PDFGate Zapier integrationAutomate PDFGate with Zapier.
The PDFGate Zapier integration gives you 2 triggers, 10 actions and 2 searches. Enough to turn a web page into a PDF, lock or stamp it, send it out for signature and react the moment every signer is done, without opening PDFGate.
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What the PDFGate Zapier integration actually does
It links PDFGate, a service that renders HTML pages into PDFs and runs signing envelopes, to the rest of your tools through Zapier. A Zap (an automation built on Zapier: one starting event, then the steps that follow it) can create, transform and send documents for you, or wake up when a signature round moves forward.
Three results show up again and again. A ready-to-file PDF from a page you already have: Generate PDF takes a URL or raw HTML and returns a document, which Compress PDF can then shrink before you store it. A document nobody can quietly edit: Flatten PDF turns an interactive form into a static file, and Protect PDF encrypts it and can block printing, copying or edits. A signature round that runs itself: Create Envelope and Send Envelope push a document to its signers, and the trigger Envelope Completed tells the rest of your stack when the last one has signed.
Now the part the app page skips. Almost every PDFGate action works on a document that already lives in PDFGate, through its Document ID. A file sitting in your drive has to go through Upload File first, and that action only reads a publicly reachable link. There is no step that lists your documents or envelopes either: the two searches only fetch one item whose ID you already hold. And there is no trigger on a new document, only on envelopes.
Both triggers are instant, so the plan you are on never slows them down. If you are still weighing tools, the neutral comparisons are here: Make vs Zapier and n8n vs Zapier.
Zapier vocabulary in plain words
Eight words come back on every line of this page. Here is what each one means for a PDFGate workflow.
- Trigger
- The PDFGate event that starts a Zap, here an envelope being sent or fully signed. Once the Zap is on, Zapier waits for it.
- Action
- What the Zap does after it starts: generate a PDF, protect it, upload it, create or send an envelope on your behalf.
- Task
- The unit Zapier bills: one action that completes successfully. The number on your plan counts nothing else.
- Instant trigger
- A trigger the app reports itself, calling Zapier the moment the event happens. Both PDFGate triggers are built this way.
- Polling trigger
- A trigger Zapier checks on a timer, asking the app for new items at a fixed interval. PDFGate has none of these.
- Filter
- A step that lets the Zap continue only when the incoming data meets your condition, and stops it quietly otherwise.
- Search step
- A step that fetches something already in an app, like a PDFGate document, so the next steps can reuse what it found.
- Connection
- Your PDFGate account linked to Zapier once, then reused by every step that touches PDFGate in any of your Zaps.
What a PDFGate Zap really costs you
The trigger never costs a task. Waiting for an envelope to be signed is free, however many envelopes go out.
- Free plan100 tasks per month, unlimited Zaps
- Steps on the free plan2 (one trigger, one action)
- Premium appNo, PDFGate works on every plan
- PDFGate triggers2, both instant: the grid below does not apply
Each PDFGate action that succeeds counts as one task, so a Zap that compresses then protects a file spends two per run. A failed action is not counted. PDFGate is not a premium app, so it runs on the free plan, which gives 100 tasks a month but only two-step Zaps: one trigger, one action. Add a filter, a search or a second action and the Zap becomes multi-step, which needs a paid plan. Interval grids below only matter for polling triggers.
Connect your PDFGate account to Zapier
- 01
Open the Apps page
In your Zapier account, open Apps and click + Add connection. You need an existing PDFGate account before you start; Zapier does not create one for you along the way.
- 02
Pick PDFGate
Type PDFGate in the search box of the dialog, select it, then click Add connection. A new tab opens on the PDFGate side, which is where the actual link between the two accounts happens.
- 03
Sign in and grant access
Sign in to PDFGate in that tab and allow Zapier to use the account. If the documents you want to touch belong to someone else, make sure your account has read or write rights on them first.
Your first PDFGate Zap, step by step
GoalWhen every signer has finished, look the envelope up, then encrypt the final PDF so it can no longer be edited or printed.
- 01
Build: start on the trigger
Create a Zap, pick PDFGate as the starting app and Envelope Completed as the event. Select your PDFGate connection, or add it now with the three steps above.
- 02
Test the trigger
Run the test. Zapier brings back the three most recent items from your account, so you map the next steps on a real signed envelope rather than a blank one.
- 03
Add the search
Add Get Envelope and map the Envelope ID from the trigger. This search makes the Zap multi-step, so this exact Zap needs a paid plan.
- 04
Add the protection
Add Protect PDF, map the Document ID from what the earlier steps returned, and tick the restrictions you want, such as Disable Printing or Disable Editing.
- 05
Test each step, then publish
Run each step once and read what came back before moving on. When the encrypted file looks right, click Publish to switch the Zap on.
