes out of the same prompt and the same sources, so the format doesn’t drift. A new rep’s first account summary reads like one from someone two years in.
- Cleaner data: An AI model can fill in structured fields while it works, so nobody has to go back and do it later, which means your forecast is working off records that actually got filled in.
- Higher capacity: With AI processes, research, enrichment, and record updates aren’t tied to headcount anymore, so you can do more work without dusting off the job posting script.
Bring AI to your GTM motion with Zapier

AI for GTM covers a lot more ground than you’d think. From account research and lead routing to forecast reporting and CRM cleanup, you can always find an opportunity to slip some well-placed AI into your go-to-market functions. But in order to take full advantage of these processes, you need the right automation system in place.

That’s where Zapier comes in: it’s an end-to-end AI automation platform that can help you sync 9,000+ apps across your tech stack. Start with a template, or build the exact GTM automation you need in plain English with Zapier Copilot. Or use Zapier MCP to run automations and do work across your GTM stack directly from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other AI assistant. Get started with our GTM agent templates.

Try Zapier

Related reading
October 2, 2026

The 7 best meeting scheduler apps in 2026

We independently review every app we recommend in our best apps lists. When you click some of the links on this page, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

Scheduling a meeting is no biggie, right? You just have to trade a dozen emails while squinting at your calendar in a negotiating mode that’d make the UN jealous, all to end alone in a Zoom room, realizing that your invitee is actually now sleeping on the other side of the earth. And then the slot-picking gymnastics begin again.

Meeting scheduler apps get rid of this back-and-forth, place the events in open slots in your calendar, and follow up with everyone with the conferencing links. Set it up once, share it with your invitees, and let them book time with you with four or five taps, tops.

There are all sorts of meeting scheduler tools out there covering all kinds of use cases. I’ve used a few of them over the years, and after diving into every single one for writing this list for you, I think I’m going to switch again. So whether you’re here to grab your first one or looking to leave Calendly or Doodle behind, here are the best meeting schedulers.

The best meeting schedulers

Calendly for end-to-end meeting management
Calendar for appointments in a calendar app
SavvyCal for mixing polling with a standard scheduling tool
zcal for a free meeting scheduler
Reclaim for priority-based scheduling
Cal.com for follow-up automation with AI phone calls
Zeeg for a customizable link-in-bio page

What makes the best meeting scheduler?

How we evaluate and test apps

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

Meeting scheduling apps are in a race to reduce obstacles and friction, helping people book time with each other without the frustration. This means appealing user interfaces that are easier to read, fewer clicks from start to finish, and team features to smooth out internal coordination.

Here’s what I specifically looked for when selecting the best meeting schedulers:

Ease of use. The meeting scheduler has to be user-friendly for both you as a booking page creator and your invitees.
External integrations. Beyond the core calendar and video conferencing, connecting your meeting scheduler app with your other apps can automate work related to your meetings. I kept an eye on those with a good list of integrations, as well as those that connect with Zapier.
Automatic video call setup. Creating a video conferencing link with one of the major platforms and delivering it to all participants is key to a smooth process when using a meeting scheduling app.
Reminders and follow-ups. Everyone is busy; nudging people to attend reduces no-shows. Follow-ups are great for nurturing and keeping the relationship growing. Having both in your meeting scheduler makes the experience easier and more hands-off for you.
Value for money. It’s a painful problem, sure, but not worth a $100/month commitment. Most of the meeting schedulers here have generous free plans; those that don’t compensate with extra features that help you with scheduling, team coordination, analytics, or extra automation.

To test the meeting schedulers, I signed up for each one of the apps below (as well as 40 more that didn’t make the cut), created a booking link, and integrated a video conferencing app. Then, I played around with the extra features until I was satisfied with the booking pages, automation, or calendar setup. Lastly, I booked meetings with myself to understand the invitee experience. I’m happy to report I have hours of meetings booked with myself and am receiving an endless stream of notifications for “1-on-1 with Miguel.”

Have a Zoom, Google, or Microsoft subscription?

If you already have a subscription with a major software suite or video conferencing solution, run a quick search to see if they’ve implemented their own meeting scheduling tool. It may turn out to have all the features you need without you having to sign up for yet another platform.

The best meeting schedulers at a glance

	Best for	Standout feature	Pricing	Website
Calendly	End-to-end meeting management	Scheduling handled entirely by cc’ing Callie in email threads	Free plan available; paid plans start at $10/month	Visit Calendly
Calendar	Appointments in a calendar app	Multiple workspaces	From $16/month	Visit Calendar
SavvyCal	Mixing polling with a standard scheduling tool	Option for invitees to automatically overlay their calendars within the polling page	Free plan available; paid plans start at $10/user/month	Visit SavvyCal
zcal	A free option	Generous free tier with customization	Free plain available; paid plans start at $7/user/month	Visit zcal
Reclaim	Priority-based scheduling	Great analytics and team features	Free plan available; paid plans start at $10/user/month	Visit Reclaim
Cal.com	Maximum flexibility	Open source	Free for individuals; paid plans start at $16/user/month	Visit Cal.com
Zeeg	A customizable link-in-bio page	Straightforward user experience	Free basic plan; paid plans start at $10/user/month	Visit Zeeg

Best meeting scheduler for end-to-end meeting management

Calendly (Web, iOS, Android)

Calendly, our pick for the best meeting scheduler app for end-to-end meeting management.

Calendly pros:

AI features handle the full meeting lifecycle (scheduling, meeting prep, note-taking, and follow-ups)
MCP server available for connecting Calendly to ChatGPT or Claude

Calendly cons:

AI features (Notetaker and Callie) are currently English-only
Free plan only supports one meeting type

Make way for the category standard: I regularly meet with people who casually say, “Let me send you my Calendly so we can find a time next week.” It’s the best all-around option because it’s a trusted platform, the user experience is polished, and it packs advanced features if you need them. I’ve been using it for two years, and it has never failed me.

As you onboard, you can connect your calendar, no matter if it lives in Google, Outlook, or Microsoft Exchange. Create your first booking link by choosing the duration, location, and availability options, wrapping it up by connecting your video conferencing software of choice (or setting up a real-world location). You can add buffer time to wind-down and ramp-up for each meeting, as well as payment support with Stripe or PayPal. Comms around the meeting are automated, with Calendly delivering the meeting confirmation by default, and also offering email/SMS reminders and follow-ups once the meeting’s done.

Once the booking page is live, you can share it with your invitees. They can browse your availability and pick a time on an intuitive interface. Calendly is always linked to your calendar (without ever sharing what you’re doing), so it knows how to remove slots when you have events already planned or keep them available if you’re free. The emails include cancellation and rescheduling links, which clean up your calendar and keep everyone on the same page.

The free plan isn’t as amazing as others below (though freelancers and small business owners will be fine with it), but when you hop on the paid plan, you get a range of smart features that save even more time and streamline your meetings. The biggest examples: Callie, an AI assistant you cc on an email thread to find and propose meeting times, and then book the meeting for you—no link-sharing required. Notetaker, meanwhile, joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams calls to automatically record, transcribe, and surface action items. Both are available on Standard Plus and Teams Plus plans.

By connecting Calendly to Zapier, you can orchestrate intelligent, end-to-end meeting workflows. For example, once Notetaker wraps up a call and surfaces action items, Zapier can automatically add those tasks to your project management tool, complete with assignees and due dates, and notify your team in Slack. Learn more about how to automate Calendly.

Automate Calendly

Build automations from wherever you work. Describe the outcome you want, and Zapier connects your tools, runs the steps, and stays on the job after you close the chat. Combine AI with reliable, deterministic automation across 9,000+ apps. Get started for free.

Calendly pricing: Free plan includes unlimited one-on-one meetings; paid plans start at $10/user/month (billed yearly), which includes unlimited multi-person meetings and more customization options. Notetaker and Callie available on Standard Plus and Teams Plus plans—$18/user/month (billed yearly) on top of your base plan.

Best meeting scheduler built into a calendar app

Calendar (Web, iOS, Android)

Calendar, our pick for the best free meeting scheduler built into a calendar app

Calendar pros:

Supports multiple workspaces, each with different calendars and booking links
Extensive meeting statistics

Calendar cons:

User interface isn’t as polished as others on the list
Expensive entry-level plan

Looking to upgrade your current calendar setup and streamline meeting booking at the same time? Calendar looks and feels like Google Calendar-lite, but adding meeting links and mobile apps to run the show across your devices.

