Stringify - Is it the IFTTT competitor it appears to be?

Last week, I wrote a post about IFTTT – the app that’ll automate your life! In the run up to that post (and while completing some research about IFTTT) there were a lot of comments about “Stringify“. After looking into and using Stringify for the past two weeks, I started to see why there were so many comments… Stringify have taken the basic principle of IFTTT, and added the ability to IFTTT+T+T (If This, Then That and That and That)!

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So, who is this app for?

Stringify have set themselves up as pretty much a direct competitor to IFTTT, but with extra abilities! As I mentioned above, Stringify allows you to take MULTIPLE actions based on an event from an initiating service. An example of this is as follows:

IF motion is detected on Netgear Arlo Q, THEN turn LIFX light on AND notify me that the light has been turned on, THEN set a timer for 10 minutes, THEN turn LIFX light off AND notify me that the light has been turned off.

It may look or sound complicated when written out, but the way it has been implemented this is incredibly simple and intuitive. You can see the exact same “flow” in the picture below:

What makes Stringify better than IFTTT?

I’ve found it’s much simpler to setup these “flows” (IFTTT call them “applets”). You can visualise exactly what’s going to happen between your various services at any given point.

The major difference though is the ability to do something AND something and then the ability to do (a) THEN (b). This hugely increases your autonomy capabilities!

Then there’s the small extras, such as the ability to set a timer and then do something. For example, in IFTTT you would need multiple applets to run in order to turn your LIFX bulb on when your camera detects motion and then back off again after a set period of time. However, with Stringify, you can accomplish this in a single flow.

There must be something that’s holding them back, otherwise they’d be as big as IFTTT?

At the time of writing this post – you’re correct. The amount of supported applications/services is vastly inferior to IFTTT. An item straight off of the bat is that Belkin’s WeMo devices are not yet supported.

HOWEVER, it’s worth noting that Stringify are actively working on a lot of integrations and they actually keep users up to date. You can see in this thread, that Stringify kept/are keeping the requestors up to date at fairly regular intervals as to the progression of the integration and where the sticking points are.

You can find the full list of supported “things” here.

What’s the catch?

Once again – there’s no catch. You can use Stringify on your smartphone (iOS/Android), however at the moment you cannot create/manage your flows via a standard web browser.

All you need to sign up is your email address and a password of your choosing. From there, you add your device/software’s service, sign in to your respective accounts for those services and authorize Stringify to use them… and that’s it. You’re on your way to creating your own flows or using existing ones!

Summary

In it’s current state, Stringify is definitely an up and coming, direct competitor to IFTTT. However, give it time and I can guarantee to you now – they’re an IFTTT killer!

I don’t think it will be long before we start seeing more complex/advanced features and functionality from IFTTT, but Stringify have it built from the ground up.

This is going to be a good one to watch. For now though – I’m using Stringify on a daily basis!