---
title: Introducing JSbox Beta
teaser: Connect your apps with webhooks and JavaScript.
tags: news
author: Mason Fischer
published_on: 2015-09-18
---

We are excited to announce [JSbox Beta](http://jsbox.io/)!  JSbox connects your
apps together using webhooks and JavaScript. It's similar to Zapier and IFTTT,
but more flexible.  For example, opening an issue on GitHub could trigger JSbox
to create a corresponding card on Trello. Since events are triggered by webhooks
they run immediately and since JSbox runs JavaScript, triggers can be
arbitrarily complex.

We came up with the idea when we were building the checkout process for
thoughtbot books.  Whenever someone buys one of our books they need to be added
to the corresponding GitHub repository for that book. If they enter an invalid
GitHub username we want to be notified via email so we could follow up with them
directly. It seemed like overkill to build and deploy an entire app just to make
some GitHub API calls and send some emails.

Another use case we found for JSbox was our sales lead form.  When a user
submits a request to hire us on thoughtbot.com, the request is saved and a
Trello card is created on our sales board with the appropriate office manager's
face on it. In the past this was handled by a Rails backend. In October we
released FormKeep, which creates form endpoints.  We wanted to use FormKeep on
our site, but it wasn't capable of integrating with Trello directly. It was,
however, able to send webhooks. JSbox now receives these webhooks and runs some
JavaScript to add the Trello card and put the corresponding face on it.

## Beta release

Use JSbox Beta at your own risk. It is unclear whether running untrusted code
inside a Docker container is safe.  We're using it in production and haven't had
any issues. If enough people find JSbox useful we will continue to develop it.
If it continues to prove useful we'll take it out of beta and begin charging for
it.  Head over to [JSbox.io](http://www.jsbox.io) and let us know what you
think!