Automations.io
Automate without losing the human touch
We've added a new feature to create and capture forms without any libraries, form builders or JavaScript. Just like in the old days.
<form action="api.automations.io/forms/3f45e" method="POST">
<input type="text" name="name">
<input type="email" name="email">
<button type="submit">
Submit Form
</button>
</form>
- You submit form with plain HTML
- We'll handle the submission and redirect to your URL
- You automate what happens with submission data
This allows you to start automations when forms are submitted, like capturing leads on a website and then emaling them and notifying yourself in Slack.
Forms can also be submitted server-side or with Ajax. Learn more at Automations.io.
You can now send bespoke events, anything from Signed Up, Order Completed to Server Restarted and then use these events as triggers in your automations.
We will record all incoming events, which you can then view in the application along with the payload you've sent and also tell you whether we have started any automations because of that event.
You can find more details in the Events Documentation and the API Documentation.
We've launched a new UI when viewing Automation Execution history, catering both business users giving a quick glimpse on what happened, and also developers, providing detailed information for debugging.
Below is a 3 action Automation Execution history:
- Wait for 15 seconds
- Do HTTP request (that returns 5)
- Mathematical expression http response value + 2
Developer Mode for debugging:
Simpler mode with less noise:
Public documentation is live at https://help.automations.io/docs. Docs still need a lot of love, but as they say... "If you're not embarrassed when launching — you've launched too late".
We're also launching a private beta today, so get your access at https://automations.io and let us know your thoughts.
After many tweaks and starting from scratch, we've finally launched a landing page at https://automations.io.
I'm a strong believer in automation, especially for startups, since that's how you reduce cost, save time and increase efficiency.
Hence we're building an automation platform, that allows you to automate day-to-day tasks and build no-code workflows.
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slick design!
11 Comments
The product is really cool and simple. And backend architecture would be even more interesting. All the best :)
Love the web design and looks like a great product. I am self-hosting https://n8n.io/ for automations. It is a little more low level and not nearly as polished. Complexity wise n8n is at least a level up from node red.
But as others have pointed out - the target audience is a little odd IMO. How much value does it add to people that can (just don't want to) run infrastructure themselves? So this is something you need to make very clear.
Also: The free tiers are always just an inflexible way to get people hooked. As an IH I can of course sympathize - but in days of AWS this kind of pricing feels really old school. And especially as a IH I rather scale the costs with the income. Especially for side gigs and in the time like these. And maybe (guessing) this kind of thinking is stronger on your target audience?
Just my 2 cents.
But it really looks like a great product!
I have just seen this for the first time. Stellar work! I know that a visual builder like this can take a ton of time to build. Is this all custom developed?
Apart from the high focus on visual, how is this really different from Zapier?
Thanks for the feedback!
We're trying to position ourselves as developers first platform, rather than just a "business tool".
From developer point of view, Automations.io is a low-level orchestration service, that lets to coordinate multiple functions into flexible workflows that are easy to debug and change, with exactly once execution guarantee, built-in error handling, retries, JSON state management and a running duration of up to a year.
This means you can start extending your SaaS, mobile & web apps to run background asynchronous jobs for up to a year. Let's say your customer cancelled a subscription, you can send a simple "User Cancelled" event from your app, we'll receive it and use it to start your multi month win-back campaign to get them back, offering discounts, deals, etc.
While we're focusing on the marketing automation since we've just launched, the roadmap has things like:
So it's basically a service to coordinate distributed applications and functions, whether it's Mailchimp, AWS or your own API, taking away the headache of state management, retrying on errors and having to touch code to change or deploy it.
Sorry for this wall of text, I hope it makes sense. Thanks again for your feedback.
Hi! From a business perspective, care to explain why you're focusing on developers? I feel that visually building these actions will make life easier for a lot of non-techies as opposed to developers who can code these things themselves.
Hi! Good question. We're positioning ourselves as developers first, but starting with a focus on the business, like our user onboarding/marketing examples on the home page.
Honestly, I think we've got a target market issues and we're torn between two.
Regarding developers who can code these things themselves, yes, you can do everything yourself. But as soon as you start doing distributed systems over a length of time (e.g. 30 day automations), you get yourself into a world of headache:
That's what we're solving and offering to developers - an orchestration service, that lets to coordinate, easy to debug and change workflows, with exactly once execution guarantee, built-in error handling, retries, JSON state management and a running duration of up to a year.
But with the visual UI, it means developers can build anything as complex as they want, and then hand it over to the business to manage. E.g. build a 30 day marketing automation with in-house CRM and SendGrid integrations. Once that's done, pass it over to business to manage day-to-day, e.g. change between emails and the content that is sent.
Above sounds great theoretically, but we're not there from business/revenue and definitely content/examples point of view.
Thank you for the detailed explanation! As an engineer myself I definitely get how things can get complicated fast, and having a service like yours mediate that makes sense.
Developers with business knowledge sounds like a rare species to me. Looking at your homepage again, it doesn't appear to me that it's really that complex? I mean, it's not like people have to start writing custom code, it's more like connecting API output to an email about to be sent out right? Maybe you're targeting slightly technical business people?
Btw, your homepage looks amazing. Care to share what you use to build it?
Sorry I worded it wrong.
Yes it isn't complex, hence business users can use it to automate their marketing, sales, etc. But the platform is developers first, with the things such as API access, debugging, exactly once execution guarantee, built-in error handling, retries, JSON state management and a running duration of up to a year.
So business users can leverage the ease of use for their marketing/sales, but developers can leverage the mentioned bits to start making more complex things - ETL jobs, order processing, backups and backup verification strategies, etc. We need to focus on content and examples to make more sense!
Sure I'm happy to share, I've used https://cruip.com for home page, highly recommended.
I sort of get it but it's still a bit vague to me how it'll all work in a real-world scenario. I really like what you're building though. Best of luck!
Also, thanks for sharing the template!
Wow, this goes pretty deep into visual programming then. This is a prime product to market through content and examples. I don't see a blog or too many demos/playbooks, so just something to think about :)
E.g. that S3 backup workflow you have there? I would love to start it in one click. Make it, post it everywhere, demo videos and all that. Just some unsolicited ideas, if you ever wanted them.
I agree, definitely need to focus on content and examples now. We've finally got the product to a stage where we can release it, now it's content, talking to customers and lots of examples!
I'll ping you once we've got some AWS/S3 examples.