Apps Vs Browser Recording?
The goal of automating anything is to free up more of your time. Whether this is form entry, data collection, cold outreach or simply your daily automation to hit “order” on DoorDash for your lunch
Browser Recording vs API (Apps) automation
Browser Recording
Browser recording is a style of automation where you can record clicks, types, etc. that eventually all together build an automation full of steps. For example, let’s say that we want to make sure we never miss checking in for a flight again. We can setup an automation that automatically does the check in process if we break it down to just click and type steps. For example, we go to southwest.com then we click flights, type our confirmation code, click check in, click no I still do no want to upgrade. Boom! Now we have automated the process of checking in for flights!
Pros | Cons |
NO rules, infinite potential for automation. As long as you a human can do it, there is a almost always way to automate | NO Guardrails, you can make more mistakes setting this up rather than APIs |
No added cost (some apis cost per use) like ChatGPT | Website could change layout. If this happens you may need to re record your automation. Normally you can just edit a handful of steps to be back to normal, Most major websites do not have extreme changes frequently. |
Beginner friendly, just record clicks and types to build your automation. The most important step to building your automations is being able to break down what you want to just being click, type, keypress etc. steps and then recording | Too much activity means you can be detected as a bot quicker which can affect your account status. You should exercise caution with automation and not dramatically increase your activity on a website that may be actively trying to prevent bots from the action. I.e. on Instagram we advise around 50 messages per day per account (10 per hour) as your limit while getting started |
API (Apps)
API automation is a style of automation where you can interact directly with another company with specific, strict rules on what you can and cannot do. Companies intentionally build a way for you (or anyone) to send / receive data directly from that company without having to visit the website
Pros | Cons |
Less errors. Due of the setup process there is less chance of error when your automation runs because everything was closely entered/sent and receives more validation when running to make sure nothing is going wrong. Companies also intentionally support what you are doing which means you and the company are working together compared to LinkedIn which is actively preventing tools like TaskMagic from automating processes (but we still are ;) ) | You can only do what the company allows you to do. For example, Instagram has an API but that API does not let you send direct messages |
Beginner friendly, because of the setup process users are prompted for every question of the process and must test steps frequently which means errors are caught early | Some APIs although being no code are still complicated to use. Understanding things like key value pairs become necessary when using some steps which are more complex concepts |
Some companies have no public API which means there is 0 chance you can use the company with the API builder |
Are APIs and Browser recording meant to be used separately?
Nope! You can build API and Browser Recording separately or together, they both serve different purposes! For example, in this automation we use the Browser Recording to go to stripe and do some clicking then we use API to upload the file directly to our Google Drive. As you get to use both types of automation you will quickly see which serves the right purpose. If you’re unsure, if you can’t do it in API (as in not displayed as an option anywhere) you really have no other option, start recording!