How Zapier Saved Me a Full Year of Work in 2024

One of my favorite end-of-year look-backs is to see how automation has improved Gold Rush Vinyl, and Zapier has always been at the core of that. (I'm such a super fan that I ended up in their ad campaign and later gave a keynote at their annual employee conference!)

So, how did we do last year?

Drum roll, please….

In 2024 Zapier saved us one full year of manual work. ONE YEAR! For a small business with just 10 employees, that's huge. We got 9% more work out done thanks to the platform.

How? Let me dig in and explain.

What is Zapier?

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Zapier is a platform that provides workflow automation software. In more basic terms, it’s a tool to connect various software products together by way of workflows called “zaps.”

For example, with Zapier you can build a zap that connects Gmail to Dropbox, so that any attachments you get in Gmail get automatically uploaded to Dropbox. Google (as a developer) is certainly not incentivized to build automations that send you to a competing service like Dropbox instead of Google Drive, which is where Zapier can help by bridging the gap.

How much time does Zapier save?

Last year, we trimmed down our active zaps to 74. These zaps automated 16,654 tasks that a human otherwise had to do -- everything from generating invoices and quotes to updating production boards and passdown logs.

Based on the types of tasks the zaps did and how long it takes a team member to otherwise complete them, I estimate we saved 2,127 hours of work. That’s equal to about 53-weeks of full-time employment.

This is similar to what we saved in 2023; however, with more companies adding automation into their own products, we’ve started moving some of our flows out of Zapier and into other platforms, like Airtable. Considering those additional automations, our annual time savings are much higher than what I could calculate from Zapier (hey, Airtable: big feature request would be the ability to see the entire automation history, not just automation by automation).

How much does Zapier cost?

In 2024 we spent $1,068 on our annual Zapier subscription. We also have subscriptions for other software we connect to Zapier, such as Airtable, Google Workspace, Heyflow, Jotform and more. In total, our annual software spend was 0.8% of our gross revenue.

All of this has led to increased revenue, lower costs and more time for my team members to focus on what they are good at -- like pressing high-quality records, designing new products and talking to clients.

It’s also given me room to pursue other business opportunities (like the acquisition of Waterloo Records). With Zapier running in the background I can get the alerts I need without being physically in the office at all times.

Thanks to the Zapiens who make this possible for us. We're happy to have Zapier as the 11th member of our team!