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Comment by shortformblog | Hacker News Reader

A more general comment because I see these services popping up on here from time to time: You’re not an alternative to IFTTT or Zapier unless you have a comparable GUI, full stop.

I would love to see an alternative to these services that could be self-hosted, but the reason why these services are useful for most people is because they have a simple web-based interface, even compared to something like Yahoo Pipes. This opens up their capabilities to non-technical users. If you’re asking people to edit configuration files, you’ve already lost them, unfortunately.

If someone can do that, that’s where the opportunity lies for an open-source alternative to Zapier or IFTTT.

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Agree! We have a full developer team, but I find myself using Zapier for tons of small things in the company that would be way too low value to get done all the way into production with proper unit tests, etc.

Found some strange bug that you want to create a ticket to investigate if it happens again? Just use a SQL trigger and create a ticket with details.

The SQL trigger is the #1 most under-used Zap I have found, love it.

Possible fraud cases, getting daily counts, duct-tape until a bug fix goes live, etc these are all great applications of SQL -> Slack/ticket or something similar.

n8n[0] is self-hosted, has a nice GUI, and its source code is available on GitHub. It is not open-source in the strict sense though.

[0] https://n8n.io/

this right here. the best zapier clone i've seen is automatorwp for wordpress. granted it's new so it doesn't have tons of integration yet, but new ones are being added every month. the interface is just so easy to use, no coding required.

https://automatorwp.com/

I think it's possible to add a GUI with GitHub login.

Am I the only who thinks Zapier and IFTTT are useless? The only one that comes close to delivering on utility is autocode.

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.

Interesting. I personally would never pass up an opportunity to save myself ~20hr a month by automating a business process for free, or nearly free.

I don’t understand your consistent personal attack here. Do I really need to explain why I would never use those services for production? They’re not reliable and you don’t have control over them. Building an entire business on top of these services come with significant risks.

It's not personal, nor is it an attack. As far as consistent - my apologies, I didn't realize this comment was made by the same person that I had replied to earlier.

Perhaps we should grab a beer sometime on me?

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.

I've only just found it but try out Integromat. So far it feels like the middle ground between IFTTT and Zapier in terms of features and price.

It also handles processing earlier data which won me over. Want GitHub tasks to get into your Todoist workflow? Easy enough to do on all 3 for future issues.

Integromat lets you process issues that already exist.

https://www.integromat.com/

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.

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.

I find that Integromat strike a good balance between ease of use (vs pure code) and "power" (compared to Zapier et and IFTTT)

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.

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.

Any good links?

Here are a couple that describe the general concepts and how Zapier works into them.

https://zapier.com/blog/what-is-no-code/ https://www.sitepoint.com/how-colocated-companies-can-adapt-...

Basically, the idea is that you can build a full-on app without having to dip into code, allowing you to develop an idea and prove it works before committing to it with more in-depth development.

Thanks!

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.

This may be a failing of those who develop visual programming interfaces, honestly. These tools are often built for non-technical users and to build in more scripting integration harms the original value proposition … which then leads to the next generation of visual programming tools.

You can place the origin at any offset in a circle and rotate 360 degrees to get back to it. One paradigm adopts features from the other to better express complexity or lack thereof, and the cycle transitions when someone decides "there's a simpler way to do this, I shouldn't need to hold all this in my head."

And at the end of the day these tools are competing with Excel, which supports both visual and textual programming for the same reasons.

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.

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.

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