IFTTT vs. Zapier: A Comparative Study of Trigger-Action Programming Frameworks

TL;DR

This paper compares IFTTT and Zapier, two trigger-action frameworks, analyzing their functionalities, growth, and user customization options through a large-scale empirical study of their triggers and actions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of IFTTT and Zapier, highlighting differences in functionality, growth, and user customization capabilities.

Findings

6406 triggers and actions analyzed

Differences in available functions and shared channels identified

Insights into framework growth and user customization options

Abstract

The growing popularity of online services and IoT platforms along with increased developer's access to devices and services through RESTful APIs is giving rise to a new class of frameworks that support trigger-action programming. These frameworks provide an interface for end-users to bridge different RESTful APIs in a trigger-action model and easily create automated tasks across diverse platforms. Past work has characterized the space of user-created trigger-action combinations in the context of IFTTT, a popular trigger-action framework. In this work, we characterize the space of possible functionality that such frameworks open up to end-users in the context of two major frameworks -IFTTT and Zapier- and discuss results from our comparative analysis of these frameworks. We create a snapshot of 6406 triggers and actions from 1051 channels/apps across these two frameworks and compare the available functions, distribution of channels, and functions shared between them. We examine user's ability to define their own channels, triggers, and actions; analyze the growth of these frameworks; and discuss future research opportunities in this domain.