There are two giants (Zapier vs IFTTT: Which Is Better For Cloud Automation?) in the cloud automation market. Zapier, an automation center focused on meeting the production needs of large businesses. And IFTTT, beloved by many bloggers writing about productivity enhancements for individuals and small businesses.
Zapier vs IFTTT: Which Is Better For Cloud Automation?
But now that IFTTT is moving to a paid model, those who have used the free cloud automation service might want to consider switching. But when you compare Zapier and IFTTT face-to-face, which solution is really the best?
In this round-up, we’ll take a close look at both services and compare them in terms of cost, supported cloud apps and services, and ease of use.
Zapier vs IFTTT: Why Switch?
If you recently signed in to IFTTT, you may have noticed that you cannot create new applets if you have created more than three of them in your account.
This is because to continue using unlimited applets, you need to upgrade to IFTTT Pro, which usually costs $ 9.99 per month. However, for a very limited time, IFTTT allows existing accounts to upgrade to IFTTT Pro, “setting their own price,†for just $ 1.99 per month. IFTTT promises to keep this price “indefinitely”.
But if you’ve been using IFTTT so far mostly because was free, isn’t it time to upgrade to Zapier?
Let’s compare the two services and see which one is better.
Supported apps: Zapier supports 4x more apps
When it comes to how many services you use that you can automate, there is no comparison.
If you examine all of the supported apps on IFTTT, you will see just over 500 available services that you can connect to.
However, when you select Explore in Zapier, they take you to a page where you can search over 2000 apps by category.
On both Zapier and IFTTT, you’ll find all of the most popular services like Google apps, social accounts like Facebook and Twitter, as well as most of the major cloud storage services.
Where Zapier comes out ahead is in the areas of customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing services that large companies tend to care about.
Zapier vs IFTTT: Why Switch?
IFTTT also suffered a significant setback when they dropped Gmail triggers entirely from their offerings when Gmail recently changed its internal code for third-party services. Today, if you’re looking for Gmail triggers in Zapier, you’ll still find plenty of flexible automation to trigger.
On the other hand, when you search for Gmail to launch an applet on IFTTT, IFTTT doesn’t work.
This means that Zapier engineers are more proactive and regularly update the applet code to include any changes needed to integrate with your cloud services.
Now that IFTTT charges users a fee for using its services, perhaps one day they will catch up in this regard. But to date, IFTTT offers only a fraction of the cloud integration than Zapier
Ease of use: IFTTT is intuitive, Zapier is flexible
The applet creation process (what IFTTT calls its automation) is literally click-by-click.
The interface guides you through each step of the process one screen at a time using the well-known This and That approach.
Basically “This” is the initiating service and event, and “This” is what you want to happen when the trigger fires.
You start by selecting Add in the If This block, and then define the parameters that you want to use to run the trigger.
The same is true when choosing a trigger service. In this example, you can add a new row to Google Spreadsheet whenever a specific SMS arrives on your Android phone containing specific words.
In IFTTT, each step of the process is one large screen with a huge font that fills the entire screen and fields that you fill out for the specific step you are working on.
This approach is aimed at people who may not be very tech-savvy but can follow very simple basic steps.
Zapier, on the other hand, takes a more sophisticated approach. When you choose Make a Zap in Zapier, the process starts in a similar way to IFTTT You look for the service you want to use as a trigger and select it to get started.
The first step is usually to select from a list of available events that Zapier can receive from this service.
After you select a trigger event and click Continue, you may need to enter some information to make the trigger even more specific depending on what you want to trigger.
Zapier conducts testing at every step of the process to ensure it can retrieve the requested data from the cloud service.
The process then moves down the chain when you select the cloud service you want to do something within the response to the trigger you just configured.
Zapier allows you to customize the actions you take with the second cloud service based on the specific data it was able to get from the first cloud service that you used to launch Zap.
Typically you will find that the available Zapier data that you can use in each Zap is much more extensive and flexible than IFTTT IFTTT usually only provides very specific, pre-formatted details, limited to the most common pieces of data that people might want to use.
For example, if you send an email to your Gmail account every time someone posts something to your Facebook page, Zapier allows you to enter things like:
-
App ID
- Creation time
- Post category or type
- Much more
Although IFTTT can be limited to just a few things like the posting message and the name of the person who posted.
You will find that this is the difference between most of the automation created with Zapier and IFTTT
Price: Zapier is almost double the price
The old adage, “You get what you pay for,” is very applicable here. While Zapier can have four times as many apps you can integrate than IFTTT, and those integrations are much more detailed and extensive, the downside is that you will have to pay almost twice as much per month for this privilege. The Starter Plan with Zapier costs just under $ 20 per month, while the Unlimited IFTTT plan costs $ 9.99 per month.
And if you take advantage of the introductory IFTTT offer, the monthly savings can be much higher.
Final Referee: Zapier vs IFTTT
Any of these services do a great job of cloud automation. The final decision really comes down to how complex you need to make your automation and whether IFTTT will be integrated with the services you need.
Zapier offers a free tier where you get 100 tasks per month to play with the service. So you can always try and see if it’s worth the extra money.
Otherwise, the current IFTTT prices are well suited for people looking to automate the cloud but are not willing to invest in the prices that Zapier is currently asking for.
Zapier vs IFTTT: Which Is Better For Cloud Automation?
Zapier vs IFTTT: Which Is Better For Cloud Automation?
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