You can create up to five scheduling links to keep your meeting invitations organized. These can range from quick 15-minute catch-ups to hour-long brainstorming sessions—and everything in between. When offering each booking link, the invitee will only be able to schedule that type of meeting in the available time slots, which you can change based on type, too. This makes it possible to, for example, schedule a single 30-minute slot per week for networking with new people.

Calendar used to have a good free plan, but that’s history, unfortunately. On the paid plan, you can address team needs with multiple workspaces, each having its own separate calendar and booking links, keeping all events organized. The setup process is a bit long, but this extra customizability can be useful for companies that run a lot of different events with complex needs. The meeting statistics are quite deep, going beyond the basic time spent to cover attendance records, rejections, and who you’re more likely to meet again.

The user interface is simple, with most of the meeting scheduling features tucked away on the left side profile link. You can learn almost everything there is to know about Calendar in under an hour, and either adopt it as your main calendar entry point or your control board to see meeting statistics.

By connecting Calendar to Zapier, you can orchestrate end-to-end scheduling workflows that tie meetings directly into the rest of your tech stack. For example, when a new meeting is scheduled, Zapier can log the details in Google Sheets, notify you in Slack, and use AI to generate meeting prep notes or suggest follow-up tasks.

Automate Calendar

Calendar pricing: Free 14-day trial. Standard plan at $16/month (billed yearly) lets you connect 6 calendars and adds meeting polls and calendar analytics.

Looking for a free alternative? Notion Calendar combines a clean calendar with simple scheduling features, with one-time availability and meeting links included.

Best meeting scheduler for mixing polling with a standard scheduling tool

SavvyCal (Web)

SavvyCal pros:

Easy to use
Includes automation and time defense features on the paid plan

SavvyCal cons:

Only polling on the free plan

Group scheduling is a nightmare. I don’t even know how to get it done without a polling tool: do I just get everyone in an email thread, suggest dates, and get ready for cognitive overwhelm? Thanks to SavvyCal, you and I don’t have to get tangled up in this, as it combines polling with scheduling, streamlining both.

You can start a new poll by naming it, as if this were a small scheduling project. In the next step, SavvyCal displays your connected calendar so you can highlight the dates and times you’re available. Click or drag to select, and you’ll see the options line up on the left side of the screen. You can adjust meeting details, such as description or location, and add an attendee to the poll so you can preview their availability along with yours.

On the invitee side, they can see all the suggested slots both as a list and on a calendar view. Unique here is how you can connect your own calendar as an invitee, so you can overlay your events with the dates and times, making it easier to spot where you’ll be available. Vote by either clicking the calendar or the list, and remember that this is multi-choice.

As the responses stream in, you can see which people voted for which slots, with a handy vote counter at the bottom of the page to help you lock in on the best. When you click the Schedule button, SavvyCal actually sends out all the meeting invites to everyone involved. Just show up at the agreed date and time, and you’re golden.

You can enjoy this part of the tool for free. For creating a static booking link based on your calendar availability—like most other apps offer—you have to hop on a paid plan. This turns SavvyCal into a Calendly/Doodle minimalist child. If you love the polling experience and are interested in automation, team scheduling, and time defense tools, definitely try the basic paid plan.

SavvyCal also integrates with Zapier. This means you can connect it with thousands of other apps and build dynamic scheduling workflows. For example, when someone schedules time with you in SavvyCal, you can automatically send an AI-generated confirmation email, tailored to the meeting type, attendee, or goal. Zapier can also add related pre- or post-meeting tasks to your project management app and update internal records.

Automate SavvyCal

SavvyCal pricing: Free plan available for polling features only. Basic at $12/user/month (billed monthly) unlocks nearly everything except custom domains, delegating to assistants, and paid bookings.

Best free meeting scheduler

zcal (Web)

zcal pros:

Useful booking page customization settings
Good range of integrations available

zcal cons:

Lacks advanced features, especially around sales automation

“Free” is a powerful word, but it’s a relative term in the software world. In some apps, it means a little taste of the features with heavy limitations. zcal is in the opposite camp: it proudly advertises that 99% of its features are free and unlimited, giving individual users a lot of value for nothing.

This means you can connect any number of calendars, generate unlimited meeting links, run meeting polls, and access a range of advanced features not usually seen on free plans. You can add screening questions during the scheduling process, include cover photos and welcome videos, and even embed it on your website.

The app is easy to use in general, although there are some minor user experience quirks. The interface on the meeting creator side can be a bit too simple and not easy to digest at a glance. For example: when you navigate to set your availability, dive into events, or set up team features, you might be left wondering how to go back to the main screen with the booking links and upcoming events. (Just click the zcal logo and you’ll be back on that screen.)

Don’t worry about the invitee side, though: the booking page is top-notch, really intuitive, with a nice detail as it separates morning slots from afternoon ones with a “noon” divider at 12 p.m. The customization features give a nice touch to make the page more memorable, with three layout controls in addition to the cover/video that I mentioned earlier.

By connecting zcal to Zapier, you can orchestrate intelligent scheduling workflows that connect meetings to the rest of your systems. For example, you can automatically add new attendees in your CRM and email marketing list, use AI to send a personalized welcome or follow-up message, and update records with a meeting summary.

Automate zcal

zcal pricing: Generous free plan available. Pro plan at $7/month (billed yearly) unlocks team features, round robin, and SMS/email reminder messages.

Best meeting scheduler for priority-based scheduling

Reclaim (Web)

Reclaim pros:

Good free plan
Great analytics and team features

Reclaim cons:

Requires building a different mindset when approaching your day, which might take some time to fully adopt

Not all meetings have the same importance. For example, meeting with an important new lead should dethrone your weekly team meeting. Setting this up in a conventional meeting scheduler app involves layering multiple calendars, which ends up being clunky. Reclaim, a Dropbox product, solves this problem: it handles meeting prioritization natively without workarounds.

Reclaim can make this happen because it’s a little bit more than a meeting scheduling app—so much so that it’s almost out of scope for this list. It’s an AI calendar with an engine that tracks your habits and reprioritizes your days based on what you have to do. This prioritization engine is behind the smart meeting features, which I’ll walk through slowly because they’re a bit complex.

There are four tiers of priority for any kind of event in Reclaim. The highest one, critical, can override all others and land on the calendar as soon as possible. The lowest one, low, is a pushover that can easily get bumped around. When creating a booking link, you can assign a priority for all bookings done from that interface. This means that you need to share the critical-labeled link for urgent meetings, or a low-labeled one for those that aren’t as key. (You need a paid plan to do this.)

On the invitee side on the critical booking link, they can see all your slots as free, excluding those occupied by other critical tasks. They can book whichever time they need and, when it lands on your calendar, all the lower-priority events are shuffled around to make it work. This dynamic behavior is great if you use your calendar as your control center and interact with it frequently, but if you’re like me and it doesn’t move around much, it might take some getting used to seeing your time in flow as the day progresses.

Recently acquired by Dropbox, Reclaim has a good free plan for all core features, offering a calendar app where you can plan your life and work, tunnel down into focus time, and protect your important habits. Coupled with the smart meeting, it makes it a really nice calendar co-pilot to help optimize your schedule without you having to work hard for it.

You can also connect Reclaim with Zapier, so you can automate complex, multi-step workflows across the rest of your tools. For example, you can automatically turn flagged emails into Reclaim tasks, complete with due dates and recommended subtasks. Zapier can also schedule focused time on your calendar to complete those tasks and notify you when priorities shift.

Automate Reclaim

Reclaim price: Free plan available for 1 scheduling link and 2 calendar connections. Starter plan at $10/user/month (billed yearly) offers 3 scheduling links and 3 Smart Meetings.

Best meeting scheduler for follow-up automation with AI phone calls

Cal.com (Web, macOS, Windows)

Cal.com, our pick for the best meeting scheduler for maximum flexibility

Cal.com pros:

Highly customizable on the backend
Free for individuals

Cal.com cons:

You can’t customize the booking pages very much

If your business depends on people showing up, like a clinic or a salon, you’re already sending reminders. The problem is that nobody reads reminder emails and texts. But do you know what people still do? They pick up the phone. Cal.com can place AI-powered calls around your appointments and meetings, so you’re not left hanging.

All of this happens with an AI phone agent: it takes a system prompt that controls what it should say and how it must handle the call. To start configuring yours, click on Workflows and create a new one. Designate a trigger (such as an hour before a meeting starts) ,and then add a step to start an agent call.

Opening the agent’s settings reveals a wealth of options. After you set up the starting greeting, you have a generous prompt window to set up system instructions. Add information on how the agent should handle the conversation, how to speak, and how to sign off.

