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Why would I pay someone hundreds of dollars to build something that I don’t know how to maintain, when Zapier can do the same thing for free or $20/mo?

• ipaddr 6y ago
  Free is free. Your return on investment at the $20.00 per month level is a year or less. So it depends on how long you need it for.
  • fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago
    Your opportunity cost for the time spent maintaining, or managing people to maintain it is much higher than $20, if your business has more important problems you could spend time fixing. It’s very obvious that this is true if you’re a yc-type startup, which could be worth $0 or $1B depending on how you spend a few years.
  • djrogers 6y ago
    Give me a break - there’s no developer that anyone could reasonably trust to write even the simplest program and maintain and modify it throughout they year for less than $20/mo. Maybe I spend several hours finding someone online who will do the job for $200, then I spend an hour communicating and clarifying my request, then another hour testing the result. 1 months later I decide I need the automated email to have a different subject line, or include an attachment that wasn’t there before, so I find the developers’ email address and pay him another $100 to make the change - or maybe I don’t because it’s too much trouble. In the alternate world (in which I live), I simply fire up my browser and create a task in about 15-20 minutes. When I need or want a change, I change it myself. Less time, less hassle, less risk, and in all likelihood less cost.