Make builds the workflow.
Merkava ships the outcome.
Make (formerly Integromat) is a powerful visual workflow builder — more flexible than Zapier, more accessible than n8n. If you love the building, Make is brilliant. If you want to skip the building and just have the work done, hire a department instead — its capabilities, its specialist Drives, and the AI exec who runs them, with Forge doing the labor.
When Make is the right call
- You're a power user who enjoys multi-branch visual scenarios with conditional routing, error handlers, iterators.
- The workflow is mechanical (data movement, file transformation, scheduled syncs) — not a judgement call.
- You're cost-sensitive at high volume — Make's ops-based pricing scales linearly without per-task surprise.
When Merkava is the right call
- The work needs judgement — what content angle to ship, which deal to qualify, when to push back on an approval.
- You'd rather hire a department that shows up + decides what to do than draw a flow diagram.
- You want a system that proactively suggests work (your Engineering exec — your CTO — says "your stack changed, here's what I recommend") not just reacts to triggers.
- You want the audit trail to read like a status report, not an execution trace.
Side-by-side
| Make | Merkava | |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer persona | Power user / ops engineer | Founder / operator / agency |
| Authoring style | Visual canvas (drag-drop nodes) | Conversational signup → department hires itself |
| Decisions | Hard-coded in scenarios | The department's exec decides per situation |
| What you pay for | The tool — you supply the operator | A whole department flat — from $99/mo, full C-Suite $699/mo. The tools are the cheapest part; you're buying the labor + integration. |
| Setup time | Hours per scenario | Two minutes total |
| Adapts on its own | No — you re-build | Your Engineering exec flags stack changes weekly |
| Audit narrative | Per-execution trace | Why/Tool/Did/Next per shipped action |
"Can I use both?"
Often the right call. Make handles your high-volume mechanical scenarios (CRM sync, file processing, scheduled exports). A Merkava department handles the functional work that needs judgement on top — and brings the labor and the shared data layer Make can't, so no one has to sit between the two. The two integrate cleanly via webhooks.
Departments from $99/mo, or the full C-Suite at $699/mo. Two minutes to your Merkava workspace. First action ships in under a minute. No credit card required.
Run audit