Abstract The binary (Zn-Ni, Zn-Co, Zn-Fe) and ternary (Zn-Ni-Co, Zn-Co-Fe) coatings have been developed with sulphamic acid (SA) as an additive using an electrolytic method of sulfate bath. The bath composition, pH, temperature, etc have been optimized using regular Hull cell technique. The effect of current density (C.D) on wt. % of metal, thickness (t), hardness (VHN), and cathode current efficiency (C.C.E) of the plating have been investigated. The potentiodynamic polarization technique has been used to determine corrosion resistances of binary and ternary alloy coatings. The corrosion rate (CR) of ternary Zn-Ni-Co alloy coating is about 18 times and 20 times higher as compared to binary Zn-Ni and Zn-Co alloy coatings and ternary (Zn-Co-Fe) alloy coating is also approximately 27 times and 28 times higher than Zn-Co and Zn-Fe coating at optimized conditions. Thus, ternary coatings can replace conventional binary alloy coatings for many technological applications including aerospace, automobiles etc.