5 ms·

IFTTT is killing its pay-what-you-want Legacy Pro plan (2023)

38 points by joshstrange 3y ago

joshstrange 3y ago
I guess “forever” = <4 years I signed up for the pro plan when it was announced even though I don’t use IFTTT much as a way to lock in the lower price. Now I’ll be cancelling.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cube00 3y ago
> In the notice, IFTTT argued that the “Legacy Pro” tier “no longer exists in our current offerings,” as the web applet service has added “nearly 200 new services, and dozens of new features” since first offering a pay-what-you-want option for grandfathered-in users. Cool, then don't offer these "nearly 200 new services, and dozens of new features" to the grandfathered users.
- _cenw 3y ago
  I don't know what the ratio of integrations IFTTT gets paid for vs the ones they develop for reach, but getting on IFTTT without them reaching out to you is (or at least was) absurdly expensive (and creates a lot of junk on their integrations listing)
- halJordan 3y ago
  It's not terrible to say "hey we've moved on." It's more petulant to say "you must maintain two services bc you had a different business ten years ago."
  - cube00 3y ago
    Nobody forced them to offer a lifetime plan, if you're happy to benefit from the hype "lifetime" brings, then don't complain when you're called out for not following through.
- pests 3y ago
  Elementor (drag and drop page builder for WordPress) handled this the correct way. Their original plans included way too much in the basic teir that should have been behind a higher priced. They realized it last year and switched up the plans to be more reasonable. They gave you the choice of switching to the new plans and pricings, or keep the current price - but you wouldn't receive any new features.
type_Ben_struct 3y ago
Sadly common nowadays. Lately I’ve really got into my self-hosting again. I had moved away from it as my income increased and I valued convenience and less things to worry about, but with everything becoming subscription based, with regular price hikes, I’m hosting as much as I can myself. I’ve also stated to torrent a lot more content, my rule of thumb is if you make it available for me to buy, I’ll buy it, but if you expect me to wait 18 months for something released in the US to land in the UK then I’ll just torrent it.
- kilroy123 3y ago
  This is the way. I self host n8n and I never have to worry about price increases.
- rytis 3y ago
  Same, and it’s not only about the price either. I value stability and certainty that things I use and rely upon aren’t going to be shut down.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    Every two or three years I oscillate been believing that self hosting is more stable, paying a professional company is more stable, self hosting is more stable, paying a professional... The actual monetary outlay is not even a factor most of the time. But identifying which tech companies are stable is a challenge.
    - al_borland 3y ago
      If self hosting and professionals are equally stable, I’ve tended to like the idea that when something breaks, there is a team of people watching for it and fixing it, and I don’t need to drop everything else I’m doing to play sys admin for the evening. I set myself a budget of $100/month of subscriptions. I decided if I stay under that I’m not going to stress about it. My bigger worry is more around longevity and a rug pull in the future (or a hack). But I have that same anxiety around self hosting as well, if something happens to a project and I need to migrate, or I get lazy about updates.
londons_explore 3y ago
IFTTT is in a perfect position to creep prices up, because when users have put effort into setting up little bits of automation in their life ('email me when my bank balance falls under $1000', 'turn my kitchen light on on workdays only', etc.), users don't want to lose that time investment or utility. IFTTT knows that migrating to a competitor is a load of work.
joshstrange 3y ago
Thank you (I assume) Dang for adding the year. I got the following email yesterday and then went searching for news on it (I must have missed it at the time): > Your current Legacy Pro plan is becoming Pro+. You will have access to new features such as multi-account support, increased rate limits, and priority customer support. > This change, along with a price adjustment, will take effect on your upcoming renewal date, January 30, 2024. Your new monthly billing rate will be $3.99. > If you have any questions, please connect with someone on our friendly customer support team.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bicx 3y ago
Companies should never use words like "forever" when talking about recurring costs. If they hadn't made that statement, we wouldn't be here talking right now because it would be just another service bumping prices.
marban 3y ago
A company offering a lifetime plan is either a naive startup or about to abandon the product and just milking the cow (And usually listed on AppSumo)
dubcanada 3y ago
It cannot possibly be that "decision is driven by increasing infrastructure costs that have created an unsustainable pattern for our business" How much resources can something like IFTTT actually be using? It accepts requests and does a very small amount of processing on them and then sends them out. I assume the resource cost increase is AI?
- draaglom 3y ago
  I don't have any knowledge of IFTTT's budget, but the truth value depends on the exact framing of cost. Your framing is "the marginal cost of any given request rounds to zero" which is probably true. Another likely true framing is "there are substantial numbers of users on legacy plans who in aggregate cost more to serve than they pay".
shp0ngle 3y ago
on one hand - pay-what-you-want forever is obviously nonsense on the other hand - "increasing infrastructure costs" - shouldn't cost of infrastructure go down over time? as hardware goes cheaper?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xbmcuser 3y ago
Higher interest rates and no longer having access to cheap capital. We/ie the internet is going to lose a lot of services that were free or grandfathered in as bean counters will be looking at every nook and cranny to save cents.
wslh 3y ago
Beyond the common business/pricing strategy used nowadays, well funded startups have been subsidizing users to gain traction, and it's concerning that we are only now realizing this. In a way, what well-funded startups have been doing for years is a form of dumping, even if it isn't legally wrong. Startups with superior products, but without the capacity to subsidize users, often fail. In my opinion, this is a discussion that we need to have in the startup community.
m-p-3 3y ago
So instead of increasing their revenue from $1.99/month to $5/month, they're going to drop down to $0/month from me as soon as they revoke my legacy subscription. I wasn't using it that much, but kept subscription for the little odd things I wanted to automate. Nothing mission critical, so I'll just cut the service. For $5/month I'll just run a tiny VPS myself.
sublinear 3y ago
I recall plenty of people disliking IFTTT from the very start because of this. Web 2.0 was born in lots of doubt and IFTTT was hyped through the roof. Anyone remember Yahoo Pipes? What's wrong with Node-RED as an alternative?
marklyon 3y ago
CEO/Founder Linden Tibbets statement on 9/16/20: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=242306143839108 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=242306143839108 IFTTT Alerts on 9/20/20: "The free-forever IFTTT Standard plan no longer supports creating unlimited Applets from scratch. To date, you've created [X] Applets. That means you are at the limit. To create more, you will need to upgrade. Through October 7th, we're offering to set the monthly price you want to pay for IFTTT Pro and we’ll honor it forever."
puppycodes 3y ago
unfortunately unsuprising... my opinion is IFTTT has consistently been a worse offering than open source, free, and low cost alternatives and moves like this usually forshadow demise. They capitalized early in educating non tech folks to learn about the cool things you can do with automation but it was always dissapointing to see the limitations they imposed on each service/trigger. It ultimately takes technical creativity to think of connections between services and I think unless your brain already works that way or your job demands it your just not gonna know what you should automate. IFTTT invested in this demographic way more than developers, and I think they have ended up with a product that appeals to very few. Just my 2 cents tho, could be wrong...
- sliken 3y ago
  "worse offering than open source, free, and low cost alternatives" Like?
  - puppycodes 3y ago
    https://n8n.io/ https://n8n.io/, https://pipedream.com/ https://pipedream.com/, https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn, https://nodered.org/ https://nodered.org/, https://automatisch.io/ https://automatisch.io/, https://www.activepieces.com/ https://www.activepieces.com/ and theres a lot more... I've used n8n, pipedream, node-red, and huginn (a while back), but imo n8n has been the simplest off the shelf.

