Congrats on their big launch! This is very exciting for their Android users! I'm not going to lie, as an iOS user I'm quite jealous. Ha This gives Android users quite a bit more tiggers available for them that iOS users can't do. The iOS app can only do basic things like calendar, contacts, and photos. Things such as "sending a text as yourself", changing settings on your phone, etc. are awesome features they added for Android that I wish iOS also offered. But I do understand the nature of iOS being more locked down than Android.
Sort of off topic, but I wonder if IFTTT will ever start charging for their services. I'm a huge fan of what they do, and it surprises me that they have stayed free for this long. Similar services (more directed towards tech) like Zapier [1] have very fair pricing plans, but their free plan is so-so. I would be more than willing to pay for the awesome work that IFTTT is doing with their platform. Just wonder if they will ever introduce pricing plans into their service or not.
I use IFTTT to send myself multiple text messages a day, to which I respond and log the results in a Google Doc spreadsheet. Each month I blast past the 100 message limit. I've asked IFTTT to let me pay them for more messages but they said no.
Use Twilio, and have a stub of code inject your responses into your Google Docs spreadsheet. 1 penny per text message they receive for you, $1/month for the number.
Hey Chris! I don't want to go and derail this post, but I'd be more than happy to give you feedback if you want to email me (contact is on my HN profile)! :)
It should be possible for IFTTT to send an SMS with the user's number as sender without involving the phone at all. Which might be preferable anyway, as it doesn't rely on your phone being reachable when an event is triggered.
Not sure how much it would cost per message and whether it's feasible for a free service like IFTT, but it can be done.
You are unable to spoof SMS numbers. Twilio has documentation on this if you'd like more info (experience: I tried, so I could SMS birthday messages to my contacts without remembering, but having it look like it came from me).
Is that really possible? I've wanted to do that before and looked into Twilio but it's basically number spoofing and would make spamming people far too easy.
Twilio lets you deliver SMS from a number other than your Twilio number. The one caveat is that you need to have Twilio verify the external number first, two-factor auth style.
Sort of off topic, but I wonder if IFTTT will ever start charging for their services. I'm a huge fan of what they do, and it surprises me that they have stayed free for this long. Similar services (more directed towards tech) like Zapier [1] have very fair pricing plans, but their free plan is so-so. I would be more than willing to pay for the awesome work that IFTTT is doing with their platform. Just wonder if they will ever introduce pricing plans into their service or not.
[1] https://zapier.com/