For all of us that use IFTTT to run our smart home, get ready for a doozy! Starting today, if you want to run more than 3 of your own commands you I’ve to pay. That’s right-no more sunset bulb rules, location based mute notifications, alarms if a door opens or anything else you can dream up-unless you pay. They’re touting the free option includes pre-established rules created by brands like Wyze, but you can’t personalize your own rule unless you pay.
I, for one, am floored! I don’t mind a pro service for more robust rules and greater access to additional features, but don’t limit the basic features that this is used for. Please take that part away and we will all be happy.
Their service was so lousy they had two choices, start charging or shut the doors. In the IT forums I belong to IFTTT is used as a verb meaning to promise way more than you can deliver. “He pulled an IFTTT on me!”
Time will tell but I suspect with the Apple/Amazon/Google open source project finally starting to show progress this may be too little too late for them.
I didn’t see anything about the limited amount of applets.
This is the email I was sent. It seems like they’ll be owing the pay wha you want for existing users, like Wyze. PDF document.pdf (1.0 MB)
I wish other services worked like ifttt. Google. Apple and Amazon have the start of something like this but it’s still limited. They all require input on one of their devices to get it to work.
You wouldn’t expect your plumber to donate his time and service to you. Why do you expect to get everything for free just because it’s on the internet. It costs money. Somebody is paying for it. Yes, there are lots of services that provide a basic level of service for free, but charge for a higher level of service. That’s who is paying for your “free” service. If that model is not supporting the operation, then the provider needs to change the level of service that is free so more people are in the paid level - or you jack up the price for the paid service… The other option is advertising on your service. And let’s face it, none of us like that one very much…
I have a simple solution to this IFTTT change. I essentially never did anything with it. I am killing my IFTTT account.
Saw this coming, only because someone had mentioned an IFTTT fee with a different camera brand. I have never had or used IFTTT for precisely this reason - you could see this coming with ANY free “cloud” service (cough, Person Detection, cough).
The silly part is that Amazon (or Apple, or Google) could replace and enhance this entire service with a weekend’s worth of development. No great loss except to the poor existing users of the thing!
Any good non-cloud replacements besides Home Assistant?
P.S. wouldn’t have thought that insane VoiceMonkey/Amazon/Wyze/IFTTT recipe would fail on IFTTT first
Generally it is not in one companies interest to facilitate using another companies products or services so it is hard to engender altruistic cooperation.
Sometimes there are overarching reasons to cooperate but the participants will always try to ensure they retain an advantage over the others. A “more equal” equal partnership.
I don’t even remember seeing any warning this was coming! I have 14 applets (mostly, to use notifications received from specific apps to fire actions).
What really floors me is that (on Android) apps can have permissions to read notification text. I use IFTTT and Macrodroid for functions based on notifications received.
So, I know that it’s possible for other apps (or even Google) to do the same. I’ve asked for this functionality within Wyze (if you’re interested, go vote here: Shortcut Triggers from Notifications ) as well as requested this feature for Google Home and Amazon Alexa apps.
I’m more miffed that ifttt didn’t even send me any notice about this. Ugh.
Writing was on the wall for me last year, when Bond abandoned IFTTT. Then my integrations became slower and slower. I am already down to 3 applets, and I don’t rely on them for anything serious.
Someone else’s bad business model is not a reason for me to pay them a subscription fee.
This is clearly the end of the service, and I’m sure even the owners know it. Perhaps they were counting on getting acquired before they had to stoop to charging all their free users. Anyway from a quick web search it seems the only reasonable alternatives (besides Zapier) are Microsoft Flow / Power Automate and the self hosted Huginn system.
Of course I’m sure a little curl / wget scripting goes a long way too.
Ironically, shortly after my comment about a bad business model being no reason for me to pay subscription, Wyze sent the"name your price for person detection" email.
Bond moved to Smartthings integration, and Wyze has hinted at doing the same. It isn’t perfect - by any stretch - but easily replaced everything I wanted to do with IFTTT by 10x.
Wow between this and Wyze’s name your price Person Detection, old Aunt Flo is really having a gushing flood of effects on the Internet of Things industry…