38 points by joshstrange 3y ago

I guess “forever” = <4 years I signed up for the pro plan when it was announced even though I don’t use IFTTT much as a way to lock in the lower price. Now I’ll be cancelling.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cube00 3y ago

> In the notice, IFTTT argued that the “Legacy Pro” tier “no longer exists in our current offerings,” as the web applet service has added “nearly 200 new services, and dozens of new features” since first offering a pay-what-you-want option for grandfathered-in users. Cool, then don't offer these "nearly 200 new services, and dozens of new features" to the grandfathered users.

_cenw 3y ago
I don't know what the ratio of integrations IFTTT gets paid for vs the ones they develop for reach, but getting on IFTTT without them reaching out to you is (or at least was) absurdly expensive (and creates a lot of junk on their integrations listing)
halJordan 3y ago
It's not terrible to say "hey we've moved on." It's more petulant to say "you must maintain two services bc you had a different business ten years ago."
- cube00 3y ago
  Nobody forced them to offer a lifetime plan, if you're happy to benefit from the hype "lifetime" brings, then don't complain when you're called out for not following through.
pests 3y ago
Elementor (drag and drop page builder for WordPress) handled this the correct way. Their original plans included way too much in the basic teir that should have been behind a higher priced. They realized it last year and switched up the plans to be more reasonable. They gave you the choice of switching to the new plans and pricings, or keep the current price - but you wouldn't receive any new features.

type_Ben_struct 3y ago

Sadly common nowadays. Lately I’ve really got into my self-hosting again. I had moved away from it as my income increased and I valued convenience and less things to worry about, but with everything becoming subscription based, with regular price hikes, I’m hosting as much as I can myself. I’ve also stated to torrent a lot more content, my rule of thumb is if you make it available for me to buy, I’ll buy it, but if you expect me to wait 18 months for something released in the US to land in the UK then I’ll just torrent it.

kilroy123 3y ago
This is the way. I self host n8n and I never have to worry about price increases.
rytis 3y ago
Same, and it’s not only about the price either. I value stability and certainty that things I use and rely upon aren’t going to be shut down.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Every two or three years I oscillate been believing that self hosting is more stable, paying a professional company is more stable, self hosting is more stable, paying a professional... The actual monetary outlay is not even a factor most of the time. But identifying which tech companies are stable is a challenge.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    If self hosting and professionals are equally stable, I’ve tended to like the idea that when something breaks, there is a team of people watching for it and fixing it, and I don’t need to drop everything else I’m doing to play sys admin for the evening. I set myself a budget of $100/month of subscriptions. I decided if I stay under that I’m not going to stress about it. My bigger worry is more around longevity and a rug pull in the future (or a hack). But I have that same anxiety around self hosting as well, if something happens to a project and I need to migrate, or I get lazy about updates.

