I Built the Zapier Alternative I Couldn't Find — Here's What I Learned

Kizna AI — Sun, 24 May 2026 10:45:02 +0000

*Originally published on Medium

I tried Make to automate a simple workflow: fetch emails, summarize them, send to Slack.
30 minutes in, I gave up. Modules, nodes, scenarios, filters. I'm not a developer. It wasn't built for me.
So I built my own tool instead.
The gap I was trying to fill
Every major automation tool requires you to design the workflow yourself. You decide the steps, the logic, the connections. That's fine if you think in systems. I don't.
What I wanted: describe what I want in plain English, and have it run.
"Summarize all emails from yesterday and send the summary to Slack."
That's it. No canvas. No nodes. No config screens.

What I built

It's called Kizna.ai. A few things I focused on that the alternatives don't do:
AI is a first-class service, not an add-on. You choose Claude, GPT-4, or Gemini as part of your flow — not as an afterthought. Switch models anytime without rebuilding.
BYOK makes it cheaper than it looks. If you're already paying for Claude or GPT-4, bring your own API key. BYOK Pro is $9.9/month for 1,500 executions. You're not paying twice for AI.
Execution-based pricing, not step-based. Zapier and Make charge per step. A 7-step workflow costs 7x more than a 1-step workflow. Kizna charges per execution — complexity doesn't cost more.

Where I am now
Still early. No investor. No team. Built entirely with Claude Code and VS Code — I can't write code myself.
If you've ever felt like automation tools were built for someone else: kizna.ai is free to try.
Feedback welcome — brutal or otherwise.
→ kizna.ai

DEV Community: Kizna AI

I Built the Zapier Alternative I Couldn't Find — Here's What I Learned