On the receiving end, the person gets a call on their phone after the trigger is met in your Cal.com workflow. They hear the greeting and, once they talk back, the agent proceeds with the instructions. This is better than emails and texts because of this two-way interaction: your AI agent delivers the meeting details, but can also answer questions or provide more information about you and your services.

Beyond this fresh new feature, Cal.com is a strong meeting scheduler on its own. The free plan comes with around 100 native integrations, including bi-directional sync to HubSpot and SMS notifications without you having to pay a dime. Cal also connects with Zapier, allowing you to build flexible, multi-step scheduling workflows that adapt to how you work. For example, when a meeting is booked through Cal.com, AI can automatically classify the meeting, generate prep notes, and assign any necessary follow-up tasks in your project management app.

Automate Cal.com

Cal.com pricing: Generous free plan for 1 user, unlimited event types, and calendars. Teams at $16/user/month adds collaboration features such as round robin, shared availability, and routing forms.

Where did Cal.com’s open-source project go? Cal.com published a version of its code under Cal.diy, free to self-host but without team features, a good match if you’re not afraid of doing some infrastructure setup.

Best meeting scheduler for a customizable link-in-bio page

Zeeg (Web)

Zeeg pros:

Good free plan
Includes AI voice agent features (billed separately)

Zeeg cons:

Advanced integrations only available in the highest paid plan

If you shared your link with an invitee via email, people will already be aware of who you are and what you do. But this page can also be part of a funnel: it can be offered after a landing page, in your social media profiles, or via email in a campaign. To turn this moment into an opportunity to showcase your brand, products, or services, you can customize a link-in-bio page with all your scheduling links in Zeeg.

This page is called a Zeeg itself: click on the corresponding tab on the left-side menu after you log in. Despite the simple controls, the page is surprisingly customizable. You can align the header along the horizontal axis, adding a description, profile picture, and a collection of all your contact methods and social media channels for easy access.

Below, you can add images, header/body text, and dividers for organization. These are great to structure your offers, your brand values, or who you are. You can rearrange the layout of these elements, stacking them in rows or in side-by-side columns. You can make them small or long rectangles or squares, and drag them to the sides of the page to position them along the grid.

Finally, we get to the scheduling blocks. For a faster user experience, the largest square displays the calendar with your availability right off the bat. When someone clicks a date, they get taken to a separate page to start the booking process for that day. In smaller layouts, you can see the name of the meeting, duration, and a short CTA. This is useful if you have multiple booking links for different services or purposes, helping you articulate your offer easily.

Another perk is Zapier’s Zeeg integration, which powers multi-step scheduling workflows. For example, when a new form submission comes through, Zapier can automatically schedule an event in Zeeg, use AI to enrich attendee data and add it to your CRM, and send a meeting brief to key stakeholders.

Automate Zeeg

Zeeg price: Free plan available for unlimited events and 2 active scheduling pages. Professional plan at $10/user/month (billed yearly) unlocks unlimited scheduling pages, payments, advanced integrations, and group event scheduling.

Make meetings better with a meeting scheduler app

The right meeting scheduler helps you get meetings onto your calendar quickly and efficiently. You can keep the productivity going by automating your scheduling workflows and even automating meeting action items. That way, it’s not just the scheduling that’s a breeze, but the entire process that follows.

Related reading:

This article was originally published in January 2019 by Jill Duffy and has had contributions from Jennifer Allen, Eric Ravenscraft, and Nicole Replogle. The most recent update was in October 2026.

October 1, 2026

Why Companies Should Support Crisis Volunteer Work

TOUFIC RMEITI/Getty Images

Employees who volunteer during a crisis bring more back to work than a sense of having helped: They can also become more resilient, adaptive, and innovative. Research across multiple crises in the

In the fall of 2017, as Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters receded across Houston, employees from a local construction firm joined volunteer crews helping homeowners gut waterlogged walls and begin the long road to rebuilding—during regular work hours and while still receiving company pay. The company knew this was a moment for the organization to support its community, but what they didn’t anticipate was what these employees would bring back. One volunteer described the experience to us this way: “Seeing the resilience of those people we were helping, and the impact we were having on them—[that] truly builds my resilience as well.” Across the group, employees who had come to Houston’s aid shared that the experience had changed them, giving them greater confidence in navigating uncertainty and stronger capabilities to adapt and develop creative solutions in their daily work. Further evidence from managers we interviewed supports the idea that crisis volunteering can indeed help employees develop some of the skills most critical to today’s workplaces.

October 1, 2026
How AI Is Changing Cyber Threats—and Cybersecurity—for SMBs

cyano66/Getty Images

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have long been at a disadvantage on cybersecurity. State-of-the-art cybersecurity and resilience programs have historically been expensive and pursued only

The cybersecurity outlook for small and medium-sized businesses can seem dire. Cybercriminal and nation-state cyberattacks appear to be on the rise, especially against utilities and small businesses. At the same time, there are new AI-enabled cyber risks, including AI agents from frontier labs breaching confinement and attacking other companies. Generative AI and machine-learning models have also streamlined traditional attack vectors. Phishing lures are now hyper-personalized, vulnerability discovery is exponentially faster, and ransomware operations are automated and ubiquitous.

October 1, 2026
How AI Is Changing Innovation: Why Speed Alone Isn’t a Strategy
October 01, 2026

AI is making it faster and cheaper than ever to turn ideas into prototypes, products, and businesses—but that abundance creates new challenges for leaders. In episode 3 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we look at the ways industry leaders are using AI to truly gain a competitive edge and innovate for the future. Cisco Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel explains how AI is changing the pace and nature of innovation, why human judgment and taste become more important when everyone has access to the same tools, and how companies can use AI to tackle problems they couldn’t have solved before. He also discusses the risks of AI agents, why organizations need new approaches to security and oversight, and how leaders can build a culture that embraces experimentation without sacrificing rigor or accountability.

Plus:
- Why deciding what not to build may become more important than deciding what to build
- Why every major AI productivity gain can create a new human bottleneck
- How Cisco used AI to dramatically accelerate the development of a new integrated management platform
October 1, 2026

The 5 best no-code app builders in 2026

We independently review every app we recommend in our best apps lists. When you click some of the links on this page, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

You’re vibing with your AI coding agent, and your prototype is working well in the preview window. Brimming with excitement, you hit publish to share your creation with the world. Everything is great for one or two days, but then the problems start: your users report broken features and clunky app behavior.

So, you go back to Lovable or Cursor and ask to fix the bugs, adding a motivating “no mistakes!” to the end of the prompt. What should be the path to making everything right instead leads you into the vibe code dark forest: your agent fixes one feature but breaks another; no fix seems to last, and you can’t tell if the code is right or wrong. Rinse, repeat, and freak out until your usage tokens burn all the way to the ground.

If you have no idea how code works at all, AI coding tools aren’t a good idea for your first product. Pick a no-code app builder instead: they structure the development process with visual tools, strong guardrails, and plenty of educational content to help you launch software just as robust as it is exciting. And, as a bonus, you’ll already be learning the transferable skills you’ll one day take to a full-code project.

I’ve been building apps and tools using no-code platforms for six years. This list is the result of using and researching over 100 different platforms on the market that I’ve whittled down to the five very best options.

A note on Zapier and no-code building

Once your app is live, it still needs to talk to the rest of your stack, including your CRM, Slack workspace, spreadsheets, and support tools. That’s why Zapier belongs in the conversation, even though it isn’t a standalone app builder. With Zapier, you can connect most of the apps on this list to thousands of other tools and build automated workflows without writing a line of code. Think of it as the layer that makes your new app actually useful from day one, not just functional in isolation.

The best no-code app builder software

Softr for complete beginners
Bubble for a balance between power and ease of use
Momen for building AI features into your app
WeWeb for generating with AI and editing with no-code
FlutterFlow for building for multiple platforms

No-code development vs. vibe coding

Before we dive into no-code tools, let’s compare them to a new software development path that’s come into the spotlight recently. Vibe coding platforms use AI to generate complete applications from natural language prompts, creating all the files, code, and configurations needed to run your app. You can edit and extend your app with more prompts, and the engine will go back to the code, rewriting and extending it to meet your requests.

The speed is incredible, as you can have a very basic prototype in hours, and it’s changing who can build software. In a Zapier survey of AI software builders, 34% had no formal programming background, 30% created a working tool in less than a day, and 56% had shipped something publicly. But AI introduces the risk of hallucinations and breaking code while editing, forcing you to roll back and try again. While vibe coding platforms are getting better, models are getting smarter, and token costs are coming down, it can still take a long time (and money in extra credits) to fix simple bugs.

