Hi community,
I’m supporting a company that wants to automate the creation of daily and weekly reports based on PDF files.
I’d like to clarify that I have very basic knowledge of Make and I’m not planning to develop the automation myself. However, before recommending a course of action to the company, I need to better understand the implementation process and what would be the best long-term strategy for them.
My main question is:
- Is it better to build the automation within the client’s own Make account, so they have full control?
- Or is it more common and viable for a third party (like a consultant or automation provider) to develop and run everything in their own Make account, and offer the service as a managed solution?
I’m particularly interested in the pros and cons of each approach regarding:
- Security and access management
- Scalability of the solution
- Scenario ownership and transfer if the provider relationship ends
- Commercial and support implications (billing, maintenance, etc.)
Any recommendations, insights, or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated. I want to make an informed decision before moving forward with the company.
Thanks in advance!
Hey Jose,
there is no right or wrong approach here.
A company might have a higher tier account (even an enterprise one) allowing for easier maintenance of existing scenarios. Also all of the scenarios they maintain will be in the same place. Also, depending on the billing structure, the client may end up paying less monthly for their scenarios to run compared to what they would pay if the account was their own.
On the other hand, this leaves the client bound to this company. They can never stop working with them if they want their scenarios to keep running. What if they want to hire a different company to automate their social media for example? Or a third company to automate HR? And you don’t provide such services? Then they can end up having 3-4 different Make accounts essentially and from their side everything is now spread out and harder to maintain.
So there are benefits and downsides to each approach and both can work great if implemented correctly.
I previously answered a similar question.
At that time there was no way that’s compliant with the Make Master Service Agreement to offer Make as a managed service for your clients.
Wind forward a few weeks … we’ve now released a new Make Managed Service subscription.
Visit the page and select Talk to sales to learn more.
Hi Stoyan, thank you so much for your thoughtful response.
You’ve made some excellent points, and I really appreciate the balance in your perspective. The “no right or wrong approach” mindset makes a lot of sense — especially when considering both short-term needs and long-term flexibility.
What you said about vendor lock-in and the challenges of having multiple providers across different departments (HR, marketing, etc.) is particularly helpful. It gave me a clearer picture of how fragmented things can become if the company doesn’t plan for scalability and ownership from the beginning.
Since the company I’m supporting is in the construction sector, where processes tend to grow organically and involve multiple areas (safety, subcontractor management, progress tracking), I’m starting to think that encouraging them to own their Make account from the beginning might be the wisest route, even if a third-party builds the scenarios initially.
Thanks again for the clarity — this was exactly the kind of input I needed to shape my recommendation.
Thank you very much for your response.
I wasn’t aware of the new Make Managed Service subscription, and it’s very helpful to know that this model is now officially supported.
I’ll take some time to review the details more carefully, and if necessary, I’ll definitely reach out to the Make sales team to explore the best option for our case.
Thanks again for the guidance!
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