Integromat Plan Change

[M_k]

Hi Airtable!

I thought this might be of interest. Integromat has changed the number of active scenarios for the Free Plan.

Integromat

Pricing

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Mary Kay

[ScottWorld]

Ah, interesting, thanks! Now it’s 2 active scenarios. How many was it before?

[Justin_Barrett]

Before it was unlimited. Very interesting indeed. I reduced my active scenario count by moving several things over to the scripting action beta, but I still have four active scenarios. I won’t be able to drop back to the free account after all.

[M_k]

Hi @Justin_Barrett, @ScottWorld

That’s right. There are some unhappy users.

Integromat had a long outage last week, so I think the change might have something to do with that.

Mary

[Bill_French]

M_k:

Integromat had a long outage last week, so I think the change might have something to do with that.

As I warned here, here, and here and about 20 other places in this community - an architecture based on polling will eventually fail at a technical level and likely at a business level as well.

Justin_Barrett:

I reduced my active scenario count by moving several things over to the scripting action beta

The vast majority of these glu-factory recipes are at risk; only the most complex of these integrations will survive which suggests that as the number of active recipes drop, the higher the price per recipe will rise. Basic economics are at play.

Factor this trend into a future where an enterprising developer (or company) decides to offer a Script Block Generator, and it will be the final nail in the glu-factory coffin as far as integrations with Airtable itself are concerned.

The future is still bright for at least ten years over at Integromat and Zapier (and the many others) because there is a vast supply of new information systems that arrive in the market without fully-baked integration options.

[ScottWorld]

Thanks for the insights, @M_k and @Justin_Barrett!

Wow, very interesting!

Sounds like they finally realized that they were giving away waaay too much for free!

And possibly, as a result of too many freebies, that might have caused their outage last week.

[Bill_French]

ScottWorld:

that might have caused their outage last week.

Outages like this are typically related to scale issues; the system reaches a point where there are simply too many processes and webworkers to run in service architecture and you begin to see the creaking. Growth can be a biotch. This is especially prone to happen where your service architecture is predominantly based on polling other systems that don’t support events and outbound webhooks.

If you charge more, people will refrain from abusive polling intervals and the services will be more sustainable, but it also means you have to spread your infrastructure costs over fewer customers.