ActivePieces Review: Open Source Zapier Alternative (AppSumo LTD)

AppSumo's Tool of the Year 2023

Every year, AppSumo narrows down hundreds (possibly thousands) of software launches to crown their top tools of the year. For 2023, ActivePieces landed one of those coveted spots — and it's easy to see why. The platform is an open source Zapier alternative that lets you build automated workflows connecting the apps and services you already use.

What makes ActivePieces particularly interesting is that it's community-driven. Being open source means developers worldwide are contributing new integrations (called "pieces") all the time. The platform is still relatively young, but that's actually part of the appeal — you're getting in early on a tool with serious momentum behind it.

ActivePieces vs Zapier: Pricing Comparison

Let's talk numbers, because this is where ActivePieces really shines. If you need 50,000 tasks per month on Zapier, you're looking at $289/month billed annually — or a painful $433/month if you go month-to-month. ActivePieces' own hosted pricing comes in at around $100/month for the same volume, which is already a significant saving.

But the real value play is the AppSumo lifetime deal. For a one-time payment, you get 200,000 tasks per month on their hosted platform — that's four times the tasks at a fraction of Zapier's ongoing cost. You could technically self-host ActivePieces for free since the source code is on GitHub, but then you're on the hook for server costs and maintenance. The hosted LTD eliminates that overhead entirely.

Building Your First Automation Flow

Getting started with ActivePieces is straightforward. The interface centers around a flow builder where every automation starts with a trigger — an event that kicks off a chain of actions. You can choose from a growing list of app integrations, or use built-in triggers like schedules and webhooks.

For a practical example, consider connecting Ghost CMS to an email marketing platform like Motic. The trigger fires when someone subscribes to your website, and the action creates a corresponding contact in your email tool. ActivePieces uses a visual builder where you map data between steps using placeholders — no code required. You pick the field you need (like name or email), click to insert it, and the platform handles the rest.

One nice touch: when you're setting up a new connection, ActivePieces provides step-by-step directions right inside the interface. It sounds basic, but anyone who's had to hunt down API keys mid-workflow knows how disruptive that context switch can be.

Adding Logic with Branches and Verification

Simple two-step automations are useful, but ActivePieces handles more complex logic too. You can insert intermediary steps between your trigger and final action — like email verification. In practice, this means adding a service like Clearout between your signup trigger and your email marketing action to check whether the subscriber's email is legitimate.

The branch action is where things get powerful. Branches let you create true/false decision points in your flow. If an email comes back as valid, the contact gets added to your marketing tool. If it's invalid or fake, you can route it to a completely different set of actions — like removing the user or flagging them for review. You can also combine conditions, such as allowing both "valid" and "catch-all" addresses through while blocking clearly invalid ones.

ActivePieces also supports draft and published versions of your flows. You can edit and test changes without disrupting a live automation, then publish when you're ready. If something goes wrong, you can compare your draft to the published version and revert easily.

Testing and Monitoring Your Flows

Testing is built directly into the ActivePieces workflow. Each step can be tested individually, and the platform provides mock data so you don't need to trigger real events while building. When you test a step, you get immediate feedback on whether it succeeded or failed, along with the actual data that was processed.

Once your flow is published and running, ActivePieces logs every run with detailed results. You can click into any individual run to see exactly what happened at each step — which branches were taken, what data was passed, and whether any errors occurred. This kind of visibility is essential when you're debugging a flow or just confirming that everything is working as expected.

Integrations, Custom Pieces, and Code Blocks

At the time of this review, ActivePieces supports 154 integrations (pieces), covering popular tools like Calendly, BannerBear, MailChimp, ConvertKit, and more. Each integration supports different combinations of triggers and actions — Calendly, for instance, offers triggers for scheduled and canceled events, while BannerBear provides an action to generate images automatically.

If you need an integration that doesn't exist yet, you have options. Developers can build custom pieces and add them to their account through the "My Pieces" section. And for one-off logic, you can drop Node.js or TypeScript code blocks directly into any flow, complete with NPM package support. This means even if there's no official piece for a service, you can hit its API with a code step.

Core Features That Make Flows Powerful

Beyond app integrations, ActivePieces includes a solid set of core building blocks that add real flexibility to your automations. The delay action lets you pause a flow for a set period — useful when you don't want follow-up actions firing immediately. The approval action pauses a flow until you manually approve the next step, which is perfect for AI-generated content you want to review before it hits social media.

Other core tools include a data mapper for advanced field transformations, a date helper for reformatting dates between apps, HTTP request blocks for hitting any API endpoint, SFTP support for file transfers, and SMTP for sending emails directly from your flows. Between the native integrations, custom pieces, code blocks, and these core actions, there's very little you can't automate with ActivePieces.

AppSumo Plan Tiers and Recommendations

The AppSumo lifetime deal comes in multiple tiers. Tier one gives you 20 connections, which sounds like plenty until you start building — connecting five apps took almost no time in testing. Tiers two and three unlock unlimited connections, and given how quickly you'll want to add new services, the higher tiers are worth serious consideration.

For anyone running a small business or managing multiple online properties, the automation potential here is enormous. Whether you're syncing subscribers across platforms, verifying email addresses, generating images, or building complex conditional workflows, ActivePieces delivers the functionality of tools that cost hundreds per month — for a one-time price.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.