When we are doing startups we have to understand the history of you competitors. For my startup, Apiway, the main competitor was Zapier. I watched all interviews with Zapier founders and consumed all the information about Zapier's growth. Now it's time to put all the puzzle pieces together and figure out the key to Zapier's success.

To understand it let's go back to 1999

Mark Benioff Co-founder of SalesForce revolutionized the tech industry by offering the first cloud-based software for companies.

Enterprises started to switch from on-premise software to cloud-based SaaS solutions. (Software as a service)

Let's draw a parallel with urbanization.

People moved from villages to big cities. That is why they started building good roads between the cities.

In the SaaS world apps are like cities, and API integrations are the digital roads.
One of the first digital road builders was the API integration platform named MuleSoft.
But Salesforce, Oracle. Mulesoft, SAP, IBM, and others are about Enterprise products.

At that time there were only two concepts:
1. Consumer products like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.
2. Enterprise software like Oracle, Cisco, IMB, etc.

In the 2000s SMB businesses and ordinary people didn’t use any software or SaaS.

Automation was the privilege of big corporations.

There was no industry like b2b SaaS for SMB or subscription-based products for the mass market, and here we come to Zapier’s case.

After the iPhone revolution and the spread of the mobile internet, in the 2010s, the world has become digitalized.

35% of the world's population started to use the Internet and it meant even small companies started to use software for business process automation.

The creation of tech products became affordable for the masses.

In the 2000s webdevelopers were nerds. In the 2010s they became rockstars.

A couple of engineers could create b2b SaaS for SMB businesses and start earning money from the first day of the company.

That is why SaaS vendors started to grow like mushrooms after the rain.

According to Chiefmartech in 2011 there were only 150 SaaS vendors in the marketing industry.
In 2023 there are 11,000. The industry become bigger in 100 times!

As it was in the 2000s with enterprise software, in the 2010s the same happened with SMB software. People also needed to transfer data between apps.

That is why with the growth of SMB software the number of public APIs was also growing.

And Zapier has started to build new digital roads in this growing industry.

Zapier was the new MuleSoft for the SMB niche and allowed data transfer between apps like Gmail, Google Sheets, Trello, Mailchimp, etc.

So we can say that the fundamental reason for Zapier’s success is

The appearance of the B2B SaaS niche for Small and Medium Businesses in general.
It was a big shift in the market and human behavior.

This is the first point of Zapier's success:

Capitalization of the shift that is going on in the market

And this shift was that The majority of Small businesses started to use SaaS software.

But a lot of SaaS companies started at that time and not all of them succeeded like Zapier.

What has Zapier done differently?

Zapier was solving two problems at the same time. Customers wanted specific integrations but SaaS vendors couldn’t develop all integrations themselves.

It's like with the roads. The main highway to the capital is good and built by the government, but the road to your house is your problem.

Zapier started to resolve the SaaS vendor’s problem with integration.

For SaaS vendors, it's much easier to recommend Zapier to their customers than to develop 3000 unpopular API integrations.

So the SaaS vendors became one of the main lead generation streams for Zapier. Customers asked in support chat something like:

This is the second point of Zapier’s success

To be a friend and not a competitor of other SaaS vendors.

If the SaaS vendors become a source of leads for Zapier the question is:

“How to add more apps to Zapier and make thousands of API integrations as quickly as possible?”

And the answer is:

“To create a Developer platform where SaaS vendors can build integration with Zapier themselves and connect to the ecosystem”.

Before that Zapier’s coders were developing all integration by themselves.

But now new App appears on Zapier without any of Zapier’s developers coding.

And this is a third point of Zapier's success.

They built a platform with user-generated content.

But in Zapier's case, users were SaaS vendors, and content was API integrations.

More SaaS vendors became a part of the Zapier ecosystem.

That is why the next vendor was more interested in joining the ecosystem.

The more apps on a platform can be connected the more people want to use the platform.

More people on the platform - more vendors want to reach out to this audience.

Zapier was transformed from classical SaaS to an app marketplace.

Having Zapier integration is a must-have request for most SaaS users today.

Without it, customers will not buy your software.

That is why Zapier integration has become an industry standard.

