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Clickbaity title aside, Zapier is achieving $35M ARR because their product is amazing. I'm infinitely suspicious of SEO articles but I'm convinced that Zapier c

Clickbaity title aside, Zapier is achieving $35M ARR because their product is amazing. I'm infinitely suspicious of SEO articles but I'm convinced that Zapier could have Slack'd (word-of-mouth'd) their way to where they are now. They're in a league of their own when it comes to integration/functionality/UX -- I don't even know who their bigger competitors are, if they exist. The first time I saw Zapier, I got the tinge of developer/engineer/builder envy that I get whenever I see products that just are obvious in retrospect, and seem to be very well and flexibly implemented. I heard of it from a forward-looking product manager I respected at a famous internet security firm that I worked at in the past and it absolutely blew my mind (also he gave me a short demo) because of how easy it made things for end users despite the complexity I know the must have had to deal with.

chrisweekly 8y ago
I admit I haven't looked too closely, but what makes Zapier so amazing compared to IFTTT?
- skunkworker 8y ago
  From what I've used they approached a similar domain problem from different angles. Zapier - B2B and web app apis, IFTTT - Home and IOT automation.
- garrickvanburen 8y ago
  It's been a year+ since I've done any work w/ either. At the time IFTTT was 'consumer-y' and Zapier was 'business-y'. By which I mean, I could wire together meaningful workflows in Zapier across multiple SaaSs inserting my own javascript to clean things up along the way. At the time IFTTT wasn't as developer friendly.
- arrosenberg 8y ago
  Just to name a few: - more small business/enterprise integrations (e.g Salesforce, Shopify, Magento) - can run Python or Javascript as part of a workflow - complex workflows with branching and conditionals I can spend several hours building and deploying something with AWS Lambda and API Gateway or 15 minutes in Zapier and it just works. IFTTT is a toy by comparison, but is also more straightforward to use - different audiences.
- LamaOfRuin 8y ago
  IFTTT created a product (and a closed one at that, being dismissive of developers wanting to give them free labor to create integrations). Zapier created a platform and actively courted developers wanting to add integrations.
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  The way I see it, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT, but it's not the functionality that separates them, it's the approach. For me it starts with the name -- IFTTT means absolutely nothing to the average non-technical user, it sounds like alphabet soup or maybe a standards body or something. Zapier also doesn't mean anything, but it means nothing in a easy to distinguish way from other things. The audience for IFTTT (which is obvious once you know the acronym and makes sense) is for developers where Zapier is generally for smart forward-looking non-technical to fully technical people in the right domain. IFTTT might get a crazy article or two in tech-focused publications and some fanfare from nerds but Zapier is the kind of thing that silently chugs along to be everywhere in ~5 years once product managers/leads, managers, business analysis people get a hold of it -- and the tech isn't even bad. I don't work for Zapier, I don't push use or pay for their products, I have no connection to them except realizing when I first saw it that it was a excellent idea in a parched solution space with an above average to great implementation & UX. [EDIT] - Thinking about this some more, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT the concept as in I could Zapier's functionality in the sentence "if X then Y", but that statement actually doesn't mean anything because you can maneuver X to be just about anything and Y to be just about anything. Zapier supports non-trigger based workflows from what I understand and so does IFTTT... so maybe they're more equivalent than anything with Zapier focusing on enterprise-level polished integrations.
  - rahoulb 8y ago
    I would put it the other way round. There's stuff I do with Zapier that I can't see how to do with IFTTT. In particular the path functionality and Python/Javascript embedding mean I can string lots of zaps together into very complex workflows.
- davchana 8y ago
  For me it was that IFTTT allows only one IF condition and one THEN step, whereas Zapier allows more simoltanous IFs & then THENs. IFTTT is free, & kind of have no limit, whereas Zapier allows only 100 executions of your zaps in a month.
taf2 8y ago
That and like every Saas company offers or refers people to zapier
- busterarm 8y ago
  They've singlehandedly turned hiring a developer to connect A to B into a business risk. An entire area of contract work is basically irrelevant. I get to bill people to train them to do simple things for themselves, cheaper and focus on the more important work instead. And I don't lose any of those clients because everybody won and they have other work to give me. They deserve it!
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Yeah, IMO that's another part of their genius business strategy -- all the SaaS apps that don't want to write plugin ecosystems or abide by an ever-changing list of interoperability specifications and want developers to love them can just pick one protocol (in the general sense of the word 'protocol', not the HTTP1/HTTP2/HTTP3 sense) -- Zapier's. Then they can put "great interop" on their landing page, list some companies that Zapier interops with on their page, and be done.

