

Zapier (YC S12), The IFTTT For Business Users, Launches Developer Platform - WadeF
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/yc-backed-zapier-the-ifttt-for-business-users-launches-developer-platform/

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bryanh
Here's a direct link to the docs <https://zapier.com/developer/> as well as
the announcement blog post [https://zapier.com/blog/2012/08/01/announcing-
zapier-develop...](https://zapier.com/blog/2012/08/01/announcing-zapier-
developer-platform-join-hubspot-podio-and-12-others/)

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mikeknoop
Very, very excited this is going live today. We're looking forward to the
awesome things developers can do with this. We've already been extremely
surprised by the creativity of our end-users and are expecting a similar story
from our developers.

A few quick ideas:

1\. hook your own SaaS app up to Zapier so all of our users (and your
customers!) can use it

2\. write an integration for a SaaS app you don't own but want to integrate
with

3\. connect your in-house tools to external SaaS apps through Zapier

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lunaru
Not to be overlooked is how simple they've made the process of integration as
a developer. You don't need to write _any_ code to integrate with Zapier.

I originally had a skype chat with Mike thinking that integrating with them
would be a back-and-forth dealing with our APIs. Nope. We had Ronin integrated
within 15 minutes via a web UI. All you have to do is drag and drop stuff
around and fill out a few forms. I think this is the coolest part of what
they've built.

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mikeknoop
Interestingly enough we were split on this decision. We had a few people who
thought we should go a straight scripting/API route and our own intuition
saying we should add structure through our interface.

In the end we've tried to support the best of both world. You can add your
endpoints using our interface and drop down to a scripting API (Javascript) to
have fine-grained control over how we prepare requests/responses to and from
your server. This gives you a lot of flexibility if you want it but it's not
required.

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OmarIsmail
I love this company. Similar to Stripe it's one of those things that when you
see it, you're just like "finally someone took away this pain and makes
something that makes sense!"

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timjahn
Exactly! The way they're targeting business related processes with their
business specific channels enables all sorts of possibilities in terms of
automating tasks and such.

LOVE it.

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kirillzubovsky
The first time my cofounder tried Zapier, she turned around and said: "Did you
see these guys? They are going to be huge!"

Good luck guys! Good job so far.

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evertonfuller
Funny how I said this was an IFTTT clone a few days back and got downvoted to
hell...

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pestaa
Most likely because it is not a direct clone and they interpreted it as if
your comment was pejorative.

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cwilson
Congrats guys. We've been using the service for over a month now and
absolutely love it. You've given us integrations we'd never have time to do
ourselves as a young scrappy startup with entirely too much work to do.

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samstave
Can you give some examples of what you have been able to accomplish with this?

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mikeknoop
You might check out a few of our highlights:
<https://zapier.com/zapbook/reviews/>

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prezjordan
Differences between this and IFTTT? This costs money, but has a ton more
"triggers." Wondering what else there is that sets them apart.

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wim
This is great! Always wondered when IFTTT or someone else would start focusing
on businesses more. Looking forward to adding our apps!

Small nitpick: there seem to be some "undefined"'s in the "spinning list" of
data-triggers.

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WadeF
Yep, we noticed that too. Working on a fix.

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mikeknoop
If you're writing an API for your app/product/startup, you can build an
integration with Zapier's developer platform and kick-start your API program
with 60+ integrations right out of the gate.

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afterburner
Anybody here use both IFTTT and Zapier? Been loving IFTTT for being texted
filtered road traffic info from Twitter feeds.

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alanh
That sounds like a really interesting Recipe. Have you shared it?

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afterburner
Not that exact one but it's a modification of another recipe: it's the "text
me tweets from this twitter account that satisfy these search terms" recipe,
with a local news radio Twitter feed for the traffic and my favourite highways
and words like "collision", "blocked", and "reopened" as the search terms.

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danielhlockard
The only thing that I didn't like about Zapier, in the trial that I did, was
that I got a TON of emails from Wade Foster. I realize that you want to be
connected to your customers, but an email every few days was a bit overkill.
June 22, 24, 28, July 1 and 4. Too much spammy email.

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WadeF
Hi Daniel,

We got a lot of feedback about that and reduced the number of emails we send
now. Really sorry about that.

Wade

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pestaa
Zapier front page keeps loading in latest Opera. Otherwise, can't wait to plug
in my apps!

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WadeF
Might try another browser real quick. Still working out some kinks in Opera.

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macca321
I wonder how they deal with triggers which cause loops...

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mikeknoop
Most things only happen once every [polling period] so the loop would occur
relatively slowly.

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macca321
lets just hope it doesn't trigger two events on each iteration

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kategleason
yes!

