Make.com Review UK: What My Real Automations Cost

I get asked the same question by clients almost every week. "Is Make.com actually worth it, or is it just another shiny tool?" This is my honest answer, written from real use rather than a landing page.

I run a small SEO and web agency, Glide Marketing, and Make quietly handles one job every month that I would hate to go back to doing by hand. Below I cover what it is, how I use it, what it really costs, and where it falls short.

If you want to follow along, you can start a free Make account here and build your first automation as you read.

What is Make.com?

Make (formerly Integromat) is a visual automation platform. You drag "modules" onto a canvas, connect them with lines, and Make moves data between your apps on a schedule or in real time.

Think of the jobs you do by hand that follow the same steps every time. A new enquiry lands, you copy the details into your CRM, you send a welcome email, you add a task for yourself. Make can do all of that in the background while you get on with real work.

It sits in the same category as Zapier and n8n. The short version is that Make gives you far more control than Zapier for less money, and it is easier to start with than self-hosting n8n. I compare the two in detail in my n8n vs Make piece.

How I actually use Make at my agency

I will be straight about this. I am not a Make power user with a wall of clever automations. I run one scenario, and it does a genuinely useful job.

One of our clients pays us on commission, tied to how much their website sells. To invoice them accurately each month I need their sales figures in one place. My Make scenario pulls their Stripe transactions into a Google Sheet automatically, so the number I invoice against is always current and I am not exporting CSV files by hand.

It is a small thing, and it is also exactly what Make is best at: taking data out of one app that does not talk to another, and moving it across on a schedule without me thinking about it. One scenario, running quietly in the background, saving a fiddly manual export every billing cycle.

That is the honest scope of my own use. I am not going to dress it up, because it does not need dressing up. It is one reliable job that pays back its small monthly cost many times over.

How Make.com pricing really works

This is the part most reviews get muddled, so let me be plain.

Make charges by operations, not by "tasks" or "runs". An operation is one action by one module. If a scenario runs and touches five modules, that is roughly five operations. Your monthly plan gives you a pool of operations to spend.

That pricing model matters. A scenario that runs a hundred times a day but only uses a couple of modules can be very cheap. A heavy scenario with lots of steps burns through your allowance faster. You watch the usage in the dashboard and pick a plan that fits.

There is a free tier that is genuinely useful for testing and light use. Above that, the paid plans step up by operation allowance. Pricing is quoted and billed in US dollars, so the real pound cost depends on the exchange rate and any card conversion fee on the day.

My actual bill is around £6 a month on the basic paid plan. For a job that would otherwise mean a manual Stripe export every billing cycle, it is one of the easier tool costs to justify.

The pros

• The operations pricing is fair. You pay for what modules actually do, not a flat per-task fee. For most small businesses this works out cheaper than the obvious alternative.
• The visual builder is powerful. Routers, filters, loops and error handlers let you build real logic, not just simple one-in-one-out links.
• Large app library. Most tools a UK small business uses are supported, and there is a generic HTTP module for anything that is not.
• It scales with you. You can start on the free tier and grow into paid plans without changing tools.
• Good for agencies. Once you have built a scenario for one client, you can clone and adapt it for the next.

The honest cons

• The learning curve is real. The first scenario is easy. Getting comfortable with routers, data structures and error handling takes a few weeks. If you want something you can set up in ten minutes and never think about, this is not the gentlest option.
• Dollar billing adds friction. Being billed in US dollars means your pound cost moves with the exchange rate, and you may pay a small card conversion fee.
• Complex scenarios can get messy. A big canvas with many branches can be hard to read months later. You have to keep them tidy on purpose.
• Debugging takes patience. When a scenario fails, working out which module and which field caused it is a skill you build over time.

Who Make.com suits

Make is a strong fit if you already use several web apps and you keep moving data between them by hand. Form tools, CRMs, spreadsheets, email, accounting software, Slack, all of these connect happily.

It suits small business owners, agencies and freelancers who are comfortable spending a little time learning a tool that then pays them back for years. If you want the full picture of the tools I lean on, I list them in my best AI tools for UK entrepreneurs guide.

It is less suited to someone who wants a single, dead-simple, one-click automation and nothing more. For that, a simpler tool with fewer options might frustrate you less.

Would I recommend Make.com?

Yes, with one honest caveat. If you are willing to spend a few evenings learning it, Make will quietly remove hours of repetitive work from your month and keep doing it in the background. For most UK small businesses that have outgrown copy-paste, it is the tool I point them to first.

The caveat is the learning curve. If nobody on your team has the patience to sit with it for a couple of weeks, you will get a fraction of the value. Go in expecting to learn, and it pays off.

You can create a free Make account here and build a first scenario today. Start small with one real job you do by hand.

If you would rather someone set this up for you, that is what I do at Glide Marketing. We map the manual jobs eating your week and build the automations so you do not have to learn the tool at all.

Mike McDonnell, Founder of Glide Marketing