There are challenges with getting a vibe-coded app to the market, too. If you don’t audit and test the code closely, your app could be vulnerable to:

Database exploits, leading to data leaks
Illegitimate API requests that drive up costs
Users bypassing payment flows and using premium features for free

And that’s just the shortlist to keep our anxiety under control.

As a result, while vibe coding, you have to build a good understanding of what the code does, and know everything that’s involved in shipping a production-ready app. It requires you to learn technical concepts as you go. If you’re comfortable with this, then it’s a relatively safe pick. Try one of the best vibe coding apps on the market and give it a go.

No-code is slower by comparison, at least initially. While many no-code platforms already include AI to generate your apps from scratch, they don’t feel as flexible or instant as vibe coding platforms yet. Still, they lower the entry barrier as you don’t have to deal with code if you don’t want to, and the platforms already have plenty of guardrails to prevent bugs and mistakes, smoothing out troubleshooting sessions.

If you’re a complete beginner in software development and want to build your first app, no-code offers a better foundation—and you can always move to coding or vibe coding once you grasp the core concepts.

Building an app without code: The requirements

How we evaluate and test apps

Most tools that let you build apps without code divide the process into three parts:

Structuring the database, which will hold all the information your users will input and request as they use the app.
Composing the user interface, where you’ll create the screens, buttons, and input fields that your users will interact with.
Building the logic of the app, which, put simply, is determining what happens once an event is triggered; for example, “when the user clicks the ‘Open’ button… open the pop-up.”

The best platforms create a visual programming experience that lets you put together an app exactly the way you want it, without having to code or even deeply understand how computers think. In addition to making programming more accessible for the non-technical crowd, these app creators also help professional developers save time on building basic features, freeing up their schedule to tackle bigger coding problems.

Here’s what I looked for when testing each no-code app builder.

It’s really no-code. No HTML, no CSS, no JavaScript. For all the tools on this list, you don’t have to type a single line of code from beginning to end if you don’t want to. But if you’re skilled, brave, or both, I’m including more complex options at the end where you can delve into low-code territory—and have more flexibility as a result.
Ease of use. The visual programming concepts need to be easy to understand. The user interface of all these apps is friendly and intuitive, and the platforms work without major performance hiccups or strange errors. Keep in mind: the easier app builders on this list, while able to deliver good results, can’t compare with the power of those with a more demanding learning curve. If you’re building a unique product, consider investing the extra time and effort to have as much freedom as possible.
Help and documentation. Having a good knowledge base is just the beginning. I also prioritized platforms that have good “getting started” articles, interactive guides, videos, and any other resources to speed up your learning and help you solve problems as you build.
Flexibility. Personal project? Enterprise app? No matter what you’re looking to build, these platforms are flexible enough to let you build the features you want. For this reason, you won’t find platforms on this list that specialize in internal tools or other niche no-code use cases.
Community. Documentation only gets you so far, and that’s when having an active forum with more experienced builders is useful. These apps have active forums and independent content creators online, so you can kick back in front of YouTube and learn while sipping your coffee.

After signing up for each platform, I opened the suggested “getting started” article and set out to build a very simple CRM app. I created the functionality to add contacts and deals and a simple dashboard to keep it all together. I tinkered a lot, and whenever I got stuck, I Googled the problem and clicked around to find the solution either in forum threads, in the knowledge base, or on YouTube. Finally, I visited each platform’s showcase and searched online for apps built with it to gauge how flexible they were and the level of success users were having with it.

One last thing before getting onto the apps: as the founders of Coaching No Code Apps said, “no-code doesn’t mean no work.” Be prepared to develop new skills and to get into the programmer mindset when you use these no-code app builders.

Is a no-code app builder right for your needs? If you’re having trouble understanding whether a no-code app builder is the right investment considering your objectives, take a look at Zapier’s guide on how to choose an app builder. It covers six types of app development platforms, matching them to project needs and use cases.

The best no-code app builders at a glance

	Best for	Standout feature	Pricing
Softr	Complete beginners	Easy to start using, plenty of useful templates	Free plan available; paid plans start at $19/month
Bubble	Balance between power and ease of use	Build nearly anything, great for prototypes and MVPs	Free plan available; paid plans start at $29/month
Momen	Building AI features into your app	Integrated AI builder alongside a full-stack builder	Free plan available; paid plans start at $33/month
WeWeb	Generating with AI and editing with no-code	Figma import tool	Free plan available; paid plans start at $20/month
FlutterFlow	Building for multiple platforms	Deep control over design and functionality, fully extensible with code	Free plan available; paid plans start at $29.25/month

Best no-code app builder for complete beginners

Softr

Softr pros:

Can generate visual elements from a prompt
Now includes native data source and advanced logic

Softr cons:

Not a good match for building SaaS products due to external user limits

If this is your very first time building an app, Softr is one of the best places to start. The user interface is intuitive even for complete beginners, and it offers all the capabilities to build internal tools, productivity apps, and client portals.

Begin by typing in a prompt, and AI will build it for you. It creates the pages, sets up the design across every single one, and takes care of user accounts and app data. You can keep prompting on the chat tab on the left while inspecting the results on the right, or you can jump in and start editing the app manually. Clicking any element reveals extra settings, so you can change the look and behavior through visual controls, not code.

The process is easy because you compose pages using blocks. In other apps, you have granular control over the interface and capabilities, which can turn into never-ending tweaking session. In Softr, you can drop pre-structured UI elements to display lists, a form, or common website components such as a pricing page—and these elements already look good in their out-of-the-box configuration.

Softr has been expanding its native integrations list quickly, now supporting over 50 apps like Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, and Xano—all the way to enterprise-grade stuff like PostgreSQL, BigQuery, and HubSpot. You can build new apps on top of the data from these platforms, or use the native Softr database if you prefer to start from scratch.

Softr also connects with Zapier, so you can weave your apps into broader, multi-step workflows that power your organization. For example, you might provision a new user in Softr when an employee is added to your HR system, use AI to generate a personalized onboarding message, and then log the entire process in a project management tool for visibility. Learn more about how to automate Softr.

Automate Softr

Get started quickly with Softr Academy, watch the 10-minute beginner video, and keep skilling up in the YouTube channel.

Softr pricing:

Free plan: Softr’s free plan offers 10 app users, unlimited published apps, and 5,000 database records. While there are feature restrictions—especially around the number of database records and available UI blocks—you can build simple apps as prototypes and even test them for an extended time before graduating into one of the paid plans.
Paid plans: The new Basic plan at $19/month (billed annually) unlocks custom domains, conditional form logic, and more workflow actions. As you move up the tiers, you can connect more data source types, have more database records, unlock all the UI blocks, and use enterprise-grade features.
Limited users across all plans: Softr is generous with non-logged-in users, as there’s no limit for visitors, great for creating an interactive website or public portal. If you want to provide personalization and have your users create accounts, the maximum number is 500 on the $329/month (billed annually) Business plan. This is why Softr isn’t a good match for building a SaaS product, or anywhere you want unrestricted user growth.
Pricey when calling external APIs: To call an external API from Softr—for example, the OpenAI API—you have to subscribe to the Professional plan at $167/month (or $139/month, billed annually). Look for other options if you need plenty of integrations and don’t have the budget yet.
Metered limits for database records: All plans have maximum numbers for the number of database records you can have at any time. If you’re building a data-intensive app, consider setting up a data archiving policy so you don’t hit the limits.

Best no-code app builder for power and ease of use

Bubble

Bubble pros:

Build nearly anything for web and mobile
Great for prototypes and MVPs

Bubble cons:

Workload-based pricing, which increases the learning curve when keeping costs under control

Bubble has its own visual programming language, making it accessible for beginners to create an app without code, while still providing the freedom and flexibility of a platform on the low-code spectrum. You’ll have a lot of control over UI, data structure, and overall performance. It’s so robust that some no-code agencies use only Bubble to build apps for their clients.

A normal day in front of the editor involves building the UI with controls similar to Canva, working with data on a screen that looks like Excel, and setting up the logic step-by-step using workflows, reminiscent of Zapier. Bubble’s expression composer is unique and extremely useful: you can build complex expressions to display data, set up conditionals, and lay out advanced logic by choosing values from a sequence of dropdown menus.

