Buzz
Connecting all the web apps and services you use is more popular than ever. While IFTTT and Zapier have long been leaders in this space, a new contender, Microsoft Flow, has entered the ring. Let’s compare these three powerful platforms to find out which one reigns supreme—and for whom.
The Competitors
No matter which platform you choose, they all serve to automate everyday tasks that would otherwise take up your time. The one that fits best depends on your specific needs.
Integrating Third-Party Apps
While each of these three services has its own pros and cons regarding the third-party apps they support, the question of 'how many' is quite straightforward to answer.
Zapier: More than 500
IFTTT: 320
Flow: 36
IFTTT is focused on connected devices and popular web apps, while Zapier is designed for the business world. Though Zapier is useful for personal apps like Wunderlist, Evernote, and Dropbox, it’s more aligned with specific business software. This becomes clear when you explore Zapier’s app catalog, where you can filter apps by categories like 'accounting,' 'call tracking,' or 'HR.' Whether or not Zapier is useful depends on your profession—if you're looking for personal app integrations, it may feel a bit too much.
User-Friendliness and Setup
Since automation is designed to simplify tasks, it’s crucial that the software you choose is easy to use. Otherwise, you might end up spending more time setting it up than the time you’d save with the automation.
At this point, things start to get complicated. While IFTTT and Flow are the easiest to use, Zapier offers much greater versatility. Both IFTTT and Flow operate on a straightforward principle: one trigger leads to one action, making them quick and easy to set up for immediate use.
Creating an IFTTT recipe is simple: choose a service to act as the trigger, pick the corresponding trigger action, then decide what you want to happen. The possibilities are vast as long as IFTTT supports the app you're interested in. For example, you can turn an email into a Trello card or get an email notification when rain is predicted. If you're not sure how to use IFTTT, simply explore recipes created by others. You can search by app or general popularity, so if you're looking to do something with Instagram, Dropbox, or Evernote, you'll find plenty of options.
Flow follows a similar approach and is just as simple to use, though it's mainly beneficial for those in the Office ecosystem. With templates like 'this one that creates a task in Wunderlist when you mark an email in Office 365 as important' or 'this one that sends a text when your boss emails you', Flow can simplify your workflow. Creating your own template is as easy as in IFTTT: choose a trigger, then an action, and you're done. However, most of these services are also available on IFTTT, making it unclear why Flow is necessary over IFTTT.
Zapier offers more customization, which can make it feel a bit more overwhelming compared to IFTTT. It can operate just like IFTTT with one trigger leading to one action, but it also allows multiple actions for a single trigger. If you want more precision, Zapier includes filters that ensure triggers only activate when specific keywords are detected. For example, you can set up an email trigger that only activates when the word 'vacation' appears in the email. Because of its wide range of options, even a simple two-step zap takes more time to set up than in IFTTT.
IFTTT stands out as the clear winner. It’s incredibly easy to master, taking less than five minutes to learn how to use it. The intuitive browsing of available recipes makes it accessible even to those with no technical experience, allowing them to quickly understand the value of the platform.
Mobile Applications and Their Accessibility
Since Zapier lacks mobile applications, IFTTT takes the lead for those who prefer using Android or iOS devices. In addition to its impressive IF apps, IFTTT offers three specialized apps: the DO Button that serves as a manual trigger for recipes, DO Camera for sharing photos across multiple services simultaneously, and DO Note for sharing text in a similar manner. More importantly, the IF app is packed with features, allowing users to replicate all the actions available on the web version. Even better, it integrates seamlessly with your phone's services, enabling tasks like directly saving iOS photos to Dropbox or automatically sending a text on Android when you arrive at a destination. Simply put, IFTTT's mobile apps are outstanding, offering a broad array of functions, and as with the web version, they are free.
Although it's disappointing that Zapier does not have mobile applications, it's still better than Microsoft’s offering with its Flow app. Currently, Microsoft Flow is available only for iPhone and simply acts as a wrapper for its web version. In fact, when attempting to create a template, users are redirected to the website. Microsoft Flow is still in preview mode, so while it's not ideal, we’ll refrain from being too critical—but it’s clear the app is not very useful right now.
By default, IFTTT emerges as the best option, though it’s important to highlight the remarkable quality of its mobile apps. You could easily rely on these mobile apps without needing to access the desktop version, which is a pretty incredible achievement.
Conclusion: IFTTT is ideal for most users, Zapier excels for business purposes, and Microsoft Flow is best avoided for the time being.
The decision is quite simple here. If you're someone who only needs to automate a few basic tasks, IFTTT is your go-to choice. However, if you're a business user, or you've been using IFTTT for a while and wish it could do more, then Zapier is the better option.
IFTTT provides enough functionality for the majority of users, but what really stands out is its vast collection of pre-made recipes, which essentially serve as a guide for using the platform.
You can browse through “popular zaps” on Zapier as well, but the process isn’t as enjoyable or intuitive. Implementing those popular zaps is more complicated too. However, if you’re someone who enjoys customizing the specifics of triggers and actions, Zapier is the webapp for you. This is in addition to the fact that Zapier’s extensive selection of enterprise apps makes it the clear choice for anyone using specialized business software.
We’ll give Flow a bit of leeway since it's still in preview mode, but it's still hard to understand its purpose or why Microsoft even released it in its current form. At first glance, it functions similarly to IFTTT, but in a very limited way. It doesn’t offer anything new except for Wunderlist integration, which can easily be bypassed using these hacky integrations on IFTTT. Currently, there’s little reason to use Flow other than for curiosity’s sake.
