No-code automation

You assemble a workflow from blocks: when a form comes in, create a contact in the CRM and post a message in Teams. For many individual steps that is quick and inexpensive, and you do not need a developer for it. Where no-code stops and a solution of your own begins is covered under AI automation.

The tools differ mainly in how much freedom they give. Zapier and Make are the most accessible, Power Automate suits organisations that run on Microsoft 365, and n8n is low-code: you can host it yourself and add code where needed. Most now have AI steps built in, up to complete AI agents.

The limit lies in volume, exceptions and maintenance. A workflow of ten steps with many variants quickly becomes hard to follow in a visual editor, and for business-critical processes you want logging, error handling and version control (see middleware). We choose per process: for LAB63 we built a modular n8n workflow with several AI agents, while elsewhere custom software is the better choice.