Replaced IFTTT With n8n.io
Overview
I was lucky to be on the IFTTT Legacy price plan where I could set the price of what I wanted to pay per month. I believe it started from $1.99 so that was what I chose. As time went on, there were less and less use for IFTTT with Home Assistant doing majority of the automation for home devices. What was left were basic automations that copied data from one service to another. For example, recording fuel to a Google Sheet or devices that did not have a Home Assistant integration (looking at you Ubibot).
Setup
This is not an extensive how-to but I have a few tips.
Make sure you have your own domain with SSL. A lot of integrations require a secure connection. The domain is more convenience where if you do not own it, it will require you to set up your connections to services again with your new domain.
n8n.io has really good documentation that steps through setting up a connection. Especially for services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they have fairly robust role based access.
Documentation
The articles are top notch. Some integrations like Google, Azure, etc require multiple steps and as a non IT Admin, the terms and way of setting things up are complicated compared to a standard token or username and password.
Each integration I have used had up to date documentation and step by step guide to setting up the integration.
Templates
There are plenty of existing library of automations called templates. These not only allow you to import and reuse, they give you ideas for new automations as well.
The templates are shareable to the point I have seen them in community posts to help others using the product itself. This is by far a lot easier to understand than text and pictures. Again, these are then reusable so you can import the example to solve your problem.
Summary
Whilst all the above are positive, I can’t help but think at some point features will be put behind a pay wall. It’s already made it’s way into the community edition. For the time being, I am very happy with the features it has and a good replacement for IFTTT.
