Back in late 2010 I shared a short post about a side project I was calling "ifttt." The idea, and the strange looking name, boiled down to four words: if this, then that. Our original tagline was "put the internet to work for you." I've been passionately working on it ever since. Now that original idea gets its biggest upgrade yet.
Today, IFTTT starts putting AI to work for you. And the limits on how many Applets you can have and which services you can use are gone, on every plan, including Free.
AI does the work, not just answers
Most people use AI like a smarter search bar. It waits for you to ask. An IFTTT Trigger acts the moment something happens in your world. Put the two together and you get AI that works for you around the clock, on the terms you set and understand.
Over the summer we connected IFTTT to Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants, and added our own AI Chat interface, so you can describe what you want in plain language and IFTTT creates that Applet for you. Today we're launching an AI Agent service, so AI can be the "this" and the "that," not just the step in between. The details are in our launch blog.
I know AI running in the background makes people nervous, and I understand why it does. Every Applet is still a Trigger, an Action, and a clear line between them. It's a standing instruction: you set it up, you understand it, and you can turn it off. I think keeping "if this, then that" as the deterministic structure, and putting the intelligence inside each step, is what makes AI safe to set and forget.
Credits not paywalls
I've always hated aggressive paywalls, the kind that lock the good stuff behind a trial gate and make you guess at what you're missing. In 2020 we introduced Pro and capped how many Applets a free account could run. Over the following years we kept moving more features and services behind that paywall. The pivot to Pro helped us become profitable, but the classic freemium model we chose was a mistake, and it was mine. It's hard to show anyone how useful IFTTT could be while constantly taking new and existing functionality away from them.
Our paywalls are coming down. If IFTTT is going to be the easiest way to automate anything, paying for it should be just as simple. If you've built a service on IFTTT, it now works with every other service, for every user, not just the paid ones. Instead of Applet limits, every account gets a monthly allowance of credits that are spent when your Applets run. There's a new Starter plan at $2.99 a month, because there should be an affordable option when most other AI apps start at $20. If you run out of credits, your Applets pause until next month or until you add more credits, and nothing is deleted. How it all works is on our plans page and pricing help center article.
If you already pay for IFTTT, your price doesn't change, and nothing forces you to upgrade. If you're on Pro or Pro+ and already use more than your new allowance, we've added a one-time boost of extra credits at no cost, sized to your past usage. No surprise bills. Most of you will never think about credits at all. If that's not true for you, tell us.
The best IFTTT Applets are often those you forget are running, so you should pay for what IFTTT does for you, not for how often you open it. With usage pricing, we only do better when IFTTT is doing more real work for you. I think most software will end up priced this way, not just AI.
Same idea, new domain
IFTTT has always evolved with the new technologies you use: the WeMo smart plug in 2012, the iPhone in 2013, and Alexa a few years later. Each successive wave made IFTTT more useful.
In the physical world, everyone already adapts things to better fit their life: you hang a jacket over a chair, or wedge a book under a door to keep it open. AI is the next leap towards doing the same with your digital world, just as easily. When it's really working, you look at your screens less and get more done. That's what I hoped for in 2010, and it's a lot closer now.
AI has changed how we work at IFTTT too. A year ago a new service took one of our engineers a week or two to build. Today it takes an afternoon. Our small team is shipping like a much bigger one, and we're spending the time we get back on making IFTTT easier to use and even more reliable.
Putting AI to work for you
Today, ifttt.com becomes IFTTT.ai. We’re still here to put the internet to work for you. AI just means we can do a lot more of it.
Thank you to everyone who's come along for the last sixteen years, especially those of you who stuck with us when we got things wrong. Go try what we've built. Create something, or ask IFTTT.ai to create it for you. Then tell me what you want us to add next.
Linden, Founder & CEO
