Last week I touched on the differences between Zapier, Integromat and Tray. Since then, I got a demo from a member of the Tray team (thanks Dhruv). And it confirmed my belief that the main differences between workflow automation tools are not the tools themselves but their go-to-market.

Tray is willing to handhold its customers during the purchasing process, work with them to integrate additional apps and go through  hoops big companies put up (SLAs, pen testing, etc) which the other two just won't (or don't have the resources to).

So it's clear to me why Tray is winning in the enterprise space. What I kept coming back to is why is Zapier so much more popular than Integromat? Yes, Zapier is easier to get started with but its limitations are felt pretty quickly and there are complicated tools out there that people love. And yes, it also has more apps integrated but when it comes to the most popular apps, Integromat has them all.

Then I Google'd "connect X and Y tools" which is how I imagine most people discover workflow automation tools. Well, let's just say the results spoke for themselves. Look at who comes first for "connect Airtable to Google sheets"

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Zapier consistently outranks everyone for these types of searches. I couldn't find a single search where any tool ranked above Zapier (I didn't see any ads for Integromat either). Since its inception, Zapier has invested heavily in every integration's landing page. Those pages have compounding SEO value so they outrank everyone. The no-code community didn't adopt Zapier because it was easier to use, but because it came up higher in the Google searches when we went out to solve our problems!

You all said you wanted more tool recommendations :) so I'm going to weave them subtly into my tirade like so:

• I used Similar web to confirm that Zapier gets 10-15X more traffic than Integromat
• Zapier also has a lead scoring integration that looks up a lead domain's traffic
• Clearbit can also provide traffic numbers on leads and has an integration with Zapier and Integromat.

Now, SEO isn't the only way no-code tools grow. Webflow built its audience through community and referrals with a laser focus on designers and agencies. Referrals are natural when your product makes its users go from designers to full blown front-end developers (workflow automation tools aren't quite there yet) so I wouldn't quite expect this to work out for every tool. Coda is definitely giving it a go with its referral program.

What's unfortunate is that I'm seeing a few great products that aren't taking off because they just don't have their distribution nailed down. Although there isn't one surefire way to grow your audience, how you distribute your product is just as - if not more - important than what your product does. Zapier is living proof of that.