In today’s competitive world automation gives you an edge over your competitors. When we have an option to let machines handle our repetitive tasks, why waste our resources? The present article is all about reviewing two well-known automation providers, that are UiPath and Zapier. Both of these companies provide automation solutions, but there are key differences that make them distinct.
UiPath
UiPath is the present market leader and well funded (at $35b valuations) Robotic Process Automation (RPA) provider. It can perform automation on web and windows programs. UiPath has a strong marketplace with a wide range of plugins to its bucket.
The main product of UiPath is UiPath Studio. Inside UiPath Studio we can create automation workflows or record our macros to be automated. One of the nice features of UiPath Studio is the NuGet style package manager, one can search and install needed packages right inside the product itself!
Zapier
Zapier is a SaaS-based automation provider. It has a huge collection of applications we can automate with it. The way Zapier works is that it connects applications as part of the target workflow.
The final product of Zapier is a web-based portal where we create Zaps! A Zap is nothing but a designed workflow where we can specify various applications at different steps of the workflow. We specify which are input/output from a specific application and we build/design accordingly. Zap is triggered as per a specified trigger event such as a new email or file in google drive!
Okay! We now have basic information about UiPath and Zapier. It’s time to dive a bit further into this. In the following section, we’ll review how to use these platforms.
How to Work with UiPath
If you want to automate something with UiPath, the best practice is to download UiPath studio to get started. UiPath Studio comes in two versions “Studio” and “StudioX”. Now, UiPath Studio is for beginner-level RPA whereas UiPath StudioX is capable of more advanced tasks and is suited mostly to programmers.
UiPath Studio contains a built-in package manager where we can search for and download third-party packages. If you want to do PDF-related activities such as merging PDF or splitting PDF (or other PDF-related functionalities), you can download PDF.co’s plugin.
To gain more information on how the UiPath Studio works and how to add packages, let’s review the following video.
Now that we know how to work with third-party plugins with UiPath let’s see one use case. Suppose we want to automate PDF-related functionality which is to add images to existing PDF. In this case, we’ll be using the PDF.co plugin as it already supports this feature.
Please review the following video which demonstrates this functionality.
If you are interested in using the PDF.co plugin for UiPath, please visit this page to get more information.
How to Work with Zapier
Zapier is a SaaS-based product, hence we do not need to install any software to make automation with Zapier. To get started we need to create an account with Zapier at https://zapier.com.
Zapier has a nice concept of ‘Zap’. A Zap is basically a workflow that configures usage of various input and output for our chosen applications. This workflow starts with a trigger. I.e. Once this trigger is triggered, this Zap will become active and will execute all configured services. You can think of Zap as an Azure function or AWS lambda. Actually, this zap is built on top of AWS Lambda which makes sense.
Let’s take a look at a use-case where we needed to automate the filling of PDF forms and generate desired results at specific locations. PDF.co provides a beautiful Zapier plugin to work with similar PDF-related functionality, and in the following video, we’ll review that.
Easy, isn’t it! Fact that everything is configured on the Zapier portal itself and no need to install additional software makes it easily usable to non-developer users.
If you are more interested in the PDF.co plugin for Zapier, please visit this link.
Comparison Between UiPath and Zapier
Both UiPath and Zapier do the automation, but there are key differences between the nature of these. In this section, we’ll be comparing UiPath and Zapier over different criteria.
Nature of Providing
UiPath provides automation via UiPath Studio. Once you have this software installed, you can create a workflow of your automation steps. It also provides machine-level automation which can simulate user behavior such as click and type.
On the other hand, Automation with Zapier does not require specific software to be installed. It’s all configured and done in its portal itself. With Zapier you can choose your specific applications and automate them based on triggers.
Product Links and Useful Resources
| UiPath | Zapier | |
|---|---|---|
| Website | https://www.uipath.com | https://zapier.com |
| Documentation | https://docs.uipath.com | https://zapier.com/help |
| Additional Software | https://www.uipath.com/product/studio
https://www.uipath.com/product/studiox |
Not Needed |
| Pricing | No Official Page for Pricing. Blogger review on price. |
https://zapier.com/pricing |
| PDF.co | https://pdf.co/uipath | https://pdf.co/zapier |
When to Use Which
UiPath provides better machine-level automation. You can simulate any user activity, for example, opening a specific website and filling a form.
Whereas Zapier is entirely SaaS-based and more into automating applications. For example, if you want to trigger any workflow whenever a new row is added to a Google spreadsheet.
I hope this article will help you scratch the surface on how to and when to use UiPath vs Zapier. Thank you!