chrisweekly 8y ago

I admit I haven't looked too closely, but what makes Zapier so amazing compared to IFTTT?

skunkworker 8y ago
From what I've used they approached a similar domain problem from different angles. Zapier - B2B and web app apis, IFTTT - Home and IOT automation.
garrickvanburen 8y ago
It's been a year+ since I've done any work w/ either. At the time IFTTT was 'consumer-y' and Zapier was 'business-y'. By which I mean, I could wire together meaningful workflows in Zapier across multiple SaaSs inserting my own javascript to clean things up along the way. At the time IFTTT wasn't as developer friendly.
arrosenberg 8y ago
Just to name a few: - more small business/enterprise integrations (e.g Salesforce, Shopify, Magento) - can run Python or Javascript as part of a workflow - complex workflows with branching and conditionals I can spend several hours building and deploying something with AWS Lambda and API Gateway or 15 minutes in Zapier and it just works. IFTTT is a toy by comparison, but is also more straightforward to use - different audiences.
LamaOfRuin 8y ago
IFTTT created a product (and a closed one at that, being dismissive of developers wanting to give them free labor to create integrations). Zapier created a platform and actively courted developers wanting to add integrations.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
The way I see it, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT, but it's not the functionality that separates them, it's the approach. For me it starts with the name -- IFTTT means absolutely nothing to the average non-technical user, it sounds like alphabet soup or maybe a standards body or something. Zapier also doesn't mean anything, but it means nothing in a easy to distinguish way from other things. The audience for IFTTT (which is obvious once you know the acronym and makes sense) is for developers where Zapier is generally for smart forward-looking non-technical to fully technical people in the right domain. IFTTT might get a crazy article or two in tech-focused publications and some fanfare from nerds but Zapier is the kind of thing that silently chugs along to be everywhere in ~5 years once product managers/leads, managers, business analysis people get a hold of it -- and the tech isn't even bad. I don't work for Zapier, I don't push use or pay for their products, I have no connection to them except realizing when I first saw it that it was a excellent idea in a parched solution space with an above average to great implementation & UX. [EDIT] - Thinking about this some more, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT the concept as in I could Zapier's functionality in the sentence "if X then Y", but that statement actually doesn't mean anything because you can maneuver X to be just about anything and Y to be just about anything. Zapier supports non-trigger based workflows from what I understand and so does IFTTT... so maybe they're more equivalent than anything with Zapier focusing on enterprise-level polished integrations.
- rahoulb 8y ago
  I would put it the other way round. There's stuff I do with Zapier that I can't see how to do with IFTTT. In particular the path functionality and Python/Javascript embedding mean I can string lots of zaps together into very complex workflows.
davchana 8y ago
For me it was that IFTTT allows only one IF condition and one THEN step, whereas Zapier allows more simoltanous IFs & then THENs. IFTTT is free, & kind of have no limit, whereas Zapier allows only 100 executions of your zaps in a month.

taf2 8y ago

That and like every Saas company offers or refers people to zapier

busterarm 8y ago
They've singlehandedly turned hiring a developer to connect A to B into a business risk. An entire area of contract work is basically irrelevant. I get to bill people to train them to do simple things for themselves, cheaper and focus on the more important work instead. And I don't lose any of those clients because everybody won and they have other work to give me. They deserve it!
hardwaresofton 8y ago
Yeah, IMO that's another part of their genius business strategy -- all the SaaS apps that don't want to write plugin ecosystems or abide by an ever-changing list of interoperability specifications and want developers to love them can just pick one protocol (in the general sense of the word 'protocol', not the HTTP1/HTTP2/HTTP3 sense) -- Zapier's. Then they can put "great interop" on their landing page, list some companies that Zapier interops with on their page, and be done.