I think you're underestimating the effort involved in writing something to poll an IMAP folder, checking for new emails, pull the right mime attachments, etc, e

I think you're underestimating the effort involved in writing something to poll an IMAP folder, checking for new emails, pull the right mime attachments, etc, etc, and then turning around and post them to the right place. Yeah I could write some Ruby or Python or Perl to do the job but I can also spend way less time and use something like Huginn to do it for me. Honestly, your argument could apply to virtually anything you might do with something like Zapier or equivalent. Nothing they do can't be done via scripting. The point is these tools simplify the grunt work so you can go from idea to implementation much faster, with proven code that you don't have to write and maintain yourself.