The learning curve is steeper than usual, but in a fun way: it’s easy to grasp the fundamentals, giving you enough confidence to start building. When you hit a snag, head over to YouTube, look up a good video, and troubleshoot your way to finding a solution in hours, not weeks—and enjoy that nice boost to keep you going.

The AI engine can generate entire apps and pages from prompts, delivering interfaces, data displays, and basic logic, ready to customize. This is a great shortcut when starting out a new project or feature. For building AI features for your app, there are no native tools: you’ll have to use the Bubble API connector to call the OpenAI API (or your AI provider of choice) and create that functionality from scratch.

If using the API connector feels like a lot of work, you can connect Bubble to Zapier to embed your apps into AI-orchestrated workflows across your business. For example, when a user submits data through your app, AI can analyze the input, log structured insights in a database, and trigger follow-up actions in your CRM—keeping every system in sync without extra effort.

Automate Bubble

Bubble’s native mobile builder gives you all the tools to build an app for smartphones, leveraging device capabilities such as the camera or location, with visual elements tuned for touch interaction. While some features still need polishing, it already includes all the essentials, and the fact that you can integrate and push each build to Google Play and Apple’s App Store with a single click (after initial configuration) feels like a massive time-saver.

I’ve been using Bubble since 2020, I wrote about it in the past, and I’ve collaborated with the company a few times. It’s the app builder I have the most experience with by far, so be sure to take my review with a grain of salt: if you don’t vibe with it, don’t follow my advice blindly, and instead check out other options on this list.

Get started quickly with Bubble Academy or watch the three-hour crash course.

Bubble price:

Free plan: Bubble has a generous free plan to both learn the platform and build prototypes before you launch them. The main feature you’ll miss is API workflows: this is server-side logic, essential to execute processes that could fail when running on the user’s device and require high data integrity/security.
Paid plans: Bubble’s lowest paid plan, Starter Web at $29/month (billed annually), unlocks all the essentials to build your mobile app, including API workflows. As you go up the tiers, you’ll have access to more app editors, custom development branches, as well as longer log retention and database backup/restore capabilities.
Web and Mobile: Bubble builds both web and native mobile apps, with different pricing for each. Web-only is $29/month, Mobile-only lands at $42/month, while Web and Mobile ends up at $69/month.
Workload-based pricing: Each plan includes a base number of workload units (WU). Every time your users do anything in your app—retrieving data or starting a workflow—Bubble deducts the corresponding amount in WU based on the complexity and compute intensity of the action. This means you must develop apps that do everything efficiently, or you could face overages.

Best no-code app builder for building AI features into your app

Momen (Web)

Momen pros:

Full-stack platform (UI, data, logic)
Designed for scalability

Momen cons:

Released in 2024, a relative newcomer on the market

When you’re building AI features into your app, you’ll spend a decent chunk of your development time setting up the API calls to OpenAI to send your data and get an output. While other no-code platforms have a set of general connections to help you do this, Momen has an integrated AI agent builder that makes this process faster and easier to manage—and that’s on top of its full-stack capabilities.

You have all the tools to provide an LLM with everything it needs to give a good response back into your app. You can add as many inputs as you want, selecting the data type (including images and video for multimodal). Tweak the prompt template to set the AI role (controls persona and knowledge field), goals (sets the workflow), and constraints (negative prompting to prevent undesired results).

Good AI outputs are based on high-quality data: you can set up data searches inside your database or via connected APIs to surface the most relevant context for each prompt. This is useful for, for example, personalizing a chatbot experience based on user data automatically, without the user having to input long instructions themselves.

To support agentic functionality, Momen also lets you connect external tools to the AI, so it can decide whether to use them based on the conversation. You can even expose Actionflows (what Momen calls its workflows) to have your agents execute logic you built previously. You can test everything as you develop on the right side of the screen, and tweak any settings as you go.

If you’re building an app with lots of AI features, Momen can reduce the time and effort required to set them all up. It integrates natively with top names like OpenAI and Google, but you can also set up external models with a manual connection. Any runs within the app are billed via a credit system, so you don’t have to deal with external API platforms if you don’t want to.

Despite being relatively new, it lands on this list due to the easy building experience and deep AI functionality. I had the opportunity to hear the founder at an in-person event in London: he’s in-tune with the core needs of no-coders assembling a new product, and the platform shows it clearly. The unified platform + systematic approach + focus on results philosophy frees up your mental time to focus on launch and growth strategy.

Get started quickly with the Quick Start page in the Momen documentation.

Momen pricing:

Free plan: Includes previewing your app with Momen branding with 1API, Actionflow, and very limited computing resources.
Paid plans: Basic plan at $33/month (billed annually) introduces white labeling, custom domains, unlimited AI customization, Actionflows, and APIs, and a decent amount of computing resources. Higher paid plans remove extra fees on payment integrations, adds collaboration and multi-frontend (publish to multiple domains), along with a more generous cloud resource pack.
Pay-as-you-go for computing resources. Need more AI credits? Extend storage by 1 GB extra? Raise bandwidth caps? Momen offers a decent base in its paid plans and you can raise caps with a combination of one-time and recurring purchase models. This adds predictability, so you can start small and then pay as you grow.

Best no-code app builder for generating with AI and editing with no-code

WeWeb

WeWeb pros:

Choose between integrating with a popular backend or using the native one
Figma import tool available

WeWeb cons:

Looks easy, but beware the steep learning curve

One of the big issues with vibe coding for absolute beginners is that you can’t interact with the code directly. Every time you want to change the size of a box or edit a key piece of logic, you have to write a prompt and hope for the best. But in WeWeb, both modes are equally strong, so you can choose between code, prompt, or point-and-click.

After it generates the starter app from the prompt, you can keep chatting to your agent on the left side of the screen to make any changes you’d like. What makes this interface so powerful is that it includes modes to build, plan, or ask—similar to what you’d get in Claude Code or Codex. On top of that, clicking the plus icon reveals a super useful context manager: this lets you select elements or variables in your project and directly ask for changes.

The moment you feel that the sweeping edits phase is done, you can collapse the agent window and work on the details. Any element you click exposes a right-side tab where you can edit design and behavior with visual controls. Settings names lean on the technical side—it includes concepts like hydration, for example—but you can chat with AI to easily get all the answers you need as you build.

If you used WeWeb in the past, you might remember it as a UI builder first and foremost. That changed: it now sports its own data, backend, and API layer. I was very surprised when exploring the settings section, as it includes useful DevOps settings, like server resource configuration and environment management. These relate to the infrastructure of your app and become essential to managing performance and uptime as your app grows to tens of thousands of users. The available settings expose a good level of power without being overwhelmingly complex.

Get started with the WeWeb Academy and keep the WeWeb Documentation close at hand as you build.

WeWeb pricing:

Free plan: You get full access to nearly all editor features, 1 million AI tokens to start building, and you can even launch your app that supports up to 1,000 user sessions.
Developer plans: WeWeb prices for editor features and app sessions. Essential at $20/month (billed annually) lets you export the code and self-host (you handle the infrastructure yourself), GitHub sync, and unlimited sessions for published apps. The top plan, Pro at $50/month/developer adds team features, unlimited access to the MCP server, and resource protection against AI actions.
Full hosting not included in developer plans: The developer plans above give you unlimited user sessions, which is essential for app growth, and there’s a limited free plan for hosting your app. Beyond that, you need to buy a WeWeb Cloud plan that matches your project needs. Click the “WeWeb cloud – see details” link below the main paid plans on the pricing page to reveal the information. As an example, only frontend is at $13/month, and a base app-hosting plan starts at $20/month.
Pricing depends on your app’s compute usage: As your app grows, it will consume more cloud resources, so you’ll be forced to upgrade to higher WeWeb Cloud tiers (not developer tiers) to keep things fast and stable. Visit your project’s settings to access analytics around usage and performance to see if you need to switch.

Best no-code app builder for creating apps for multiple platforms

FlutterFlow

FlutterFlow:

High customizability
Extensible with code

FlutterFlow:

Requires at least intermediate no-code skills and a solid understanding of how apps work conceptually

One of the most puzzling things about building software for beginners is that there are so many types of code. Web apps default to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; native mobile apps go with Swift for iOS or Kotlin for Android; and even operating systems have their own preferences, with Windows defaulting to C# and Linux to C or C++. FlutterFlow caters to every one of them: you can build an app for one or multiple devices without having to deal with the complexity that usually comes attached.

You can get a speed boost using the AI app generator, delivering a prototype with a polished interface that you can start customizing right out of the gate. Every single element you see on the page is actually a piece of code on a file, but you use the visual interface to add and customize each one of them. Most elements also support swiping and touching actions common on smartphones, so you can go deep when customizing the user experience.

