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Postman vs Zapier: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this Markdown code, we will provide the key differences between Postman and Zapier. Postman is an API development tool, while Zapier is an automation tool that connects various applications.
Integration Capabilities: Postman primarily focuses on API testing and development, providing a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing, debugging, and documenting APIs. In contrast, Zapier specializes in integrating different apps and automating workflows, allowing users to connect and streamline processes across various platforms.
Workflow Automation vs API Testing: Zapier excels in workflow automation by providing a user-friendly interface where users can create "Zaps" to connect and automate tasks between different apps, without the need for coding knowledge. Postman, on the other hand, is designed for API testing and debugging, with advanced features like request generation, response inspection, and comprehensive test suites.
User Interface: Postman offers a rich and powerful user interface specifically tailored for API development, including features like API documentation, code snippets generation, and easy collaboration with team members. Zapier, being an automation tool, prioritizes simplicity and ease of use, providing a user-friendly interface that enables non-technical users to create complex automated tasks effortlessly.
Scalability: Postman is designed to handle and manage the complexities of API development, allowing for advanced testing scenarios, performance monitoring, and collaboration features suitable for teams of developers. Zapier, while also accommodating teams, is more focused on simplifying and automating repetitive tasks for individual users or small teams.
Pricing and Usage: Postman has both free and paid versions, with different tiers offering additional features and support. Zapier, on the other hand, follows a subscription-based model with tiered pricing plans based on usage and automation requirements.
Target Audience: Postman caters primarily to developers, providing them with a comprehensive set of tools and features to build, test, and document APIs. Zapier, on the other hand, is aimed at individuals and small-to-medium-sized businesses that want to automate repetitive tasks between different applications without the need for extensive development work.
In Summary, Postman is a robust API development tool, while Zapier is an automation tool that connects various apps and simplifies workflow automation.
Hey! We are Raisegiving, a payments platform geared towards helping nonprofits raise money and manage donors. We are looking to give our Users (Admins of nonprofits) the ability to integrate their Raisegiving account with other tools such as Mailchimp and QuickBooks.
Examples of desired use cases:
- Users should be able to sync Raisegiving audience with their Mailchimp audience, trigger the creation of a new Mailchimp audience based on data from their Raisegiving account.
- Donations made on our platform should sync with users Quickbooks account.
Does anyone have any helpful insights into the pros and cons of Tray.io vs Zapier?
Tray.io is expensive and only makes sense in a few rare occasions where you need 2-way constant data binding in a 'loop' where Zapier is more like an automation swiss army knife. Tray.io is aimed exclusively at enterprise while Zapier supports businesses of any size. Tray.io is very expensive and Zapier is much more reasonable especially early on before you have massive amounts of zaps.
You may also want to look at Integromat but Zapier would be my choice in this case. I almost don't see Tray.io as being something worth considering for your particular use case unless there's a massive scale behind your product that I'm unaware of (absurd amounts of tasks in the hundreds of thousands).
Zapier also has a great community and an "experts" program in the event that you want to outsource your automation.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
Postman supports automation and organization in a way that Insomnia just doesn't. Admittedly, Insomnia makes it slightly easy to query the data that you get back (in a very MongoDB-esque query language) but Postman sets you up to develop the code that you would use in development/testing right in the editor.
Pros of Postman
- Easy to use490
- Great tool369
- Makes developing rest api's easy peasy276
- Easy setup, looks good156
- The best api workflow out there144
- It's the best53
- History feature53
- Adds real value to my workflow44
- Great interface that magically predicts your needs43
- The best in class app35
- Can save and share script12
- Fully featured without looking cluttered10
- Collections8
- Option to run scrips8
- Global/Environment Variables8
- Shareable Collections7
- Dead simple and useful. Excellent7
- Dark theme easy on the eyes7
- Awesome customer support6
- Great integration with newman6
- Documentation5
- Simple5
- The test script is useful5
- Saves responses4
- This has simplified my testing significantly4
- Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,34
- Easy as pie4
- API-network3
- I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis3
- Mocking API calls with predefined response3
- Now supports GraphQL2
- Postman Runner CI Integration2
- Easy to setup, test and provides test storage2
- Continuous integration using newman2
- Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable2
- Runner2
- Graph2
- <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>1
Pros of Zapier
- Sync cloud services45
- Easy setup34
- Scheduled tasks15
- Great customer support8
- Integrates with Trello6
- Gives me updates anytime, anywhere6
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Cons of Postman
- Stores credentials in HTTP10
- Bloated features and UI9
- Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens8
- Poor GraphQL support7
- Expensive5
- Not free after 5 users3
- Can't prompt for per-request variables3
- Import swagger1
- Support websocket1
- Import curl1