Three firms asked me this question in the space of a fortnight. Each had done their research. Each had read the same four blog posts comparing Zapier, Make, and n8n — posts written for Shopify stores and marketing agencies, with no mention of Intelliflo, Xplan, data residency, or what happens when the FCA asks you to evidence your client communication process.

So here is the answer written for regulated advice firms. Not a general comparison. Not affiliate-link bait. The actual answer, for your context.

The short version

Platform choice matters less than most people think. All three can solve the problems most wealth management firms actually have. The difference is in cost structure, technical overhead, and where each one starts to strain. Getting the choice wrong costs you roughly six months of rework when you hit the ceiling. Getting it right means you build once and extend it.

Start with your constraints, not with the platforms.

What regulated firms actually need from automation

Before comparing tools, it helps to be clear about what makes this sector different from the use cases most automation content is written for.

You need audit trails. Not just logs that you can dig out if something goes wrong, but records you can produce clearly and quickly. If a workflow sends a review letter, you need to know exactly when it sent, what it contained, and whether anything in the chain modified the data before it went.

You need data residency you can account for. Most clients don’t have a formal policy written down, but under UK GDPR they should be able to answer where their client data flows. A workflow that sends a client’s name, date of birth, and portfolio value through three US-hosted third-party services is a data map entry. Someone needs to own it.

You need integrations that actually exist. Intelliflo has a published API. Xplan has one too, though it is more involved. Any platform comparison that doesn’t address this is answering a different question.

And you need something that your compliance officer can look at and understand in broad terms, even if they don’t touch it themselves.

Zapier

Zapier is the most expensive of the three at scale, and the easiest to start with. If you have one person who needs to automate something this week and you can’t wait for a proper implementation, Zapier will get you there.

The pricing model is task-based. You pay per action the workflow performs. For low-volume, high-value automations (sending a meeting confirmation, logging a call outcome to your CRM, triggering a review workflow from a calendar event) the cost is reasonable. For anything that runs hundreds of times a day, it gets expensive quickly.

Zapier’s Intelliflo integration exists but is limited. You can trigger on new contacts and push data in a few directions. For straightforward onboarding notifications or CRM-to-calendar sync, it’s enough. For anything involving document generation, fee calculations, or multi-step client journeys, you’ll hit the edge of what the native connector does fairly fast.

Where Zapier wins: you need something working in a day, you have a non-technical member of staff who will own it, and the workflow doesn’t involve moving sensitive data across more than two systems.

Where it breaks: task costs compound fast, the audit trail is basic unless you build logging steps in deliberately, and complex branching logic becomes very hard to read and maintain.

Make (formerly Integromat)

Make uses an operations-based pricing model rather than a per-task one, which makes it significantly cheaper than Zapier for the same workload once you’re past a few hundred runs a month. The visual interface is genuinely good. Workflows are represented as diagrams you can follow, which helps when a compliance officer or a new staff member needs to understand what a process does.

Make has a broader native connector library than Zapier for financial services adjacent tools, and its error handling is considerably better. You can set up fallback routes, catch specific failure types, and log exceptions to a separate system without much effort.

The data residency question is more nuanced here. Make is a European company (Czech Republic, now US-owned following the acquisition) and offers EU data processing. For UK firms, this requires a specific check on your data processing agreements. It’s solvable, but it needs to be checked, not assumed.

Where Make wins: you’re running moderate to high volumes of automations, you want workflows that a non-developer can read and audit, and cost efficiency matters. For most IFAs I work with, Make hits the right balance.

Where it breaks: the learning curve is steeper than Zapier. The first two or three workflows take longer to build than they would in Zapier. And like Zapier, you are ultimately dependent on their connector library for anything involving your back-office system.

n8n

n8n is open-source and self-hostable. That last word is the key one for regulated firms thinking seriously about data residency. If you run n8n on your own infrastructure (or a cloud environment you control, such as an Azure or AWS tenancy you manage), client data doesn’t leave your perimeter to reach the automation layer. It stays in your systems.

This is genuinely important for some firms. If your compliance team has flagged data flows as a concern, or if you’re handling particularly sensitive client situations, n8n self-hosted removes a category of risk that Zapier and Make can only mitigate.

The tradeoff is technical overhead. Someone needs to run the server, handle updates, and manage the environment. For a firm with a technical director or a managed IT provider who can take this on, that’s fine. For a firm of five people with no in-house technical resource, it is a real cost.

n8n also has a cloud-hosted version, which removes the operational overhead but reintroduces the data residency question. The cloud version is priced per workflow execution and is competitive with Make.

The honest answer for most firms is that n8n self-hosted is the right long-term answer, and Make is the right pragmatic answer for the next twelve months while you get comfortable with automation generally.

Where n8n wins: you have or can buy technical resource, data residency is a firm requirement, and you’re thinking about building a more substantial automation capability over time rather than solving a single problem. It’s also the best fit for Level 3 work (custom builds with complex logic) where you need full control over the pipeline.

Where it breaks: without technical resource to maintain it, a self-hosted n8n instance becomes a liability. I’ve seen firms spin one up for a specific project and then ignore it for eight months. That is not a good outcome.

The one question that decides it

Forget the platform comparison for a moment. Answer this: does your firm have, or can it reliably access, someone who will own and maintain the automation environment over the next two years?

If yes, n8n is worth serious consideration, especially if data residency is on your compliance radar.

If no, or if you’re not sure, Make is the right choice for most regulated advice firms at Level 2 (integration work connecting two or three existing systems). The visual interface makes workflows auditable, the cost structure is sensible, and it has enough depth to handle everything from onboarding sequences to review triggers to fee reconciliation notifications.

Zapier is the right choice for one specific scenario: you need something working now, you have a non-technical person who will own it, and the workflow is simple enough that you won’t outgrow it.

A note on Intelliflo and Xplan specifically

Both platforms have APIs. Neither has a rich native connector in any of the three tools above. In practice, this means you’ll be using HTTP request modules to call the API directly, which requires knowing the API documentation and writing the calls manually.

This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Intelliflo’s API is well-documented. But it does mean your first automation involving either system will take longer than your first automation involving, say, Gmail or HubSpot. Budget for that.

If you’re building Level 2 integrations involving your back-office system, the platform choice matters less than the quality of the person building the workflow. A good Make implementation involving Intelliflo will outperform a poor n8n implementation every time.

Platform choice is a constraint, not a strategy. Get the constraint right, then focus on the work.