The number of apps on the Zapier marketplace was growing very fast. Zapier integration marketplace becomes a lead generation source for SaaS vendors.

Zapier started to compete with Google, Capterra, and G2 Crown in the software exploring process.

Zapier’s marketplace become a place where people can find new apps.

This is a close circle.

SaaS Vendors give traffic to Zapier, and Zapier gives traffic to vendors.

It became not just about integrations. It became about getting new customers.

When something becomes about getting new customers - the entrance bar grows.

And Zapier has increased the entrance bar to the marketplace.

For example, If you want to add your app to Zapier you have to bring 100 users who will connect your app with other apps using Zapier.

And vendors started to promote Zapier to their customers.

The appearance of Zapier integration became not just a blog post.

It became an announcement.

Also, Vendors added Zapier integration inside their interfaces and this strategy allowed Zapier to get more and more customers.

Let's make a little bit of calculation and figure out what a genius this step is.

Now Zapier has more than 6000 app integrations. Multiplying 6000 apps to 100 leads we can see that this technique gave Zapier 600,000 leads only from vendors. But what if vendors provide more than 100 leads?

The number of free leads can be millions.

And this is the fourth point of Zapier’s success.


Get others to recommend you for free.

Moreover, they have made it not just an option, but a requirement without which the SaaS provider cannot survive.

But all previous points were just a warm-up.

Let's unlock the true Zapier’s secret!

With the number of apps on the marketplace, the number of pages with integration also grew.

For example, you have a page with Mailchimp integration, Slack integration, and Trello integration.

When Zapier adds an integration with Google Sheets, it automatically creates a page with Mailchimp and Google Sheets integration. Slack and Google Sheets integration. Trello and Google sheet integration and so on.

Now you can connect more than 6000 apps using Zapier, and this is more than 49 million unique pages for low quarry searches that drive very hot Google search traffic to Zapier.

And the icing on the cake - Zapier has a lot of pages with a lot of keywords but to be on the top of Google you need to have a strong domain rank.

In the last decade domain authority was built with qualified backlinking.

What can be a more qualified backlink than a backlink from the SaaS vendor website?

SaaS Vendors also growing by SEO and buying backlinks.

Their domain ranks are also very high, which means the link from the Vendor’s domain will be a very good signal for Google's algorithm.

For example, Mailchimp has a 93-domain rating. For comparison, Wikipedia has 96 domain ratings.

Every SEO expert knows that one link from Wikipedia can change the game.

What if you can have a backlink from 6000 websites like Wikipedia?

Here is the list of best backlinks to Zapier. There are a lot of well-known companies here

But you can't buy backlinks on websites like Hubspot and Mailchimp.

You have to deserve it.

With this strong backlink strategy, Google boosted all 49 million Zapier’s pages at the top of the search.

This crucial SEO growth strategy gives Zapier 4 million organic visits every month.

This is the next point of Zapier's success:

Building the best leveraging SEO strategy in SaaS history.

When we look at the whole picture we can see a strong growth strategy.

SaaS Vendors are building integration with Zapier themselves.

One new integration creates new 6000 pages with other integrations that give more search traffic.

Vendors want to get customers from the Zapier marketplace. They start to promote integration with Zapier on their website giving backlinks to Zapier.

Backlinks give more boost to the SEO of all Integration pages and Zapier gets more customers
more customers on the platform more vendors want to join.

And the circle starts again.

But what will be next?

Zapier decided to use Netflix and Amazon's approach.

They started as a marketplace, but after, Amazon and Netflix began to create their own Brands and movies and eat their partners in the marketplace.

Zapier does the same.

They add new features that compete with SaaS vendors. For example, SMS by Zapier competes with Twillio 10b business, and Emails by Zapier competes with Sendgrid and Mailgun multi-billion business.

Features like Schedule and Path Delay by Zapier partially replace marketing automation software vendors like Hubspot, ActiveCampaing, and Klavio.

Also, Zapier makes a bet on no-code app building.

Interface and Tables by Zapier compete with Webflow and Airtable in the multi-billion no-code industry

And this is the final point of Zapier's success:

To be a monopoly, and become an all-in-one tool for the no-code industry

December, 2023