Think about where your user actually “builds” their process of using your product. Not where they click buttons, but where they decide what should happen next, what connects to what, what runs automatically.
If that place isn’t directly inside your product, you’ve got a problem.
External automation tools like Zapier are useful for a reason. They make it easy to connect systems quickly, especially when a product doesn’t offer much on its own. For early users, that’s often enough, as they just want a way to get things working, not fiddle with endless settings.
So they wire your product into Zapier. Then they add another step. Then another. Over time, more of their logic ends up there. At that point, the interesting part of what they’re doing isn’t happening inside your product anymore. It’s on someone else’s platform.
This changes how your product is used, even if nothing about the interface changes.
External Workflows = Your Product is Just a Component
Your product stops being the center of attention, and instead becomes just another component in a chain. Something sends data in, something else reacts, and your app plays its role somewhere in the middle.
From the user’s perspective, the workflow is the system. Your product is just one of the tools inside it. That matters more than it seems!
Because the place where users build their workflows is where they spend time thinking, adjusting, and improving things. It’s where they form habits. It’s where they understand how everything fits together.
If that happens in another tool, that’s where their attention goes. You also lose control over how your product is experienced. The logic lives outside, so the flow isn’t shaped by your UI or your structure. Errors happen outside. Visibility lives outside. When something breaks, they debug somewhere else. Maybe they even ask someone else – and you don’t get that product feedback.
Your product is still involved, but you’re not shaping how it’s used. Over time, this weakens your position: if users want to change how things work, they don’t come back to your product first. They go to the place where the workflow lives. And maybe they swap out your tool for something else entirely. After all, you’re just a step in a process now, not the process itself.
Don’t Make Yourself Easy to Replace
If they replace your product with something else, they can often do it by swapping one step in that external system. You’ve made yourself easier to replace without meaning to.
This is why relying on external automation as the main path isn’t neutral. It solves the short-term need, but it trains users to build around your product instead of within it.
Embed Workflow keeps that logic inside your product. Users define what should happen using your data, your actions, and your interface. Everything is inside a white-labeled workflow builder, meaning it appears as your brand on your website. The workflows run there, and the behavior stays connected to how your product is designed.
That keeps the center of gravity where it belongs. The user builds, adjusts, and understands their setup inside your app, not somewhere else. If users are going to build workflows anyway, the real question is where that happens. That choice ends up shaping how your product is used, and how replaceable it becomes over time.
David Amrani is the founder and CEO of Embed Workflow. After building three custom workflow automation systems from scratch, with each taking over 8 months at companies like Brivity, a healthcare startup, and Resorcity, he saw the gap between bloated iPaaS tools and what SaaS companies actually need.
In 2022, he launched Embed Workflow: a white-labeled, embeddable, high-performance solution designed for startups. With 10+ years in engineering leadership and deep expertise in automation architecture, he’s building the tool he wished he’d had.