IFTTT ("If This Then That") is a tool that made a huge splash when it showed up, by allowing people to create simple automations, as the name implies.
If you use Power Automate, you're probably used to having very complex workflows, but people can achieve a lot with simple trigger-based automations, especially more than 15 years ago, when IFTTT launched.
It allowed people who didn't even think about automation to do super powerful actions that saved them a lot of time. The whole point of automation.
It had the perfect combination of:
- Unlimited automations, or Applets as they call them
- Lots of services, some of them not available elsewhere
- A strong community that shared their own automations and evangelized the tool
The last one was nicely done since you could see "formulas" from other people and then adapt them to your own usage. So if you saw something you liked, you could simply clone it and you would be good to go.
Since it has iOS and Android apps, it can connect directly to system features. For example, I could have an Applet that created a reminder whenever someone tweeted, something many tools still can't do today. Power Automate went in the opposite direction and retired its mobile apps for iOS and Android on August 31, 2026, so this is an amazing thing to have.
If you're curious, they released a 15-year retrospective here, where they detail their journey.
So if everything looks this good, why am I using the past tense in most of the article so far?
When things turned
Like all companies, they needed to make money. Nothing wrong with that. If services are free, something (or someone) will need to pay for it. Infrastructure and employees are not free, and they are not cheap.
That's not why many users pushed back.
In September 2020, they introduced a paid Pro plan and limited free users to a strict 3 Applets per person. This upset a lot of long-time users, and it turned the community, their biggest asset, against them, because people now needed to pay for things that they already had.
Another thing they did was make customizations paid, meaning that even new users who wanted to try a quick automation in their free slots couldn't do it, or at least found it harder.
So, revisiting the previous list:
- Unlimited automations, or Applets as they call them
- Lots of services, some of them not available elsewhere
- A strong community that shared their own automations and evangelized the tool
The Pro plan took away 2 of them. The most loyal supporters were blocked from using the tool. The people who arrived had a harder time getting to use the service.
Again, companies need to make money, and maintaining these services is expensive. I get that. But they gave something, then took it away and made the free tier harder to use. That limited their growth and put off even the users who had stayed. I think giving paying users new features, instead of blocking existing ones, would have worked better.
In 2023, they reduced the limit from 3 to 2 Applets. Users who wanted unlimited Applets and access to all services needed the Pro+ plan.
What could have been
It's impossible to know, but the shift was so fast that now, for hobby automators, recommendations usually go to N8N, a workflow automation tool you can run on your own computer or server, instead of IFTTT.
N8N dealt with the premium tiers nicely. It allows people to use the tool for free with some blocked features and then provides an online service where people can pay to have more usage and more reliability.
So you pay for more, not for things you already had.
Limiting the most devoted users like that was a big setback, and I don't know if IFTTT will ever recover from it, but again, I'm not a business expert.
Final Thoughts
IFTTT continues to be a service that is beautifully designed and works quite well, but when you see companies behave like this, you always think, "What will change for me in the future?" At least I do.
But if you're interested, you still have 2 free Applets, so give it a shot and see if it works for you.
Sources
- IFTTT's 15-year retrospective
- IFTTT introduces a paid plan, reduces free usage to 3 applets (TNW, 2020)
- Everything you need to know about IFTTT's new paid service (Stacey on IoT, 2020)
- IFTTT Pro subscription service explained (Gearbrain)
- IFTTT plans and pricing
- Petition: IFTTT, stop going Pro and limiting us to 3 free applets
Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
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