Zapier’s official Solutions Partner Directory is the obvious place to start when you’re looking for a local automation partner.
The problem is that “local” does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Zapier partners self-nominate their location and service regions, which means a search for Australian partners returns a mixed bag – people genuinely embedded in the Aussie market, alongside those who listed Australia because the form had a checkbox and it cost nothing to tick it.
This article was written to help you separate the chancers from the people who grew up obsessed with footy, have strong opinions about where to get the best coffee in Fitzroy, and understand instinctively how Australian businesses think and operate.
A quick note on selection
The Zapier directory features a lot of Australian partners. Most of them aren’t on this list, and that’s by design. To make the cut, a partner needed to meet the following criteria:
- Real Aussie roots – Someone whose knowledge of Australia extends slightly beyond having watched Neighbours as a kid.
- A functioning web presence – If a quick Google draws a blank, they’re not on this list.
- Primarily a Zapier shop – The sort of person who can and will talk about automation for an uncomfortable length of time at a family BBQ.
- Proof of life – At least one review on the Zapier directory. A low bar, but a useful one.
One caveat before we get into it: a mention here isn’t a personal endorsement or recommendation. All of the agencies below are Zapier Solutions Partners, so Zapier has already kicked their tyres. But do your own due diligence and don’t just hire whoever’s first on the list.
That said, the first one is pretty good.
Electric Monk
Electric Monk is a one-man automation consultancy and Zapier partner founded in Melbourne by me, Chris Higgins, way back in 2010. Over the last sixteen years I’ve logged a frankly embarrassing number of hours building automations inside Zapier, HubSpot, Notion, PandaDoc, and most of the other apps you’ve got lurking in your software stack.
I moved to London a few years after starting my business (because of a girl, as is traditional) and these days I’m lucky enough to split my time between the two best cities in the world (which sounds glamorous until you factor in the 24-hour flight and the jet lag that takes a week to shake).
A decade and a half on, Electric Monk is still just me, and that’s entirely by design. The guy who answers your first email is the same guy who scopes your project, builds your automation, and is still there six months later when you want to tweak something.
I work with all kinds of businesses, but my sweet spot is people who sell expertise for a living – the consultants, coaches, and agency owners who are brilliant at what they do and chronically short of time in which to do it.
The Joinary
The Joinary is a Melbourne-based automation agency and Platinum Zapier partner. For context, Platinum is Zapier’s highest partner tier – a handful of agencies hold it globally, and The Joinary are the only Australian operation among them.
Despite the impressive credentials, The Joinary were the hardest agency on this list to research. Their website is pretty sparse, and doesn’t feature an about page. Their social media pages are more or less empty.
Dig into their Zapier directory reviews, though, and the picture sharpens quickly. The man behind the operation is Michael Lucas – his name appears in nearly all of their 53 five-star reviews, which tells you more about who’s doing the actual work than any about page would.
For all the credentials, The Joinary are refreshingly easy to engage – they offer a free discovery call, fast turnaround, and none of the agency baggage you might expect from the only Platinum Zapier partner in the country.
Terrific
Terrific is, technically, a Hong Kong-based operation. Electric Monk is, technically, a London-based one. Two automation agencies founded by Melbourne boys who ended up overseas, we can either both be on this list or neither of us can. And there’s no chance I’m leaving myself off.
So, Terrific – a Gold-rated Zapier partner and certified HubSpot agency, working with clients across Asia-Pacific and the UK. Founded in 2019, they help businesses in real estate, finance, media, HR and recruitment with their automation and technology needs.
Terrific’s founder Tristan also runs a YouTube channel where he shares practical automation tutorials and experiments with AI and other emerging tech. Worth a look before you book a call (and honestly, worth a look even if you never do).
The shared Melbourne roots, the deep Zapier and HubSpot expertise, and the conviction that work should fit around life rather than the other way around – it’s fair to say this particular author has a lot of time for Terrific and their approach.
That Automation Agency
https://www.thatautomationagency.com/
There’s no ambiguity about what That Automation Agency does. There’s also no ambiguity about how well they do it.
A Brisbane-based, Gold Zapier partner with dozens of five-star reviews, That Automation Agency was founded in 2014 by Chris Drake. A former operating partner at an investment group, Chris has spent years scaling and optimising businesses from the inside before turning that experience into an automation practice.
That operational background shapes how That Automation Agency approaches client work. They’re deliberately not a high-volume shop. They take on a limited number of clients at a time and go deep rather than churning through transactional builds.
Beyond client work, Chris runs a Zapier user community on Facebook that boasts 10,000 members – the kind of side project that tells you something about how genuinely invested someone is in the space.
For businesses with complex operational problems that happen to need an automation solution, That Automation Agency should definitely be on your shortlist.
Final thoughts
I’ve done my best to research every agency on this list properly, but I’m a Zapier partner with my own biases, blind spots and skin in the game. This is an honest attempt at a useful resource, not an independent review.
In putting this article together, I was struck by how small the Australian Zapier agency market actually is. There are good operators out there, but they’re heavily outnumbered by the ones who’ve watched a handful of YouTube videos and decided that qualifies them to be an automation consultant.
Do your own research. Have a chat with a couple of legit, Zapier certified agencies. Find someone who understands the problem, not just the solution.
And if that person just so happens to be the one who wrote this article … well, you could do a lot worse.