Make Is the Automation Platform I Use Every Day
Make, and what I actually run on it
Make is a visual automation platform: you connect apps, webhooks and APIs into workflows it calls scenarios, and they run on a schedule or the moment something happens. I have around fifteen of them live, running sign-ups, billing, monthly reports and live site statistics across two marketplaces.
I am not a developer, and every one of those scenarios was built in a browser on a Chromebook, most of them by describing the job to Claude and letting it work in my Make account through Make's own connector. This page covers what they do, what Make costs in practice, and the parts that would have saved me time to know first. If you remember it as Integromat, it is the same product, renamed in 2022.
Why I use it
Most of the work in running an online marketplace sits between the systems rather than inside them. A form is submitted, and then a record needs creating, a payment needs setting up, two emails need sending and a listing needs drafting. Each step is trivial. Doing all of them by hand, every time, for every supplier, is how a small business ends up employing someone to copy and paste.
The alternative is usually a separate app for each job, each with its own monthly fee and its own idea of how your data should look. Make replaces that with one place where the joins live, where I can see every run, what went in, what came out and where it stopped.
The second reason is less obvious: it lets a website do things its platform was never designed to do. A storefront cannot count its own search queries and display the totals. A scenario that logs each search and writes a summary back to the store every six hours can, and nobody visiting the site would know the difference.
How I build them: Make and Claude together
Make publishes an official MCP server, which is the standard way AI assistants connect to outside tools, and it is included on every Make plan at no extra charge. Connected to Claude, it means I can describe an automation in plain English, such as "when a supplier upgrades, update their listing, take the payment and email them a confirmation", and have Claude create the scenario, map the fields and check the configuration inside my own Make account.
The same connection works in reverse. Claude can list what is running, read the execution history when something fails and adjust the scenario, which turns debugging from an afternoon of clicking through module bubbles into a conversation. Make also lets you expose scenarios as tools an AI can run on request.
The caveat is the obvious one: an assistant that can build scenarios can build wrong ones. Run each new scenario once by hand, read what it actually did, and only then switch it on. The visual editor is still where I check the work, which is the real advantage Make has over writing the same logic as code. More on how I use Claude across the rest of the business is on my Claude page.
What I use it for
Onboarding that does the paperwork
A new training provider completes the agreement online. One scenario records it and sends the confirmations; another reads the provider's own website and builds their listings as drafts, so I review them before anything goes live rather than typing them in from scratch.
Subscriptions and billing
For a supplier directory: sign-ups, payment set-up, upgrades and a billing check that runs every two hours. Money is the one place where a missed step costs real goodwill, which is exactly why it should not depend on someone remembering.
Reports and housekeeping
Monthly supplier reports go out on the first of the month, registrations are re-checked monthly, and old data is cleared out weekly in the small hours. Unglamorous jobs that only ever get done reliably once a machine is doing them.
Live numbers on the website
Every supplier search on one site is logged as it happens. Every six hours a scenario totals the last thirty days and writes the result back into the store, where the theme displays it. Real demand data on the page, with no app installed to produce it.
What I would flag before you sign up
Learn how credits are counted before you build anything big
Make bills in credits, and most module actions cost one each time they run. That sounds cheap until a scenario loops through a list: fifty items passing through four modules is two hundred credits, not four. Routers and error handlers are free. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing term, so buy for your real usage rather than for headroom.
The free plan is for learning, not running a business
It has no time limit, which is generous, but it allows 1,000 credits a month, two active scenarios, a fifteen-minute minimum between scheduled runs and five minutes per run. Enough to build your first few and see whether the approach suits you. Paid plans remove the scenario cap and allow scheduling down to the minute.
The ready-made modules run out sooner than you expect
Make connects to thousands of apps, but the pre-built actions rarely cover everything an app's API can do. Most of my scenarios end up using the generic HTTP module to call an API directly, which means reading documentation and handling JSON. No-code is accurate. No-thinking is not.
Automations fail quietly
A scenario that stops working does not announce itself; the emails just stop arriving. Add an alert to anything that matters, and check the run history now and then. Detailed execution logs are kept for 7 days on the free plan and 30 on the paid tiers, so a problem you notice late may already be out of view.
Who it suits
- ✓Small businesses doing the same admin by hand every week
- ✓Shopify and WordPress site owners who want features without another monthly app
- ✓Marketplaces and directories with suppliers to onboard, bill and report to
- ✓Non-developers prepared to read API documentation when the ready-made modules stop
- ✓Claude users who want the AI to build and run automations, not just describe them
- ✓Anyone running a business from a browser, with no server to host code on
Common questions
Is Make free?
There is a free plan with no time limit, covering 1,000 credits a month and two active scenarios. Paid plans are priced by the number of credits you need each month.
Is Make the same as Integromat?
Yes. Integromat was renamed Make in 2022, and the visual scenario builder is the same idea it always was.
Do I need to know how to code?
No, but it helps to be comfortable with how data is structured. Simple scenarios are drag and drop. More ambitious ones usually involve calling an API with the HTTP module and mapping JSON fields, which is learnable without being a programmer.
Can Claude build Make scenarios?
Yes. Make's official MCP server connects it to Claude and other AI assistants, is included on all plans, and lets the assistant create and manage scenarios in your account and run scenarios you expose as tools. Test anything it builds before you activate it.
What happens if I run out of credits?
Scenarios stop until more credits are added, either by buying extra or upgrading. Make warns you as you approach the limit, and incoming webhooks are queued up to your plan's allowance rather than lost straight away.
Getting started
Sign up through the link below and your first month is free. Pick one job you do by hand every week, build it as a single scenario, and watch how many credits a real run uses before you decide on a plan.
Try Make: first month freeAffiliate link. I may earn a commission if you subscribe through it, at no cost to you. I pay for my own Make subscription, and nobody there has reviewed or approved this page.
What I have built with it
Automation is only worth it when it is attached to a business that works. The Operator's Library is where I document the rest: courses and working tools from 23 years of running this kind of operation.
Browse the Operator's Library