Building the same kind of need on three automation platforms to compare deployment, learning curve and best-fit scenarios.
- n8n (local Docker on Windows, free tier): fetches 5 AI news articles at 09:00 every day, summarizes them with a language model and emails the result; the downside is that nothing runs when the computer is off, and building flows is less intuitive
- Make (cloud): when someone uploads a document (such as a leave request or a quotation) to a cloud folder, Gemini reads it and emails the key points; the interface is more intuitive than n8n
- Zapier: starred Gmail messages → Gemini summary → automatically added to Google Sheets; flows can also be built conversationally in Copilot mode, and I tried Zapier Agents to help collect job-search information
- A three-platform comparison: Zapier is the easiest to learn and connects to more than 7,000 apps but has a smaller free tier; Make is medium difficulty with a more generous free tier; n8n can be self-hosted for free and suits people with a technical background who want deep customization