Wizard Factory: IFTTT Alternatives : Similar automation sites

2014년 2월 27일 목요일

IFTTT Alternatives : Similar automation sites

FTTT / Put the internet to work for you.

Put the internet to work for you.

Ifttt is a web service which lets user to create tasks which are performed when certain condition is met. We have already covered about Ifttt and some of its best recipes in one of our earlier posts. Whether you like Ifttt or not, you might want to learn some of its alternatives or programs offering similar services. Well, I did find some sites claiming to offer similar services as Ifttt, but take my word, none of them seem as good as Ifttt (maybe because it's very early in their development). Besides, Ifttt is in beta and totally free while most of these alternatives are either in private beta, or are not free. Some of them, however, do seem promising - let's just hope they will turn out to be as good as Ifttt.

CloudWork

Cloudwork is a service that allows users to automate tasks between Google Apps, Salesforce, Evernote, Zoho, Twitter, Freshbooks, MailChimp, Zendesk, Dropbox, WordPress and others. They are in private beta and according to them, they'll be ready during the week of September 10. Definitely a site to watch out for. You could sign up for a beta invitation if you want to be updated whenever the site is open for public beta.

Zapier

The best and most versatile alternative to Ifttt which offers much more unique set of apps than those offered by Ifttt itself. You can create a zap (recipes on Ifttt), by simply dragging and dropping the apps on two different boxes named trigger and action. Free accounts can have 5 integration and unlimited actions. However, the zaps for a free account are run every 5 hours. If you want to make the zap run faster or make more integration, you need to sign up for a paid plan.

Update (11.15.2012) : Zapier now runs the zaps for free account every 15 minutes. Free users can access all the standard services and can perform up to 100 tasks a month. And you can also invite your friends to earn an extra 100 tasks a month!

Wappwolf

This goes beyond just syncing and moving files; it provides actions that could improve your productivity. For example, you could have a pic converted to black and white, scaled, renamed and then uploaded to Facebook and Picasa easily. All you need to get started is one of the popular cloud storage apps : Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or even Facebook. What more? It is absolutely free for basic use, i.e. up to 100 files or 100 megabytes of data per day. The free account is limited to 3 active automations.

We-Wired Web

It works the same way as Ifttt and Zapier. The site recently came out of private beta and is now in general public beta, but it has got a lot to improve before its even comparable to Zapier or Ifttt. For one, it takes too long for the site to respond to your clicks, and next, you will have a hard time activating some services, since sometimes either the activate button does not show up or the site does not respond at all. You can have your task scheduled to be run at a specific date/time or just make it run in 15 minutes or every hour. Seems pretty promising, lets see how it goes.

Elastic.io

Another similar service to keep track of. Elastic.io helps you automate routine operations and connect multiple cloud APIs. This site is also in private beta. You could try signing up for an invitation if you'd like to have an early access.

Yahoo Pipes

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs. Not suitable to average users with no know-how of programming.

Hojoki : Collaboration for Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, Google Calendar and 30 other productivity tools

Your productivity home base: Notifications, messaging, and tasks for everything your team is working on in Dropbox, Evernote, Google Calendar, and 30+ other tools.