Just got an email that they are going to charge $10 a year for IFTT integration. But it’s currently discounted 50% til the end of June.
Personally, I’d rather pay a small amount for IFTT integration than have them remove it entirely (I’m looking at you Smart Life !)
@JDRoberts, it seems to be the downhill has started already. What’s next?
As I’ve mentioned before my own guess (just a guess) is that we will see more and more companies moving away from IFTTT and instead relying on Alexa routines for third party integration for two reasons:
IFTTT charges the companies money, Amazon doesn’t
IFTTT’s customer service is pretty much nonexistent, forcing the companies to provide it themselves. Amazon’s is very good, and again costs the companies nothing.
IFTTT integration is still better than Amazon’s at the time of this writing because IFTTT offers many more trigger options. But Amazon’s keeps improving, and again there’s a question of whether IFTTT’s is worth the cost to the companies.
A friend of mine notes that in the past year he has moved multiple integrations off of IFTTT and onto HomeKit, which has more trigger options than Alexa routines. One example he gave is using a Hue dimmer switch with Meross plugs.
I’m not convinced that has the same marketforce as the Alexa routines, because I think most device manufacturers want to offer both iOS and Android options, but it might have some additional impact.
Alex routines requires an alexa device right ? It’s not cloud based like IFTTT ?
It’s cloud based, and although they don’t point it out specifically, you can use the routines just with the free Alexa app, you don’t need an Echo device.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202200080
Right now if you don’t have an echo device, it’s most useful for using GeoPresence, contact sensors, motion sensors, or time of day as the “if.”
Hmmmm…
In a Paul Hibbard video that @leonardo09 linked to in another thread, he says two things:
One) Ifttt has raised their charges to the device company, which is why some of the device companies are dropping them
Two) specifically for Tuya devices, there is an Australian company called “brilliant smart home“ which has a reskinned version of the smartlife app and has their own Ifttt channel. So if you add your to your Devices to the “brilliant smart home“ app you can then use their IFTTT channel. And Hibbard says that that company has told him they are very recently renewed with Ifttt, so there should be available for at least one year. (I’m not sure how that’s going to work if the company finds that it cost too much to support devices from other brands, though.)
Hibbard suggests you use that app for now while you look for a longer-term solution.
Note that the one that he is talking about is “brilliant smart“ from Australia, not “brilliant smart home control“ which is a different company.
This is the one:
I was already even considering to purchase the cheapest Echo model to set up the Alexa guard for glass breaks.