Automate surveys and forms with Zapier: here's how

It is Friday afternoon, your survey is still running and you want to show what came in this week. So you open the survey tool as always, download the responses, paste them into a spreadsheet and write a short email to go with it. Next Friday, the same again. That is not just time and patience gone, it is also easy to get wrong: one figure mistyped, one response overlooked, and the report no longer says what the data says.

Zapier is built for exactly this kind of repeat job, and it is the best known automation service going. A fixed sequence is called a Zap there. At the top sits the event that sets it off, a new response to your survey for instance. Underneath sits everything that should happen next, a Slack message carrying the new result for example. empirio.ai is listed at Zapier as its own app and takes on the questionnaire part of these sequences: you build it with empirio.ai, participants enter their answers there, and empirio.ai handles that data properly.

To automate surveys and forms you approve the empirio.ai app once on the Connections page at Zapier, and after that you can build as many Zaps as you like. At the top you pick the New Response event, underneath you hang whatever takes work off your hands: a message in Slack, a row in Google Sheets or a record in your CRM.

📌 Key takeaways

• Zapier connects empirio.ai with 9,000+ apps and services.
• empirio.ai is the survey and form app inside Zapier.
• Every empirio.ai integration is free on every plan.
• One click connects empirio.ai and Zapier.

What Zapier is and why it suits surveys

Zapier is one of the oldest automation services around and it still offers the widest choice of apps to connect to. The way you work with it stays deliberately plain. A Zap is a list worked through from top to bottom: the event that starts everything at the very top, then one or more actions below it. No code appears anywhere in it.

More than 9,000 apps and services are on offer, from Gmail through Airtable to Mailchimp. Billing goes by tasks. A task is charged for every action Zapier carries out successfully (as of September 2026, Zapier pricing page). The event at the start is always free, and so are the built-in helpers such as filters and the Formatter. AI steps can come to more.

For surveys, then, the bill hangs on two numbers: how many people answer, and how many actions you hang on each response. A survey that sets off a single message stays cheap even with plenty of responses. Three actions per response triple the usage without a single extra response arriving.

What you can automate around surveys and forms

Between writing the first question and reading a finished report, a survey usually passes through five phases. Each one holds handwork nobody will miss. Work out which phase eats the most of your time, because that is exactly where your first Zap belongs.

Here are a few examples of what can run by itself:

• Creating: the survey appears when another system asks for it, with questions that fit the occasion.
• Sending: the link to the survey travels on its own to wherever people will actually read it.
• Notifying: your team hears about a new response where it is already looking, in Slack or Google Chat for instance.
• Processing: the results land straight in the spreadsheets you set up beforehand, or in the systems your team works in anyway.
• Analysing: figures and charts appear on a schedule instead of whenever somebody remembers.

empirio.ai brings one event and 16 actions to this. New Response reports every submitted participation, and the actions cover the rest, from creating the survey through to a cross-tabulation. Spread across the five phases it looks like this:

One caveat belongs here: empirio.ai does not send emails itself inside a Zap. Your mail app does the sending, while empirio.ai supplies the link and the data.

When automation pays off and when it does not

A Zap only earns its keep once the same job keeps coming back. Setting it up takes half an hour, after which it runs by itself and you only glance at it now and then. With a single survey and thirty responses, the analysis will be done by hand long before the Zap has even fired once.

Three signs suggest the effort is worth it:

1. The survey is permanently live and new responses keep arriving, say as a feedback form on your website or as a rating after every job.
2. A response needs a prompt reaction, otherwise somebody waits longer for an answer than they should.
3. The figures get used somewhere else, in the CRM, on the project board or in the monthly summary.

On top of that comes a quick sum for Zapier. It works out more kindly than most people expect, because the trigger costs nothing. Only what happens afterwards gets counted. If your Zap reports every new participation to Microsoft Teams, that is exactly one task per participation: two hundred responses in a month are two hundred tasks. The free plan brings a hundred, so it carries roughly a hundred responses as long as you stick to the one action. Add a second one, the row in the spreadsheet for instance, and the number doubles. The free plan is finished at that point anyway, because it only allows two steps per Zap. The full sum with examples comes further down.

Really only one thing speaks against a Zap: that nobody looks at it afterwards. A sequence that has been writing empty rows for three weeks because a question is now worded differently costs more trust in the end than it ever saved in time.

The best Zap is the one you have forgotten about after a fortnight, because it simply runs.

empirio.ai in the Zap: the app for surveys and forms

In a Zap, empirio.ai is the point where real people type something in. Zapier pushes data from A to B, but somebody has to supply it in the first place. That is where empirio.ai sits, an online survey tool from Germany: at the survey, at the form, at the one feedback question after the appointment.

