I doubt you're the only one, but that's a very narrow-minded view of the world. Do you also feel that eyeglasses, hearing aids, and other personal assistance devices are 'useless' just because you personally don't need them?
Someone who is capable of using autocode - who has the technical capability to write code - may not need something like Zapier.
On the other hand, it took me 5 minutes with Zapier to set up a fully automated system that takes a line from a spreadsheet and populates a calendar, sends a calendar invite, and sends some follow up emails for a charity thing I run. It saves me tons of time, and I never have to think about it, nor did I have to write a single line of code against an API that will change shortly for I forget how all of my code works.
What does it matter how many people think these platforms are useless? Even if 7 billion think they're useless, that leaves them with quite enough of a market segment.
A quick search shows that Zapier has over 3M users and IFTTT has 18M users, so they got that going for them.
IFTTT recently introduced a pro pack which quite heavily impacts a large portion of its userbase, which is why I personally think that their current number of users is pretty useless as a metric.
They also charge services for supporting them and want the services to make a special API for them (as opposed to plugging into existing ones), which is why I find them relatively scummy.
That being said, Zapier is just expensive. From my memory it's like $20/month if you want more than 3 automations running, and can easily rise to $50/month. I like it as a service, but that price is fairly unreachable for me.
They are personally useless for me. On many occasions I wantied a no-code no-hassle "point and click" automation and I have tried them a few dozen times over last 5 years and never had any success even once - they had always lacked something and were unable to do things I wanted. And I wanted nothing extraordinary, typically something like a proper bidirectional synchronization between two services (say, Alexa todos and iOS reminders)
They seem to work for many people though, so they aren't useless in the general sense.
My brother uses Zapier to automate a lot oft the processes in bis company. Especially the backoffice processes. He is is not a tech savy Person. If you ask him what an API is, he has no idea.
It obviously only works if you use SaaS pltaforms for everything but, sadly, thats the default in a lot of companies anyway.
Interesting. I personally would never use those services for production/work. And even for personal it’s iffy at best. I wasn’t aware they had so many users.
Read up on the whole no-code thing. Zapier (along with the API-based services it plugs into) has essentially enabled an entire philosophy around startups that does not require the use of a code editor.
I think that we're going to see a rejection of no-code in a few years. Whatever the new word for visual programming is, it comes in cycles and the visual programming tools adopt more scripting integration and then we come back full circle.
I personally find IFTTT useful for a few basic home automation things. I probably could write some code to do it myself, but it's much faster so for things that aren't super important to me, I might not do them at all if I didn't have IFTTT. Now that they allow multiple triggers and filter code, it does most of what I want without having to run anything myself.
I have actually tried Integromat and have found it interesting, though I haven’t taken a deep enough dive to decide if it’s for me. (It’s cheaper than Zapier, which is a big plus.)
I honestly find the pipes-based interface kind of a turnoff, admittedly, but functionally it’s not bad.
Never used Zapier, but IFTTT is too simple to really be useful as you can't do much with it. I had a few actions, but not after they announced it's not really free anymore.
djrogers|5 years ago
Someone who is capable of using autocode - who has the technical capability to write code - may not need something like Zapier.
On the other hand, it took me 5 minutes with Zapier to set up a fully automated system that takes a line from a spreadsheet and populates a calendar, sends a calendar invite, and sends some follow up emails for a charity thing I run. It saves me tons of time, and I never have to think about it, nor did I have to write a single line of code against an API that will change shortly for I forget how all of my code works.
bitxbit|5 years ago
[deleted]
falcor84|5 years ago
A quick search shows that Zapier has over 3M users and IFTTT has 18M users, so they got that going for them.
input_sh|5 years ago
They also charge services for supporting them and want the services to make a special API for them (as opposed to plugging into existing ones), which is why I find them relatively scummy.
That being said, Zapier is just expensive. From my memory it's like $20/month if you want more than 3 automations running, and can easily rise to $50/month. I like it as a service, but that price is fairly unreachable for me.
drdaeman|5 years ago
They seem to work for many people though, so they aren't useless in the general sense.
lhoff|5 years ago
It obviously only works if you use SaaS pltaforms for everything but, sadly, thats the default in a lot of companies anyway.
bitxbit|5 years ago
shortformblog|5 years ago
qppo|5 years ago
ajmadesc|5 years ago
michaelmior|5 years ago
DavidPP|5 years ago
shortformblog|5 years ago
I honestly find the pipes-based interface kind of a turnoff, admittedly, but functionally it’s not bad.
lscotte|5 years ago