Devs have a tendency to make automation as powerful as possible from the start. More flexibility, more logic, more edge cases covered. It feels like the right way to build something serious. More options = more professional. Right?
If you look at earlier designs of our UI, we actually used to think this, and our workflow builder used to be more complex. We had the number of executions and other information displayed right on the UI itself:
The problem is that most users don’t arrive looking for a system like that. They arrive with one small annoyance: something they’ve done three or four times already and don’t want to keep repeating.
If the path from that moment to a working workflow is simple, they’ll take it. If it feels heavy or confusing, they won’t.
That first experience ends up mattering more than everything else. People don’t evaluate automation systems based on what they could do. They evaluate them based on whether they can get one thing working right now – without thinking too much about it.
This is where complex systems tend to struggle. Even if they’re well designed, they ask for more upfront. More decisions, more setup, more understanding of how things fit together. More more more, all for something with a not-seen-yet benefit. For a user who just wants to automate a small task, that’s enough friction to stop them before they see any value.
Simple workflows avoid that. A clear trigger, a clear action, and a result you can see immediately. That’s usually enough to get someone started, and once they’ve seen it work, they begin to trust it.
From there, things tend to proceed in natural fashion. One workflow leads to another, people start noticing other places where the same idea applies, rinse and repeat. Over time, more of what they do gets handled automatically, but it doesn’t feel like they’re learning some complex workflow software system. It just feels like they’re improving something they already use.
That gradual expansion is hard to get with a complex setup from day one. If users don’t get past the first step, none of the advanced capability matters.
It doesn’t mean complexity is useless. There are always users who need more control, more conditions, more advanced logic. But that only becomes relevant after they’ve already seen value. If it shows up too early, it gets in the way instead of helping.
There’s also a practical side to this when it comes to retention and revenue. Simpler workflows get used more. More usage leads to more reliance, and that creates the kind of growth that actually matters over time. Complex systems often have fewer users going deep, while simple ones have more users steadily expanding what they automate.
So, Make Your Workflows Native
External automation tools tend to lean toward complexity because they’re built to cover as many use cases as possible. That makes them powerful, but often overkill for what most users need inside a single product.
Keeping workflows simple and native avoids that problem. With Embed Workflow, workflows are built around the actions your product already has, so users aren’t starting from scratch. They’re just connecting familiar pieces in a straightforward way, and adding complexity only when they need it. If they need it at all!
At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to build the most super, powerful, complex automation system. It’s to get people to actually use it. Simple workflows win because they lower the barrier to that first step, and everything else builds from there.
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.