The Tines alternative for business automation
A Tines alternative for teams outside the SOC: describe the workflow in plain English, the AI builds and tests it on real data, approvals included.
Tines is a security automation platform first. It grew up in SOC teams orchestrating alerts, enrichment, and response, and its story builder reflects that: a small set of precise action types, composed carefully, with cases and pages for the humans in the loop. People searching for a Tines alternative usually fall into two groups: teams outside security who tried it for operations work and found the builder and the contract sized for a different buyer, and small teams who want to automate "read this, decide, ask someone, record it" without a procurement cycle.
MadMax is built for that second kind of work: you describe the outcome in a sentence, the AI builds the workflow on a canvas, verifies every step on real data, and you turn it on.
Where MadMax is different
The AI does the composing. Tines asks you to compose a story from its action types. MadMax asks for a sentence. Max plans the steps, builds the graph, wires the data between steps, and runs a verification pass before the workflow can go live. Everything it builds is editable by hand. See build mode.
Verification on real data, with honest proof. The verification run executes read-safe steps on realistic inputs and judges the output content, captures a real sample for webhook, email, form, and upload triggers, and previews outbound sends without sending. Editing a verified step revokes its proof. The green check is evidence, not decoration.
Approvals for people who live in Slack and email. The approval step pauses the run and asks: Approve and Reject buttons in a Slack channel or direct message (the message rewrites itself with who decided), a signed one-click email link, a YES or NO text reply, or the run page. The run continues down the approved or rejected port.
AI agents as workflow steps. The AI agent extracts fields from documents (scanned PDFs included, via AI vision), classifies, summarizes, or runs a custom prompt with structured output. Bind a knowledge base and it answers from your documents; bind an AI memory and it remembers prior conversations by session.
General-purpose branching and loops. If, switch, loop, loop until, and merge are canvas nodes with ports, so an inbox triage with five categories or a batch over 300 rows is one graph, not a chain of carefully composed actions.
More ways in than webhooks. Every workflow can mint its own inbound email address. Verified phones can text the platform number. Forms, file uploads, schedules, and app events (a Slack message or mention) are triggers too. See triggers.
Runs you can read step by step. The run page shows each step's input, output, timing, and attempts, with "Repair with AI" on failures. History is kept for audit.
MCP, REST, and a pricing shape without a sales call. The MCP server lets Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Claude Code build and verify workflows; the REST API covers workflows, runs, stores, and knowledge bases. Free is a personal workspace with 3 active workflows and 500 runs a month. Pro is $29 per month per workspace with unlimited workflows, 2,000 runs a month, 5 seats, and 1,000 AI credits monthly. Enterprise gets a dedicated, isolated instance.
Where Tines is still the better choice
- Security operations. A SOC automating detection and response against a stack of security tools should look at Tines first. That is their specialty, their integration depth, and their compliance posture.
- Case management. Tines' cases and pages are built for tracking incidents through a team. MadMax has data stores and approvals, not a case system.
- Enterprise governance. Tines sells to organizations that need the contract, the reviews, and the controls that come with it. MadMax is self-serve.
- Deterministic by design. If your team wants no AI in the build at all, Tines' small action vocabulary is a feature.
Side by side
| MadMax | Tines | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | anyone automating business work | security and SOC teams |
| How you build | describe it; the AI plans, builds, verifies; hand-edit any time | no-code story builder, you compose |
| Testing before go-live | every step run on real data, sends previewed, samples captured | test events and story runs you drive |
| Human approvals | a step: Slack buttons, email link, text, in-app | pages and human-interaction actions |
| AI agents | agent step with tools, knowledge bases, memory | AI features within stories |
| Branching and loops | if, switch, loop, loop until, merge as nodes | triggers, loops, and branches composed from actions |
| Pricing shape | free tier; flat Pro per workspace plus AI credits | enterprise contracts |
| Integrations | native apps plus HTTP, webhooks, BYO AI models | deep security-tool integrations plus HTTP |
| API and MCP | REST API and MCP server on Pro | API for managing stories |
Moving from Tines
If the stories you want to move are business workflows rather than detection and response, the path is short.
- List the stories that are really operations work: inbox triage, document extraction, approval chains, a nightly report.
- Describe each one to Max in plain English, naming the apps and who approves.
- Connect the accounts it asks for. With one connection per provider Max auto-wires it; with several it asks which.
- Let verification finish. For a webhook trigger, send one real event so the sample is real.
- Activate and run both for a week. Compare what each wrote and who it asked.
- Retire the story. Keep the security stories where they are.
Frequently asked
Is there a free Tines alternative? MadMax has a free plan: a personal workspace, 3 active workflows, 500 runs a month, the full integration library, no card.
Can I self-host MadMax? No. It is a managed service. Enterprise customers get a dedicated, tenant-isolated deployment on their own database and infrastructure.
Does it work with Slack and Gmail? Yes. Both are native OAuth connections. Slack can trigger workflows from messages and mentions and host approval buttons.
What happens when a step fails? The run fails by default and the run page shows the failing step, its input, and the error. Per step you can choose retry (up to 5 attempts with backoff), continue out an error port, or retry then continue. See error handling.
Can I bring my own OpenAI or Anthropic key? Yes, for AI steps in workflows. Connect Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or OpenRouter in Settings and bind it on the step. The builder chat always runs on the platform model. See security and privacy for what the AI can and cannot see.
Related
Describe the workflow. MadMax builds it and tests it on your data.
Free to start, no card. Connect your apps, say what should happen in plain English, and watch each step run against real data before anything goes live.