Like the grandparent comment, it's hard for me to imagine that there are enough people in need of this service to justify a $5B valuation
Regarding Terraform, installing it, learning HCL, understanding the state management, maintaining a place to run it, and learning how not to screw it up were all headaches I did not want.
I think you're overestimating what people use Zapier for.
Because developers are relatively expensive.
Because hiring anyone requires identifying someone who can do the job and trusting them to do it well. And even before that, you have to figure out what the job actually is.
Because hiring anyone requires some sort of contract, and that has legal implications that might require approvals etc.
As a developer with the required knowledge and skills, these services offer little value to me, but I'm not their target customer. That knowledge and those skills are the result of decades of study and practice, which is experience that most people don't have, and for all of those people the cost/benefit comparisons are going to look completely different.
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> You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc.
The reason is exactly that. They don't want to pay hundreds for a dev to dev for them, and that's just for 'one' integration, with Zapier they can always add whatever they want. They'd rather have the 'cheaper' option (which to be real doesn't always end up being cheaper in the long run, but sometimes does).
The
Your return on investment at the $20.00 per month level is a year or less. So it depends on how long you need it for.
Maybe I spend several hours finding someone online who will do the job for $200, then I spend an hour communicating and clarifying my request, then another hour testing the result. 1 months later I decide I need the automated email to have a different subject line, or include an attachment that wasn’t there before, so I find the developers’ email address and pay him another $100 to make the change - or maybe I don’t because it’s too much trouble.
In the alternate world (in which I live), I simply fire up my browser and create a task in about 15-20 minutes. When I need or want a change, I change it myself.
Less time, less hassle, less risk, and in all likelihood less cost.