You can go very far when building the UI, but the problems begin after you figure out the pages and set up the navigation. FlutterFlow doesn’t have its own backend—it doesn’t handle user accounts and server-side logic on its own—so you’ll have to use Firebase to handle that for you. This is a separate Google product that provides document databases, analytics tools, and cloud infrastructure to handle everything behind the scenes.

Wiring FlutterFlow and Firebase together is a no-code/low-code situation. You’ll have to spend time asking AI about data schemas, security rules, and testing everything multiple times—but once complete, you’ll have a database and user accounts. The server-side logic is the trickier path: you either use an AI coding agent to write Cloud Functions (runs on Firebase), or keep it low-code by integrating BuildShip with FlutterFlow.

Firebase connects to Zapier, which is the most useful connection point since a lot of data and logic lives in the backend. Orchestrate AI-powered workflows around your apps, like capturing new user data from Firebase, enriching it with AI for personalized onboarding, and adding it to your CRM. Learn more about how to automate Firebase with Zapier.

Automate Firebase

If FlutterFlow and Firebase sounds like too many platforms and too much work, I can assure you that it is: I built an app using this stack, and it was the highest level of complexity I had to deal with, across all visual development platforms that I used. FlutterFlow becomes a great choice only if you’ve already built a few real projects and want to launch in two different platforms, like on both app stores or a desktop and web app.

Here are some resources for you:

Get started quickly with the introduction page, follow this guide to build your first app, and continue your journey in the FlutterFlow Academy video playlist.
For Firebase, stick to the FlutterFlow documentation page at the start. Later, dive into the Firebase developer documentation for a deeper understanding of your infrastructure.

FlutterFlow pricing:

Free plan: The free plan lets you build your first prototypes and try out the best parts of FlutterFlow, with the only big limitation being the 2 projects and up to 2 API endpoints.
Paid plans: Basic at $29.25 (billed annually) lets you build as many projects as you want, adds monthly AI credits you can use to generate apps, and you can connect as many APIs as you want. Upper tiers offer developer features like code export and testing, as well as team collaboration features.
Firebase pricing is separate, but generous: Firebase has a good free plan that supports plenty of users and computing resources to get started with. The main caveat here is that you’ll have to enter your credit card details to access the most advanced features with free quotas; for usage above that initial point, it’s pay-as-you-go, and it’s hard to set limits to how much you can spend.

Tools to support your no-code apps

Algolia helps improve and speed up any search process inside your app. If you’re dealing with deep databases with thousands of entries, search can slow down or even crash your app. This tool helps to figure out the user intent, quickly sort through your databases, and surface the right information faster.

If you’re building AI features into your app, check out the API guides I wrote for the major providers, with step-by-step explanations of how to set them up from scratch:

Build an app without coding

Creating an app without code should be fun, honestly. And by now, you should have a general idea of which platform is the best for your particular project. All the apps in this list either have a free plan or a “free to learn/pay to launch” model, so you can create your account and start experimenting. And most tools here connect to Zapier, so you can wire your app into thousands of other tools the moment it goes live.

One last tip before you dive in: create two projects when starting out. One for the app you want to build, the other one for testing and learning. Whenever you hit a roadblock on your main app, head over to the testing project to brainstorm possibilities and implement potential solutions. This will build up your skills using the app builder while keeping your main project clean as you learn.

Happy building!

Related reading:

This article was originally published in January 2023. The most recent update was in October 2026.

October 1, 2026

The 8 best internal tool builders in 2026

We independently review every app we recommend in our best apps lists. When you click some of the links on this page, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

With new problems popping up every day, you need robust solutions to keep them all under control. Even if you have an IT team to build internal tools for you, their backlog is probably full of higher-priority tasks.

For businesses that can’t wait to move forward, internal tool builders can help you develop custom apps for every problem—in as little as a few hours, once you’re familiar with the platforms. No more juggling all varieties of data sources: all the data is centralized, ready to be plugged into a user interface with custom logic buttons included.

I’ve spent a lot of time tinkering with and writing about app builders, and this time, I researched and tested the top internal tool builders to find ones to help you solve problems, stay agile, and enhance your productivity. Based on all my testing, here are the best internal tool building platforms.

The best internal tool builders

Zapier for automating with AI
Softr for creating with AI
Google AppSheet for starting from a spreadsheet
Zoho Creator for connectivity and extensibility
Microsoft Power Apps for advanced logic without code
Budibase for an open source solution
Retool for turning AI-generated code into reliable software
OutSystems for an enterprise-grade solution

What is an internal tool builder?

An internal tool builder is a platform that lets you build custom apps for you and your teammates to use at work. That might be a bespoke CRM, a customized task management app, a social media tracker, an editorial calendar, or anything in between.

It’s important to remember that internal tool builders are different from other app builder platforms. They focus on data and functionality, providing the flexibility to let you solve internal business problems. You’ll be able to set up dashboards to view all your data with one glance and add interfaces and buttons to make quick changes. For your teams, you’ll be able to create a set of customizable apps to streamline day-to-day work.

If this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for:

Consider using a database-powered app builder if you’re upgrading from spreadsheets.
Explore the best no-code app builders for building any kind of app beyond internal tools—or check out the best AI app builders.
Check out work OS apps like monday.com or ClickUp. While neither are internal tool builders (or app builders in general), they offer plenty of modules that can cover most of your productivity-related challenges.

Not sure where to even start? I wrote a guide to picking the right app builder for your project so you know what to look for.

What makes the best internal tool builder?

How we evaluate and test apps

The most basic tools here will offer various data connections, a way to display that data using a collection of UI components, and all the create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) actions to manage data. More advanced solutions will let you customize the user experience, add advanced logic, and even set up workflow automation.

Here’s what I looked for when testing all the internal tool builders:

Development options. While I prefer no-code, I looked for platforms that offer a combination of development methods, including low-code and full-code. This should make it flexible to let your non-technical team members create apps and your IT department scale them.
Data sources and integrations. I looked at the range of data sources you can connect to your internal tool builder, along with third-party integrations to help you move data around and trigger automations.
Flexibility and customization. The apps in this list will help you create common internal tools, such as a CRM or an inventory manager, along with more specialized solutions, offering a good range of customization settings.
Scalability, performance, and reliability. I looked at uptime reports where available, read user reviews on this particular topic, and ran performance tests in the editor and the apps to make sure they don’t break easily.
Platform reputation. I’m prioritizing platforms that have a proven track record and that look like they’re sticking around for the long run.

I tested these apps over the course of one month. After signing up for each one, I created apps from scratch and from templates, following the available help guides. I built a few CRMs, a seasonal promotion tracker, a project management tool, and an internal onboarding guide, among a few others. Whenever I faced low-code or code challenges, I used ChatGPT to understand the requirements and put together a few code lines to make things work.

What are no-code, low-code, and full-code?

I labeled each app to give you an idea of how much code is required to use each one. You can take a look at Zapier’s guide to low-code vs. no-code for more details, but here’s the gist:

No-code means the platform has a series of visual processes to let you create your app. These include point-and-click controls, drag-and-drop elements, and language that makes it easy for non-technical users to start building apps.
Low-code tools come in two flavors (note: this is my distinction). Easy low-code only requires you to know (or generate) a bit of SQL for working with data and JavaScript or Python for building advanced logic; everything else is no-code. Hard low-code requires deeper coding knowledge, systems thinking, and knowing how your app’s components connect and work with each other.
Full-code. I added “full” to differentiate it from the other options. In this article, it means you’ll be owning infrastructure setup, building and maintaining services, and troubleshooting issues on your own—essentially, the job description of an engineer.

The best internal tool builders at a glance

	Category	Best for	Pricing
Zapier	No-code	Automating with AI	Free plan available; paid plans from $19.99/month
Softr	No-code	Creating with AI	Free plan available; paid plans from $19/month
AppSheet	Mostly no-code, some easy low-code	Starting from a spreadsheet	Free to build; deploying an app starts at $5/user/month
Zoho Creator	No-code/low-code hybrid	Connectivity and extensibility	From $8/user/month
Power Apps	Easy low-code	Advanced logic without code	From $20/user/month; additional features priced separately
Budibase	Easy low-code	An open source solution	Free when self-hosted for core features; paid plans from $19/month
Retool	Turning AI-generated code into reliable software	Extending with code	Free plan available; paid plans from $10/month/builder and $5/month/internal user
OutSystems	Full-code	An enterprise-grade solution	First app is free; from $36,300/year

Best internal tool builder for automating with AI

Zapier (no-code)

Zapier, our pick for the best internal tool builder for building safely with AI

Zapier pros:

Connects your tool with over 9,000+ apps (and counting)
Allows you to set up complex step-by-step logic
SOC 2 certified security and governance built in, without sacrificing ease of use

Zapier cons:

Not a true interface builder

Zapier combines automation, AI, databases, and forms to let you build powerful internal tools. And because of its automation-first mindset, your tools will connect to the rest of your tech stack too—it natively connects with over 9,000+ apps.