This part decides more about the outcome than it appears to at first glance. The tidiest sequence achieves little if too few people answer at the start of it. Four things hang on it:

• First impressions. The empirio.ai templates cost nothing and are designed to current standards, on a phone just as much as on a desktop. There is nothing for you to configure.
• The range of questions. With 20+ question types, from single choice through matrix and ranking to the Net Promoter Score, you can cover the unusual cases too, all of them on the free plan.
• Where the data sits. Storage is in the EU, and the data processing agreement belongs to the free plan as well. Under Article 28 UK GDPR, that contract is what puts the relationship between controller and processor on a legal footing (ICO guidance on contracts and liabilities). For charities, universities and companies, this is very often the point where the decision gets made.
• A free choice of route. You can build the questionnaire and analyse the responses inside empirio.ai, with the AI features and the interface you know. Or you can drive the same thing through Zapier, whichever you prefer.

Whenever your Zap needs an opinion from people, after the appointment, after the purchase or before the project starts, empirio.ai takes on that step. Zapier does the rest of the distance.

Setting up empirio.ai in Zapier: step by step

Unlike some automation services, Zapier gives you nothing to install. empirio.ai is in the directory and can be picked straight away. Three moves and you are off. None of them needs admin rights.

What the app brings with it is set out on the empirio.ai integration page at Zapier: one event and 16 actions, sorted into surveys and responses.

Step 1: create the connection to empirio.ai

Open the Connections page in your Zapier account. If you have never connected anything there, you will see an empty list and an Add connection button.

In the Add new connection window, the first few letters are enough. Type empirio, which is what the app is called in the directory, pick the suggestion and confirm with Add connection.

Step 2: approve the connection

The next step is handled by empirio.ai itself, in a window of its own headed Authorize Application. It sets out in black and white what Zapier may do afterwards, in three points: view and manage your surveys, read the responses along with the analysis, and register endpoints through which new responses get reported. The access goes no further than that. Authorize confirms it and the window closes. You can undo it at empirio.ai at any time.

Step 3: choose the trigger and test it

Back in the list, the connection appears with the status Connected. From here on it applies to every Zap you build later. There is no key for you to copy anywhere.

In the editor you put empirio in first place and choose New Response. This event does not go off and ask at intervals, it gets reported by empirio.ai the moment somebody submits. After that you pick your survey from the dropdown and fetch a test response. It shows you every field you can carry on working with in the steps that follow.

On our side, none of this costs anything. The empirio.ai integrations belong to every plan, the free one included. An account is enough and no credit card is needed.

Your first Zap in the editor: two steps are enough

The editor arranges everything in a single column, from top to bottom. The event right at the top, the actions below it in the order they should run. A plus between two cards slots another step in between.

In the picture there are two cards. empirio with New Response at the top, Gmail with Send Email underneath. A participation comes in and seconds later it is sitting in the inbox as an email. That is all it takes for nobody to have to check the dashboard again.

Top right it still says Draft up to this point. Test run pushes everything through once, Publish puts the Zap into service. After that it only speaks up when something genuinely arrives.

Three templates that cover nearly every case

However varied the occasions are, nearly all of them come down to three patterns in the end: notify, store, report. Two of them start when a response arrives, the third runs by the clock. Once you have seen all three, you will usually recognise your own plan in one of them.

empirio.ai keeps a ready-made template for each group. You take it over, hang your connection on it and pick your survey. That is it.

Template 1: a notification as soon as somebody has answered

Event at the top, message underneath, nothing in between. A useful Zap does not get any shorter than that, which is exactly why it still fits on the free plan. It pays off most with surveys that stay open for months and only deliver something now and again.

• Straight into the inbox, via Gmail or Outlook. The simplest case and the one most people set up first.
• Into the team channel, through Slack or Google Chat. Handy as soon as several people need to read along.
• Only for critical feedback. A filter in front checks the rating: anyone giving a 0 to 6 on the Net Promoter Score sets off the message, everyone else passes through quietly. This variant needs a paid plan.

Template 2: store responses in other systems automatically

The same start, a different continuation. Instead of notifying somebody, the Zap enters the response where the work carries on later. This pays off whenever somebody would otherwise be retyping it.

• Row by row into Google Sheets or Airtable. Map the fields cleanly once and the spreadsheet stays tidy even when somebody skips a question.
• As a contact in HubSpot or Mailchimp. Sensible anywhere the survey captures an email address, in a customer survey for instance.
• As a task in Trello, Asana or Notion, when a piece of feedback was going to become a to-do anyway.