PDFGate triggers
2 events start a Zap when something happens in PDFGate, and 2 of them are instant: the app calls Zapier straight away, whatever your plan.
Envelope Completed
Instant triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when all recipients have signed a PDFGate envelope.”
This one starts your Zap once the last recipient has signed a PDFGate envelope. It marks the end of the signing round, which makes it the natural place to archive, lock or share the finished document.
Envelope Sent
Instant triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when a PDFGate envelope is sent to recipients and signing has begun.”
Here the Zap wakes up at the start of a signing round, when a PDFGate envelope goes out to its recipients. You learn that a document is on its way to signers, not that it has been signed.
PDFGate actions
PDFGate gives you 10 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.
Compress PDF
ActionIn Zapier“Compress a PDF to reduce its file size without changing visual content.”
Reduces the weight of a PDFGate document while keeping what it looks like. The Linearize option lets the first pages show in a browser before the whole file has arrived.
Create Envelope
ActionIn Zapier“Create a signing envelope from one or more existing PDFGate documents.”
Builds a signing envelope around one or more PDFGate documents and names who must sign. The envelope exists after this step, but nobody receives it yet.
Delete Document
ActionIn Zapier“Delete a stored PDFGate document by ID.”
Removes a stored PDFGate document for good, using its Document ID. Use it to clean up the intermediate files a Zap leaves behind.
Extract PDF Form Data
ActionIn Zapier“Extract form field data from a fillable PDF and return it as a JSON object.”
Reads the answers typed into a fillable PDF and hands them to the next steps as separate values you can map. It works on a document already in PDFGate.
Flatten PDF
ActionIn Zapier“Flatten an interactive PDF into a static, non-editable PDF.”
Freezes an interactive PDF into a static file that can no longer be filled in or changed.
Generate PDF
ActionIn Zapier“Generate a PDF from a URL or raw HTML.”
Turns a URL or a block of raw HTML into a PDF stored in PDFGate. It is the only way in that needs no existing document.
Protect PDF
ActionIn Zapier“Encrypt a PDF and optionally apply permission restrictions.”
Encrypts a document and, if you want, locks what readers may do with it: Disable Editing, Disable Copy/Extract, Disable Printing. Encrypt Metadata also hides the title, author and keywords.
Send Envelope
ActionIn Zapier“Send a signing envelope to its recipients.”
Sends an existing envelope out to its recipients, which is the moment signing really begins. It needs only the Envelope ID.
Upload File
ActionIn Zapier“Upload a PDF from a URL so it can be referenced by other PDFGate operations.”
Pulls a PDF from a link into PDFGate so the other actions can work on it. PDFGate fetches the file itself and keeps it.
Watermark PDF
ActionIn Zapier“Apply a text watermark to a PDF.”
Stamps a line of text over a PDFGate document, such as DRAFT or a client name. Both Document ID and Watermark Text are required.
PDFGate searches
2 search steps look for data that already exists in PDFGate, so a later step can use it.
A search step fetches a PDFGate item you already know by its ID, so a later step can reuse it. In the editor, searches sit at the bottom of the Action event list, under SEARCH. Using one makes the Zap multi-step. Three settings decide what happens with the result.
Get Document
SearchIn Zapier“Retrieve a PDFGate document by ID.”
Looks up one PDFGate document from its Document ID and returns it to the following steps. It cannot browse or match by name, only fetch by ID.
Get Envelope
SearchIn Zapier“Retrieve a PDFGate envelope by ID.”
Fetches one signing envelope from its Envelope ID, so you can read its state and reuse it later in the Zap.
The three settings every search exposes
- Successful if no search results are found?Left on its default, a search that finds nothing stops the Zap there and the dependent steps are skipped. Switched on, the Zap continues with nothing in hand.
- Create X if it doesn't exist yet?Turns a search into a find-or-create. PDFGate offers no such variant, so you will not see this box on its two searches.
- If multiple search results are found?Three exits when several items match: keep the first one (the default), stop the Zap, or pass all of them on at once.
When a PDFGate Zap breaks
Zapier attaches no help article to PDFGate and lists no limit of its own for it.
What goes wrong comes from the way Zapier itself works. Four cases account for the surprises you are likely to meet. If a Zap still misbehaves, the Zapier troubleshooting page is the next stop.
Old envelopes are ignored
A Zap only reacts to what happens after you publish it. Envelopes completed last month will never start it; moving that backlog is a separate job.The Zap that sets itself off
A Zap on Envelope Sent that ends with Send Envelope triggers itself again and again, and eats through your task count fast.A bulk send gets held back
If a large batch of envelopes goes out at once, Zapier's flood protection can pause the trigger instead of running every one of them.No Document ID, no action
Compress, flatten, protect and watermark all need a file already stored in PDFGate. Without an upload or generate step first, they have nothing to work on.
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