You’ll use Forms and Tables for gathering and storing data, and then build Zap workflows with agentic task execution built in. Or you can get whatever information you need, however you need it, directly from your AI assistant. Zapier MCP lets you securely access and take action on 9,000+ apps, so you may not even need an internal tool: just ask ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, or whatever agent you use, and get the answers you need from across your entire tech stack.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to show you what’s possible. Marcus Rush at Rush Home built an AI agent with Zapier that scores 11,000+ leads and delivers each agent a ranked daily briefing—all through Claude with no code required. And Corey Smith from ClickUp built a Zapier-powered ticket triage system that cut per-ticket research from 15 minutes to 4, saving his support team 917+ hours every month.

Take a look at more ways folks are building internal tools with Zapier, or start building.

Try Zapier

Zapier price: Free plan available. Professional plan at $19.99/month (billed annually).

Best internal app builder for creating with AI

Softr (no-code)

Softr, our pick for the best internal tool builder for creating with AI

Softr pros:

Very easy to learn
Quick results, even without using AI

Softr cons:

Pricing scales sharply with user count

Remember staring at a blank editor screen and dreading all the grunt work needed to get to a working prototype? AI is slowly turning that into a distant memory, with Softr as a great example of how a prompt can turn into buttons and screens that you can start tweaking immediately.

The AI CoBuilder got a big upgrade since last year. Previously, you’d enter a prompt and only get the starting point of the app; now, the agent window stays open after the first version, inviting you to add more features. You can keep going by writing more prompts or hiding the chat window and jumping into the visual editor yourself.

You can edit the UI yourself by dropping blocks on pages, a much faster approach when compared to other options where you’re manipulating containers and aligning input fields. Instead of placing elements one by one, you can drop a hero section or a form and then adjust the settings so it displays and behaves the way you want. If you need something unique, there’s even a vibe coding block that you can use to generate a custom component, a nice touch for flexibility.

Beyond its native databases, Softr integrates with a good range of data sources, such as Airtable, Google Sheets, and Notion on the free plan. As you upgrade to the upper tiers, you get access to more connectors, all the way up to PostgreSQL and Salesforce on the Enterprise plan. The API tool is now available for all plans, but some endpoints are gated based on pricing.

And speaking of integrations, you can connect Softr to Zapier to unlock advanced logic and access to over 9,000+ apps. You’ll be able to build AI-powered workflows that connect your app to all the other tools in your tech stack, so you can streamline app management. Learn more about how to automate Softr.

Automate Softr

It’s no surprise that the number of positive reviews for Softr keeps growing. And it offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee for its top paid plans, so you can combine easy-to-use tools with excellent reliability.

Softr price: Free plan available for unlimited apps and 5 AI credits per month. Basic plan at $19/month (billed annually) for 10 AI credits per month, 5 internal users, and 5 external users.

Best internal app builder for starting from a spreadsheet

Google AppSheet (mostly no-code; easy low-code for advanced features)

AppSheet pros:

Generates an app based on your spreadsheet
Interesting extra features, such as machine learning on your data

AppSheet cons:

Not receiving big new feature updates; Google is slowing down development to focus on stability and reliability instead

All the solutions on this list let you configure your data sources, edit your user interface, and keep hitting the preview button as you test and implement more features.

Google AppSheet has a different philosophy. Upload one of your spreadsheets, and AppSheet will use its AI engine to sketch an app you can use to interact with the data and data types on it. After that, you can customize each page of the app with a set of menus that have the cleanliness that Google has made us expect. The whole user experience is very Google, both while building the app and in terms of how your final app feels. The terminology is a bit advanced in some of the interactions, but there’s a lot of help (including a free video course on Udemy) to support you through the process.

I uploaded a spreadsheet with data for fictional employees, and AppSheet built a simple profile view and button to let me edit each entry. In five minutes, I was able to create a form to add new employees with a quick Google search and a couple of clicks.

The best part: AppSheet builds responsive apps that look great on any device. You can even include features that smartphones can take advantage of, like barcode scanning (albeit those features come at a higher price point). Other interesting features include machine learning and text recognition to add some artificial intelligence to your builds.

You can build and edit all you want, for as long as you want. AppSheet will only start charging when you’re ready to deploy your app to a live setting. While the setup time for Google AppSheet is longer and the learning curve a bit steeper, the range of solutions you can create is potentially much wider.

You can do even more with AppSheet by connecting it to Zapier to do things like creating a new record based on a sale or form submission.

Automate AppSheet

Google AppSheet price: Free to build; deploying an app starts at $5/user/month with basic application and automation features.

Best internal app builder for connectivity and extensibility

Zoho Creator (no-code/low-code hybrid)

Zoho Creator pros:

Wide feature set covering internal tools, BI dashboards, and AI
Offers iOS and Android versions of your apps

Zoho Creator cons:

Not very intuitive

Forty years ago, most IT systems were monolithic giants that had to be taken down and redeployed for every tiny update. Today, adopting a modular mindset is a much better answer for fast-changing business circumstances, quick incident recovery, and infinite scalability. If you’re already here, Zoho Creator is great for gathering these microservices into a single platform and building apps to interact with them.

On the left side of the dashboard, click the Microservices tab. The next step is choosing which kind you’d like to add: the most obvious ones are adding a data source or a custom API. Creator also integrates with a range of popular apps, such as Salesforce or Stripe—and nearly the entire Zoho software suite too.

But there are two more interesting options in this tab. The first is AI, offering a way to tune a model for predictions and object detection, while also offering the more common sentiment analysis and OCR. The other is augmented reality sets, a way to store 3D assets to use in these kinds of applications—for example, to create a more immersive shopping experience for your clients.

Once everything is connected and ready, you can move forward to building your internal tools. There’s so much you can do here: data collection apps, analytics dashboards, automation control boards, the list goes on. Use the Design tab of the builder (and the Page editor within it) to add visual components, set up the functionality in Workflows, and go deeper in the Settings tab. And if you need advanced logic at any time, Creator lets you bring out your code skills and write your way to the solution.

While we’re talking about solutions, you can connect Zoho Creator to Zapier and further extend it with the power of thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate your Zoho apps.

Automate Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator price: Free 15-day trial available. Standard plan at $8/user/month for 1 application and 5 data sources.

Best internal tool builder for advanced logic without code

Microsoft Power Apps (easy low-code)

Power Apps pros:

Runs on Microsoft Azure and integrates with all Microsoft products
Lets you build and edit apps with AI

Power Apps cons:

Some useful advanced features are priced separately

Microsoft Power Apps feels like the super-powered grandchild of the classic Microsoft Access. It’s a Microsoft product through and through, with the user experience we’ve grown used to. It’s surprising how much you can do with Power Fx, a formula language for Power Apps that lets you build advanced logic without having to code. The syntax is similar to spreadsheet formulas, making it easier to learn, read, and understand.

It has the highest number of native integrations with third-party apps when compared with others on this list. It works with all the business-oriented Microsoft 365 apps like SharePoint, Microsoft Azure web services, and a huge range of other apps—from familiar faces such as Dropbox to specialized enterprise-grade software.

What I love about Power Apps is its flexibility. You can start building by importing data, by putting together the user interface, or from a template. You can see all your data in a single tab in the dashboard, configure multi-step flows, or even start training an AI model. The more I clicked through the tabs, more possibilities popped up. The flexibility is there in the editor, too, letting you add plenty of UI components and customize their look and functionality.

Usually, the more power you have in your hands, the more difficult the platform is to learn. This isn’t necessarily true for Power Apps. There’s a quick tour on the homepage that gives you a pretty complete idea of everything you can do. When using the app itself, the controls feel intuitive—as if PowerPoint was overhauled with magic buttons. And with the Power Fx that I mentioned before, you can advance a lot faster once you get familiar with the basics.

Power Apps is the app on this list that surprised me the most when I first used it. Even if you end up choosing another solution in the end, I encourage you to sign up for a free account and try it out yourself.

