Today I switched off the last two automations still running on Zapier and Power Automate. I wanted to share what was actually behind them, because "I build my own tools" often stays abstract.

Concretely, three things lived in that no-code stack:

  • a welcome SMS sent to the traveler when they leave,
  • a follow-up email when they get back — different depending on the booking channel,
  • an internal alert to the team whenever an incident is logged on a file.

Three simple bricks on paper… but scattered across an Excel sheet, a SharePoint list, an 18-step Zap and a Power Automate flow. Rename one column and it all broke. And worst of all: I no longer understood what was happening inside.

What I love most: the simplification

I rewrote them in my own tool. Three changes transformed everything.

A single "travelers" table now powers EVERYTHING

The same row that fires the departure SMS also fires the return email. No more syncing an Excel file between three tools.

The subtle business logic is finally readable

Example: if an incident was logged during the trip, the client does NOT get the automated "we hope everything went well" email — instead, the agent in charge gets a reminder to reach out personally. That nuance was buried in 18 steps. Today it's a few lines I can re-read in ten seconds.

Two scheduled jobs a day, each idempotent

SMS in the evening, emails in the morning. A guard in the database means a client never gets the same message twice, and nothing ever goes out "to the whole list" by accident.

Reviewed, tested, adversarially checked

Before flipping the switch, I had the whole thing reviewed — I even ran AI agents in an adversarial code review to be 100% sure it couldn't spam everyone or send the wrong message to the wrong client.

An afternoon, not weeks

All of it built with Claude Code. A year ago this would've taken weeks and a budget. This time, it was an afternoon.

No-code took me far, and I owe it a lot. But when an automation touches your clients directly, owning the code — testable, versioned, debuggable — changes everything.

Zapier, Power Automate: thanks for the lessons. 👋

Do you have no-code automations touching your clients that make you nervous with every update? That's exactly what I do. Let's book a free 30-minute audit: we'll look at what, in your setup, deserves to move from a fragile stack to a tool you keep the keys to.

Benjamin Bertigny — Founder of NBN IA. I build custom AI systems for small businesses. Based in Bordeaux, serving all of France.