5 ms·

I don't use Zapier because of money. I use IFTTT to: * Keep a spreadsheet of my written tweets. * Keep a spreadsheet of my liked tweets. * Used to download I

I don't use Zapier because of money. I use IFTTT to: * Keep a spreadsheet of my written tweets. * Keep a spreadsheet of my liked tweets. * Used to download Instagram photos liked by me, but Instagram API broke it. * Keep a text file of my hn, reddit comments, in two separate files.

mslate 7y ago
Why do any of that?
- davchana 7y ago
  Just another copy of my data. Yes, we can download too from each website; but that requires active action; this happens instantly and on its own.
  - turbostyler 7y ago
    This is pretty much the same basic use case I’ve had for Zapier at work. My team uses it to write leads into both a Google sheet and Salesforce. The sheet sort of acts as a sanity check and a log of all the attempted lead creations. For one reason or another, they don’t always make it into Salesforce.
girishso 7y ago
Not exactly the same, but only saves tweets with links. I built http://www.tweetd.com http://www.tweetd.com to auto generate a link blog from the links I tweet. I use it to keep/search my bookmarks.
dublin 7y ago
Yeah, you can use Zapier for that, but you haven't mentioned anything that couldn't be done just as easily with curl and a shell script... I don't have anything against Zapier, in fact I have a good friend (a dietician) who build a bunch of Zaps to semi-automate her business, a good call for someone who has zero interest in coding. It just seems to me that anyone reading HN might find it easier to not use Zapier or IFTT...
- davchana 7y ago
  Well, for me, it was never curl or shell vs Zapier or IFTTT. Only time I have used curl is few years ago in PHP while fetching some external link or page. The closest to shell script is my bunch of .bat files or even less number of .vba files I used very few times in life. I never touched linux or *nix if you don't count using Control Panel on PHP Hostings & using Android. Also, the Ask HN was what do you use these for, not what do you use these for which can't be done by shell? > anyone reading HN might find it easier to not use Zapier or IFTT. Well,there you go, I find IFTTT easier than shell or curl because of all GUI & inter-connectivity. Although last two years I go to Google Apps Script first for anything related.

mslate 7y ago

Why do any of that?

davchana 7y ago
Just another copy of my data. Yes, we can download too from each website; but that requires active action; this happens instantly and on its own.
- turbostyler 7y ago
  This is pretty much the same basic use case I’ve had for Zapier at work. My team uses it to write leads into both a Google sheet and Salesforce. The sheet sort of acts as a sanity check and a log of all the attempted lead creations. For one reason or another, they don’t always make it into Salesforce.

girishso 7y ago

Not exactly the same, but only saves tweets with links. I built http://www.tweetd.com http://www.tweetd.com to auto generate a link blog from the links I tweet. I use it to keep/search my bookmarks.

dublin 7y ago

Yeah, you can use Zapier for that, but you haven't mentioned anything that couldn't be done just as easily with curl and a shell script... I don't have anything against Zapier, in fact I have a good friend (a dietician) who build a bunch of Zaps to semi-automate her business, a good call for someone who has zero interest in coding. It just seems to me that anyone reading HN might find it easier to not use Zapier or IFTT...

davchana 7y ago
Well, for me, it was never curl or shell vs Zapier or IFTTT. Only time I have used curl is few years ago in PHP while fetching some external link or page. The closest to shell script is my bunch of .bat files or even less number of .vba files I used very few times in life. I never touched linux or *nix if you don't count using Control Panel on PHP Hostings & using Android. Also, the Ask HN was what do you use these for, not what do you use these for which can't be done by shell? > anyone reading HN might find it easier to not use Zapier or IFTT. Well,there you go, I find IFTTT easier than shell or curl because of all GUI & inter-connectivity. Although last two years I go to Google Apps Script first for anything related.