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SaaS Automation: How Design QA Transformed Operations with Activepieces

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If you’re building a product, every minute counts, especially in the critical early-stage journey. The less time founders spend buried in repetitive busywork, the more creative energy and focus can be spent shaping the actual product, listening to users, and driving growth. But most early teams face a painful catch-22: either spend money on expensive ops tools or lose countless hours to manual workflows.

Meet Mahdi, the founder of Design QA. In a conversation with Jordan from Activepieces, Mahdi reveals how a handful of simple but powerful automations transformed his company operations

Prefer the video interview? Check it out on Youtube

What is Design QA and Why Does It Matter?

Mahdi and his team are solving a highly specific pain for design-centric startups and agencies: the friction of UI bug reporting and manual QA. Their main product, which is a Chrome extension, makes it super easy for anyone to click on a site element, document the bug, attach a visual reference, and instantly see all bugs between design and implementation.

The Vision

  • Core User Problem: Manual QA is slow, inconsistent, and error-prone.
  • Product Solution: Automatic visual bug detection anywhere, with instant feedback for developers and designers.

Now imagine trying to iterate quickly, onboard new users, and keep the team in sync, all while manually logging and sorting user data, tracking signups in spreadsheets, and digging through payment dashboards daily. That’s where automation enters the picture.

Before Activepieces

Before automation, Mahdi’s workflow looked like this:

  • Logging into databases and spreadsheets to check for new signups
  • Filtering out noise from internal test accounts
  • Notifying team members through manual Slack/Email messages
  • Tracking Stripe for every new payment event

“I used to check our signups five or even ten times every day. If each check takes just two minutes, that quickly adds up to 10, 20, even 30 minutes daily gone!” Mahdi recalls.

Things began to change dramatically when Mahdi discovered Activepieces and then his favourite piece -webhooks. This helped him to orchestrate multi-app automation flows without writing code.

“Once I figured out webhooks, I realized I could automate almost anything. Activepieces made these complex ideas feel easy, even for a solo founder.”

Workflows Built With Activepieces

Let’s break down the specific automations Madhi implemented by workflow.

1. Real-Time Signup Tracking & Team Alerts

The Challenge:

  • Keep the team notified about new users instantly
  • Filtering out test signups
  • Minimize the founder's time spent checking dashboards

Automation Flow:

  • User signs up via the Design QA landing page
  • Backend (Supabase) pings a webhook in Activepieces
  • Loop: Loops through the user’s email in a Google Sheet containing team/test addresses
  • Router/Branches:
  • If test email, ignore (no notification)
  • If a real user, automation continues
  • If it is a real user, then a Slack notification (with name, email, avatar, plan type) is sent
  • Log the signup in a Google Sheet or Activepieces tables, or CRM
  • (Optional) Trigger a personalized welcome email to the user

Pro Tip:

If you use another backend, e.g., Firebase, Node, or a custom API, Activepieces makes integrating any of them straightforward.

Key Benefits:

  • Team stays aligned & engaged
  • Founder time freed for high-leverage work
  • Zero bottlenecks: every real signup celebrated

2. Stripe Payment Notifications

The Challenge

  • Find out instantly when actual customers start paying
  • Avoid false celebration from internal test transactions
  • Create transparency & excitement around signups

Automation Flow

  1. Trigger on Stripe “new payment”/“subscription”
  2. Route event to Activepieces webhook
  3. Loop: Loops through emails in a Google Sheet containing team/test addresses
  4. Router/Branches:
  • If test email, ignore (no notification)
  • If real user, automation continues
  1. If it is a real user, then a Slack notification (with name, email, avatar, plan type) is sent
  2. Log the subscription in a Google Sheet or Activepieces tables, or CRM
  3. (Optional) Trigger a personalized welcome email to the user

3. Automated Waitlist Management

The Problem

  • How to collect, sync, and leverage interest before launch
  • Complicated or expensive tools

Automation Flow

  • Once the waitlist form is filled, it triggers the Activepieces webhooks
  • Contacts are automatically logged to Google Sheet
  • Personalized welcome email (with direct link to book a call, join a demo, etc.)
  • Instant notification for every signup

“Activepieces gave us a waitlist flow that rivals any paid tool and it’s free for all reasonable usage. The ease of plugging into Google Sheets is unmatched.”- Mahdi

Time Saved

By automating these flows, Mahdi:

  • Saved 10–20 minutes daily
  • Never miss a signup or paying user event
  • Enables real-time team celebration and coordinated responses

“Now, notifications just happen. I go about my day and react only when there’s something that really deserves my attention.”

Why Activepieces?

There are dozens of automation platforms, but why did Activepieces win for Maddie?

  • No-code, extremely beginner-friendly
  • Generous free tier: 1000 tasks/month, renews monthly most startups will never hit the limit
  • All key integrations available: Stripe, Slack, Gmail, Google Sheets, and more
  • Active development: New features (like “Tables” for CRM/data models) rolling out regularly
  • Transparent pricing and a supportive team

Pro Tip For Founders Looking To Start Automation

  • Start small: Automate one manual process this week
  • Document everything: As you automate, keep a running doc so future team members can contribute or troubleshoot
  • Iterate fast: Improve and expand your automations as soon as you find friction or new use cases

As Mahdi says, the automation journey begins with one “aha!” moment and quickly compounds. With the right tools, every founder can reclaim their most precious resource: time.

Start your automation journey today with a free Activepieces account here: https://www.activepieces.com/