Microsoft Power Apps price: Free developer plan available for building and testing unlimited apps and workflows. Premium at $20/user/month (billed annually).

Best open source internal tool builder

Budibase (easy low-code)

Budibase pros:

Open source
Pleasant design system

Budibase cons:

Advanced security and auditing are paid features even if you self-host

Budibase is open source, and it gives you most of its features for free if you want to self-host it. If you don’t know how to do it, be sure to have an IT person do it for you—deploying Budibase in your servers isn’t a walk in the park.

The platform itself feels great to use. The app editor window is clean, with all the controls grouped up and organized in four major tabs:

Data lets you create a new data source or connect an existing one. You can bring in everything you need to power this specific app and manage it in this tab.
Design lets you add the screens of your app, fill them with UI components, display data, and configure what each button does.
Automation lets you configure step-by-step actions that happen when a trigger is activated.
Settings contains a few useful controls for backing up your app, managing versions, and even embedding this app inside other tools.

After you build your core internal tools collection, start exploring Budibase’s new AI features. You can add generative capabilities inside your apps through the OpenAI integration, so you can easily add summarization or translation buttons. On top of these, you can build AI agents scoped to the data they need to work with, so they don’t snoop around databases with sensitive data. You and your team can interact with them via a chat interface, and the infrastructure can be self-hosted as well.

One quick note on the design: while other internal tools don’t care much about the aesthetics, Budibase locks you in a pleasant design system, with balanced spacing between elements and good color rules to differentiate visual elements—especially useful at the end of a busy workweek. You can choose one of eight color schemes, including light and dark modes to respect your eyes day and night.

The fact that you can build apps and set up your own automation makes Budibase quite flexible, especially considering the (non-existent) price point for self-hosting. It’s trusted by big companies like Netflix, Tesla, and Google—you’ll be in great company if you choose Budibase to build your internal toolkit.

Budibase price: Free when self-hosted for core features. Premium plan for running it on the Budibase cloud starts at $19/month (billed annually) for 1 creator and 2,000 Budibase AI credits.

Best internal tool builder for turning AI-generated code into reliable software

Retool (easy low-code for basic features, full-code for advanced features)

Retool pros:

Builds workflows, web, and mobile apps
Database management features available

Retool cons:

Editor slows down while building complex apps

The non-technical and developer worlds are crashing together fast with the help of AI and vibe coding. The main problem lies in performance and security, with generated code having gaps that are hard to find. Retool is targeting the trend directly, offering a de-slopping toolkit to turn vibes into reliable software you can trust.

You’ll find the Lovable and Replit import buttons front and center on the landing page. This means you can bring prototypes generated in these platforms directly into Retool. If you’re already using AI coding agents, set up the MCP server and create your apps from Claude Code or Cursor, and then make the final polishes back on the Retool interface.

Don’t have a prototype or any of these agents? Use Retool’s native AI agent instead: it walks you through the process of turning a general prompt into a set of clear requirements, moving forward with the build once you lock in your preferences. The app slowly takes shape to the right side of the chat window, as you see previews of SQL queries. You can inspect the data schema and the code in dedicated tabs, easy to audit as you go.

In the pre-AI era, Retool shone more brightly in the hands of backend engineers, with non-technical users facing a steep learning curve to publishing their apps. The playing field is more level now, as AI handles the coding complexity and Retool’s visual tools handle the design, logic, and security layer. The learning curve is still there, but it’s much smoother than before.

Retool price: Free plan available for unlimited web and mobile apps. Team plan at $10/month per builder, $5/month per internal user (billed annually) offers 5,000 workflow runs and 1,000 AI credits.

Best enterprise internal app builder

OutSystems (full-code)

OutSystems pros:

Includes enterprise-grade AI platform for developing custom agents
Customizable integration with existing platforms and data

OutSystems cons:

Tough learning curve for semi-technical people

OutSystems brands itself as a low-code platform. If you’re a developer, that’s definitely true. If you’re a non-technical user, it’s going to be hard to leverage everything this platform has to offer.

OutSystems works at the enterprise-grade level, offering a scalable and reliable infrastructure for companies that are already working with multiple platforms. Each new app that you create gets its own development environment, running its own analytics and logging engines, enabling all the tools that you need to actually create the app. Once you publish it, this platform will convert everything in the editor into high-performance code and create separate instances for all the services required to run it.

This provides some level of isolation between apps, giving you more control over data and logic. You can choose to connect OutSystems apps to one another at the platform level and even with external integrations, so you can work with data inside OutSystems or part of your data pool.

To start creating an app, you’ll need to create an account online and download the desktop app, the OutSystems Service Studio. This editor feels almost like a crossover between a low-code app and an integrated development environment (IDE) like Visual Studio. The right tab has a files-and-folders view for everything inside your app, from visual elements to scripts. The debugging features include precise controls to run your app step-by-step, helping you fix unintended behavior.

OutSystems ranks highly in both Gartner and Forrester‘s studies, slightly outpacing its closest competitor Mendix (which you can check out for comparison). The first app you build is free, but beyond that, pricing starts at $36,300 per year, making this platform a much better fit for bigger businesses with huge pain points in their digital infrastructure.

OutSystems price: Free for building test apps. Pricing negotiated directly with sales, starting at $36,300/year.

What is the best internal tool builder?

Internal tool builders are the answer to the question “is there a way we can do this faster and with fewer mistakes?” Yes, there is. Connect your data sources, build an interface, set up the logic, and get more done with less effort, in less time.

There are apps on this list for every type of user: beginners who are just learning what no-code means, tech-savvy people who have a good mental picture of how apps work, and IT professionals who want to add their own code and keep an eye on security and performance. Take the internal tool builder that best matches your needs and skill level for a ride, and see how it can simplify your work.

And if you want your internal tools to connect to the rest of your stack—and work with the AI tools your team already uses—Zapier brings 9,000+ integrations and automation into whatever you build.

Try Zapier

Related reading:

This article was originally published in October 2023. The most recent update was in October 2026.

October 1, 2026

Category: Business and Making Money

The best Pipedrive alternative options

The best Pipedrive alternatives at a glance

Best Pipedrive alternative for scalability

Salesforce Sales Cloud (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for versatility

HubSpot CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for all-in-one value

Zoho CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for small businesses

Salesmate (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for Gmail power users

NetHunt CRM (Gmail, Web, iOS, Android)

Best free Pipedrive alternative

Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for an AI-native CRM

Attio (Web, iOS, Android)

Best Pipedrive alternative for mixing pipeline and project management

monday CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

Which Pipedrive alternative should you use?

What is AI in IT?

What kind of AI is used in IT?

Why IT teams are adopting AI

Top 7 use cases for AI in IT

IT service management (ITSM)

Identity and access management (IAM)

IT operations (AIOps)

Security operations

Vulnerability management

Software license management

Security compliance

Bring AI to your IT processes with Zapier

What are Gemini connectors?

What can you do with Gemini connectors?

How to set up Gemini connectors

How to add a custom connector or MCP server

Connect Gemini to 9,000+ apps with Zapier

Build deterministic workflows and add AI only when you need it

Access 9,000+ apps directly in Gemini via Zapier’s Gemini connector

Gemini connectors FAQ

Are Gemini connectors free?

What’s the difference between Connected Apps and Gemini Enterprise connectors?

How many connectors does Gemini have?

Are Gemini connectors safe?

What happened to Google Agentspace?

What is AI in GTM?

Types of AI that GTM teams use

7 ways GTM teams are using AI

Sales intelligence

Outbound sales

Email marketing

Lead management

Pipeline management

Data hygiene

RevOps reporting and forecasting

Benefits of AI in GTM

Bring AI to your GTM motion with Zapier

The best meeting schedulers

What makes the best meeting scheduler?

How we evaluate and test apps

Have a Zoom, Google, or Microsoft subscription?

The best meeting schedulers at a glance

Best meeting scheduler for end-to-end meeting management

Calendly (Web, iOS, Android)

Best meeting scheduler built into a calendar app

Calendar (Web, iOS, Android)

Best meeting scheduler for mixing polling with a standard scheduling tool

SavvyCal (Web)

Best free meeting scheduler

zcal (Web)

Best meeting scheduler for priority-based scheduling

Reclaim (Web)

Best meeting scheduler for follow-up automation with AI phone calls

Cal.com (Web, macOS, Windows)

Best meeting scheduler for a customizable link-in-bio page

Zeeg (Web)

Make meetings better with a meeting scheduler app

A note on Zapier and no-code building

The best no-code app builder software

No-code development vs. vibe coding