londons_explore 3y ago

IFTTT is in a perfect position to creep prices up, because when users have put effort into setting up little bits of automation in their life ('email me when my bank balance falls under $1000', 'turn my kitchen light on on workdays only', etc.), users don't want to lose that time investment or utility. IFTTT knows that migrating to a competitor is a load of work.

joshstrange 3y ago

Thank you (I assume) Dang for adding the year. I got the following email yesterday and then went searching for news on it (I must have missed it at the time): > Your current Legacy Pro plan is becoming Pro+. You will have access to new features such as multi-account support, increased rate limits, and priority customer support. > This change, along with a price adjustment, will take effect on your upcoming renewal date, January 30, 2024. Your new monthly billing rate will be $3.99. > If you have any questions, please connect with someone on our friendly customer support team.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bicx 3y ago

Companies should never use words like "forever" when talking about recurring costs. If they hadn't made that statement, we wouldn't be here talking right now because it would be just another service bumping prices.

marban 3y ago

A company offering a lifetime plan is either a naive startup or about to abandon the product and just milking the cow (And usually listed on AppSumo)

dubcanada 3y ago

It cannot possibly be that "decision is driven by increasing infrastructure costs that have created an unsustainable pattern for our business" How much resources can something like IFTTT actually be using? It accepts requests and does a very small amount of processing on them and then sends them out. I assume the resource cost increase is AI?

draaglom 3y ago
I don't have any knowledge of IFTTT's budget, but the truth value depends on the exact framing of cost. Your framing is "the marginal cost of any given request rounds to zero" which is probably true. Another likely true framing is "there are substantial numbers of users on legacy plans who in aggregate cost more to serve than they pay".

shp0ngle 3y ago

on one hand - pay-what-you-want forever is obviously nonsense on the other hand - "increasing infrastructure costs" - shouldn't cost of infrastructure go down over time? as hardware goes cheaper?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xbmcuser 3y ago

Higher interest rates and no longer having access to cheap capital. We/ie the internet is going to lose a lot of services that were free or grandfathered in as bean counters will be looking at every nook and cranny to save cents.

wslh 3y ago

Beyond the common business/pricing strategy used nowadays, well funded startups have been subsidizing users to gain traction, and it's concerning that we are only now realizing this. In a way, what well-funded startups have been doing for years is a form of dumping, even if it isn't legally wrong. Startups with superior products, but without the capacity to subsidize users, often fail. In my opinion, this is a discussion that we need to have in the startup community.

m-p-3 3y ago

So instead of increasing their revenue from $1.99/month to $5/month, they're going to drop down to $0/month from me as soon as they revoke my legacy subscription. I wasn't using it that much, but kept subscription for the little odd things I wanted to automate. Nothing mission critical, so I'll just cut the service. For $5/month I'll just run a tiny VPS myself.

sublinear 3y ago

I recall plenty of people disliking IFTTT from the very start because of this. Web 2.0 was born in lots of doubt and IFTTT was hyped through the roof. Anyone remember Yahoo Pipes? What's wrong with Node-RED as an alternative?

marklyon 3y ago

CEO/Founder Linden Tibbets statement on 9/16/20: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=242306143839108 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=242306143839108 IFTTT Alerts on 9/20/20: "The free-forever IFTTT Standard plan no longer supports creating unlimited Applets from scratch. To date, you've created [X] Applets. That means you are at the limit. To create more, you will need to upgrade. Through October 7th, we're offering to set the monthly price you want to pay for IFTTT Pro and we’ll honor it forever."

puppycodes 3y ago

unfortunately unsuprising... my opinion is IFTTT has consistently been a worse offering than open source, free, and low cost alternatives and moves like this usually forshadow demise. They capitalized early in educating non tech folks to learn about the cool things you can do with automation but it was always dissapointing to see the limitations they imposed on each service/trigger. It ultimately takes technical creativity to think of connections between services and I think unless your brain already works that way or your job demands it your just not gonna know what you should automate. IFTTT invested in this demographic way more than developers, and I think they have ended up with a product that appeals to very few. Just my 2 cents tho, could be wrong...

sliken 3y ago
"worse offering than open source, free, and low cost alternatives" Like?
- puppycodes 3y ago
  https://n8n.io/ https://n8n.io/, https://pipedream.com/ https://pipedream.com/, https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn, https://nodered.org/ https://nodered.org/, https://automatisch.io/ https://automatisch.io/, https://www.activepieces.com/ https://www.activepieces.com/ and theres a lot more... I've used n8n, pipedream, node-red, and huginn (a while back), but imo n8n has been the simplest off the shelf.