Template 3: regular reporting on activity

Nothing triggers this one except the calendar. At the time you set, Zapier fetches the results and sends them on. If you are pulling your weekly figures together by hand anyway, this is where you win back the most time.

• Raw data as an attachment, as CSV, Excel, JSON or SPSS.
• Finished charts instead of columns of numbers, as PowerPoint, PDF, Word or an image package.
• The short update with no file at all: how often the survey was opened, how many people started and how many made it to the end.

Alternatives to Zapier

Zapier is convenient, but it is not always the best choice. If your team already works with another service, you are better off there. If you would rather type than click, a chat gets you to the finish faster. And if you want to connect a system of your own, go straight to the API.

All of these routes belong to empirio.ai, whatever your plan:

• Other automation services: n8n and Make follow the same principle. n8n counts one execution of the whole workflow rather than each individual step, which shows up clearly once the chains get longer.
• AI assistants: the MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT and other agents directly. You describe in the chat what you want to know and the analysis comes back in the same window.
• Your own systems: webhooks and the REST API will connect just about anything, including something you have developed yourself. The empirio.ai developer documentation describes how it is done.

What the route through an assistant feels like is set out in the guide to a survey with Claude and in the article on the empirio.ai MCP server. One difference remains, though: a chat answers when you ask. A Zap works while you sleep.

Zapier Forms or empirio.ai?

When you build a sequence at Zapier, at some point you need the form itself. You have two options for that: Zapier Forms, which comes in the box, or empirio.ai as its own app. Which one suits you depends on what you want to ask and what should happen to the answers afterwards.

Zapier Forms has only carried that name for a short while, having run under Interfaces before. It lets you build simple questionnaires in the same tool the Zap runs in, with no second account and no second login. You will find it in the menu under Automation, right next to Zaps, Tables and Agents.

The picture shows the limit rather precisely. The rating question is a plain text field, not a scale. Anyone trying to measure something with it gets free text back and has to sort it out afterwards.

What speaks for Zapier Forms

• The billing. The forms themselves consume no tasks. The number of responses is not capped either, and you only pay for what the Zap does afterwards.
• The free entry point. Ten pages per account, as many form projects as you like, the basic components and embedding on your own website all come without a plan (as of September 2026, Zapier pricing page).
• The closeness to the sequence. Form and Zap sit in the same place, so there is no switching.

Where Zapier Forms stops

• Design and logic cost money. Conditional logic, your own colours and password protection belong to the Professional plan, which starts at around £23 a month. The Built on Zapier line in the bottom right only disappears on the Team plan.
• The question types are basic components. Scales such as the Net Promoter Score, matrix questions and ranking are not there.
• No analysis is included. You get the responses as data. Key figures, cross-tabulations and charts happen elsewhere.

Which tool for what

As a rule of thumb, ask what you intend to do with the answers. If you are asking for a name, an email address and a request, and that should turn into a task or an email, Zapier Forms is perfectly sufficient. If you want to measure an opinion, if you need scales, a matrix or the Net Promoter Score, if you want to filter, compare and report on the answers afterwards, then use empirio.ai as the form in your Zap.

A third point decides this more often than it appears in comparisons: where the data sits. Zapier processes customer data on AWS servers in the United States and expressly offers no option to store it in the EU only (as of September 2026, Zapier data privacy overview). With empirio.ai the survey data stays in the EU, and the data processing agreement comes into being as soon as you register. If you are surveying customers, staff or study participants, this is exactly where the decision gets made.

The Zap behind it looks the same either way, incidentally. All you swap is the first step.

Common mistakes when automating

A Zap rarely comes unstuck while you are setting it up. It comes unstuck weeks later and in silence. Five points turn up so regularly that they are worth a look before the sequence runs for good.

• Renamed question, empty field. The fields carry the question titles as their names. Reword a question and Zapier no longer finds the old name, so it writes an empty cell with no error message. Test once after every change to the survey.
• Two steps is the ceiling on the free plan. Event plus one action and that is the end of it. Filters do not exist at all before a paid plan (as of September 2026). Anyone wanting to react only to the poor ratings will not get there for free.
• The bill grows with the responses. Three actions times a hundred responses are three hundred tasks. The event and the filters do not count, but every action carried out does, and AI steps sometimes count more than once. Do the sum before the Zap runs for good.
• Edited is not the same as published. Update Survey works on the draft. Leave out Publish Survey afterwards and participants carry on seeing the old version, while the task has already been charged.
• What comes back is a link to the file. The file itself stays with us and the link expires after about an hour. Many file fields in Zapier will fetch the file through it themselves, the Gmail attachment for one. Check on the first test run that a file really arrives and not a link.

What does Zapier cost for surveys and forms?

