Reverse ETL (Hightouch/Census) vs Zapier syncs: state vs events.

Reverse ETL (Hightouch/Census) vs Zapier syncs: state vs events.

SCOOP: the dirty secret of Zapier-based 'syncs' is they fire on a trigger and forget. Miss the webhook, the record's wrong forever. Reverse ETL tools diff your warehouse against the destination and reconcile state on every run, so a missed event self-heals next sync.

When to use which:
— One-off, low-stakes record copies: Zapier is fine and faster to ship.
— Anything where 'the two systems must always agree': reverse ETL, full stop.

If you've ever run a 'cleanup' Zap to fix drift, you needed reverse ETL. Watch this.