AI Automation with Make & Zapier
No-code AI automation is the highest-leverage skill for founders and operators who are not developers. This course teaches you to connect AI models to your real business tools using Make (formerly Integromat) and Zapier — without writing a line of code. You will build workflows for lead enrichment, content creation, customer support triage, and operations, and learn how to maintain them as your business scales.
What you'll learn
Course outline
Free — no account needed
What No-Code AI Automation Actually Means
The mental model behind automation platforms and how AI changes what is possible
Make vs Zapier — Which to Choose and Why
The concrete comparison that ends the "which platform" paralysis
Your First Automation — New Lead → AI Summary → Slack
Build a real workflow end-to-end: form submission triggers AI enrichment and posts a summary to Slack
Full course — $49 one-time
AI + CRM — Intelligent Lead Routing and Enrichment
Automatically score leads, enrich with company data, and route to the right owner
Content Automation — Draft, Approve, Publish Pipelines
Build a content machine that takes ideas and turns them into scheduled posts with minimal human touch
Customer Support Triage with AI
Automatically categorise, prioritise, and draft responses for incoming support requests
Data Enrichment and Research Workflows
Automatically research companies, extract data from documents, and populate your databases
Error Handling and Monitoring Your Automations
Build automations that fail gracefully, alert you when something breaks, and self-heal where possible
Get the full course
8 lessons — from your first automation to a full production workflow system.
About this course
Automation tools like Make (formerly Integromat) and Zapier let you connect apps, trigger workflows, and process data without writing traditional code — and adding AI steps to these workflows has made them dramatically more powerful. Learning workflow automation means you can eliminate hours of repetitive work: automatically route customer enquiries, generate content from data, process form submissions, sync information between tools, and trigger complex multi-step processes from simple events.
This course is for founders, operators, marketers, and non-technical professionals who want to automate their work using no-code and low-code tools. After completing it you will be able to build automation workflows in Make and Zapier, incorporate AI steps that generate content or classify data, and connect the apps your team uses into coherent automated pipelines — saving hours of manual work per week.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Make and Zapier?
Zapier is the more accessible option — its linear trigger-action model is easy to understand and configure. Make is more powerful and flexible — it supports complex branching logic, data transformation, iterators, and error handling, but has a steeper learning curve. Zapier works better for simple, linear workflows. Make works better for complex, multi-branch workflows with conditional logic. This course covers both so you can choose the right tool.
Do I need coding knowledge to use Make or Zapier?
No coding knowledge is required for basic automation workflows. You connect apps by selecting triggers and actions from a visual interface. Where basic coding helps is in data transformation — writing simple formulas or JavaScript expressions to manipulate data between steps. This course teaches the automation patterns and minimal formula knowledge that handles 90% of real-world use cases.
How do I add AI to an automation workflow?
Make and Zapier both support HTTP request steps that can call any API, including the Claude or OpenAI API. You pass data from previous workflow steps into the prompt, call the AI API, then use the response in subsequent steps. Common AI automation patterns: generate personalised email drafts from CRM data, classify incoming support tickets, extract structured data from unstructured text, or summarise documents. This course covers each pattern with working templates.
Is no-code automation reliable enough for business-critical processes?
Yes — Make and Zapier power mission-critical workflows at thousands of companies. The platforms have enterprise tiers with SLAs, error handling, and retry logic. The key to reliability is building in error handling (what happens when a step fails?), monitoring (are workflows completing?), and test runs before going live. This course covers building reliable workflows with proper error handling from the start.
What are the most valuable automation workflows to build first?
The highest-value automations are repetitive and involve moving data between apps. High-value starting points: lead capture form to CRM to welcome email sequence, new customer to onboarding task list, support ticket to AI classification and routing, and daily report generation from a database. This course provides templates for each of these common patterns.