The price question takes one sentence to answer: you pay for what your Zap does, not for what sets it off. The event at the start is free, and every action carried out successfully after it costs one task. Zapier Forms sits outside this sum altogether, because the forms themselves consume no tasks at all (as of September 2026, Zapier pricing page).

Something follows from that which surprises a lot of people: whether your questionnaire lives in Zapier Forms or in empirio.ai changes nothing on the task counter. Both tools sit in the trigger position, and that costs nothing. Only the Slack message your Zap sends afterwards counts as a task, and it is the same single task in both cases. There is one exception: if you use a form with no Zap at all and simply collect the answers, you pay Zapier nothing whatsoever.

Five worked examples for one month

With those rules you can work out in advance what a month will cost you. You need only two numbers: how many responses you expect and how many actions your Zap carries out per response. Each sum shows both sides, the plan at Zapier and the plan at empirio.ai.

Case 1: every new response sends a Slack message. Forty responses in the month, one action per response.

Case 2: the same Slack message, more traffic. Ninety responses in the month, still one action per response.

Case 3: every response sets off an email through Gmail and also lands in Google Sheets. Two hundred and fifty responses in the month, two actions per response. That gives the Zap three steps, and the free Zapier plan allows only two.

Case 4: every Friday an email goes out with the current results. Here it is not a response that starts the Zap but the calendar. Four runs in the month, two actions each: fetch the results and send the email. Eighty responses come in over the same month.

Case 5: a large survey with three actions per response. Three thousand responses in the month, each one reporting into Slack, landing in Google Sheets and creating a contact in the CRM.

The fifth case shows the rule most clearly: at empirio.ai the price grows with the participants, at Zapier with the number of actions. Saving there means cutting steps, not responses.

When you upgrade and with whom

Three thresholds decide it, and there really are no more than that. Each one belongs to a different provider. Know them and you can tell at the planning stage which one you will hit first:

• At Zapier you upgrade as soon as a Zap needs more than two steps, or more than a hundred tasks come together in a month. Filters, the Formatter and the connection via webhooks hang on the paid plan as well.
• At empirio.ai the number of participants is the only thing that decides: 50 a month are free, Lite brings 100 for 19 €, Plus 1,000 for 39 € and Pro 3,000 for 69 € (as of September 2026, empirio.ai pricing). The integration itself belongs to every plan.
• At Zapier Forms it is the ten pages per account, or the wish for conditional logic, your own colours and password protection. Professional lifts the limit to fifty pages, Team to 150.

The cheapest split

All told you get surprisingly far without paying anything: one survey at empirio.ai, one Zap with one action, up to fifty responses a month, all on the free plan on both sides. And when you do eventually reach for your wallet, it is worth looking at what for. The 19 € at empirio.ai buy you more participants, logic jumps and the export of the responses. The roughly £23 for Professional at Zapier buy you longer sequences and better looking forms. They change nothing about the questionnaire itself, the question types or the analysis.

The cheapest split therefore works itself out almost on its own: Zapier takes on what Zapier does best, namely the connection to your other 9,000 apps. empirio.ai takes on the questionnaire, the way it looks, the analysis and the processing of the data in the EU. Each part plays to its strength. And the free plan lasts longer on both sides than you would think.

Conclusion

Automating surveys and forms pays off whenever the same sequence keeps coming back, and that is exactly what Zapier is made for. With empirio.ai as the app inside it you cover the whole distance: the questionnaire looks all of a piece, the responses are processed in the EU, and Zapier handles everything after that. Notifying, storing and reporting run without you, and you get back the time that used to go on downloading, copying and retyping.

The best part is that both tools have a genuinely usable free offer. So you can try it out in your own time, set up a first sequence and see whether it really does take work off your hands. If it proves its worth, you automate more of it bit by bit, use further features and upgrade exactly where things get tight first. Start small, with two steps, and only hang something else on once the first fortnight has stayed quiet.

Two cases speak against Zapier. For a one-off survey the setup takes longer than analysing by hand. And for very long chains with many actions, n8n works out cheaper, because there the whole workflow counts rather than each individual step. If you would rather automate your processes with n8n anyway, connecting empirio.ai to that tool is no trouble either.

Where to go next

• Planning long chains with no task counter? Automate surveys with n8n
• Still looking for the right tool? Survey tools compared
• Want to skip questions depending on the answer? Logic and branching in surveys
• Are you collecting personal data? Data protection in surveys
• Want to show the survey on your own site? Embedding a survey in a website

Ready for your first Zap?

Create your first survey at empirio.ai for free, share the link and connect Zapier to the matching empirio.ai app. After that, notifying, storing and reporting run on their own, and you see the results where you are already working.

Create your free survey now