The 2025 Buyer’s Guide to Integration Solutions and Software Connectors
Software connectors and Integration Solutions are the plumbing that lets critical data flow between the tools your customers already rely on and the product you’re building. Get them right and you unlock new revenue streams, shorten sales cycles, and keep engineering focused on core value. These solutions take care of a lot of the hard work - they handle authentication, abstract and translate data models, and connect to the native end points of whatever you’re trying to connect. They make it easy for you to automate tasks, build native integrations between your SaaS and other databases or software platforms, and keep critical records in sync across tools.
But integration solutions are also a broad and often confusing category of tools. Although many of these platforms look similar and claim to do it all, in reality there are important differences in both the type of tool as well as the features offered by each provider. We put together this buyer’s guide to help you find the right integration solution for your business.
We have categorized 3 Primary Application Types:
Depending on your product and audience, integration solutions typically fall into three use-case patterns: simple event-based automations, embedded SaaS integrations, and customizable in-app workflow builders:
Simple business automations — like copying Gmail attachments into a Google Drive folder. In this case, the integration is typically event-triggered, and makes a simple API call to copy the attachment over.
Native in-product SaaS integrations — for example, think of a sales-enablement platform that keeps Deals and Opportunities in sync with whichever CRM each customer uses. These integration solutions usually bundle secure authentication, configurable field-mapping, real-time webhooks for event triggers, high-volume bulk sync, plus built-in monitoring and error handling.
Custom in-app workflow builders — picture a project-management platform that lets every customer design their own multi-step automation: when a Zendesk ticket closes, automatically create a Jira issue, copy attachments from Dropbox, and post a summary to Slack. The underlying integration solution layer supplies the drag-and-drop designer, field-mapping, branching logic, retries, and run-time monitoring, so your engineers integrate it once while end-users tailor — and later tweak the workflows themselves.
Some adjacent use cases that will not be covered in this guide include:
User analytics data distribution — platforms that help collect customer data, behavioral analytics, or marketing information, and then distribute it to multiple analytics tools. For example, you might use a hub-and-spoke analytics distribution platform like Segment or Google Tag Manager to distribute your customer behavior data to multiple analysis platforms at once.
Reverse ETL platforms — tools that enable the movement of data from a data “warehouse” to various operational systems, such as CRMs, marketing platforms, and sales automation tools. This process, also known as operational analytics or data activation, allows businesses to leverage their data warehouse insights in real-time within their day-to-day operations. These platforms are generally focused on data that lives and is used within a company, rather than enabling a company to connect with external data sources, customer data, or other products.
| Approach | Who it’s for | Rough Effort | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| No-code Workflow Builders: (E.g. Zapier, Make) | Ops / RevOps automations / Simple business automations | Minutes, non-technical | Templates, limited scale. |
| Unified APIs (E.g. Grid Squid, Merge, Apideck) | SaaS teams or businesses who want to quickly integrate with a single app or category (e.g., connect to all CRMs) | Hours to days, 1–3 developers | One canonical schema; fast to add new integrations once the first is set up. |
| Embedded iPaaS (E.g. Prismatic, Paragon) | SaaS teams adding 10–500 integrations across various categories | Weeks–months, full engineering squad | Framework for integrations; deep per-tenant customisation. |
| Fully custom build | Edge-case protocols, on-prem ERPs | Months to years of engineering squad, plus ongoing maintenance | Own maintenance forever; generally more expensive than buying. |
So which type of integration solution is right for you?
If you’re just looking to build a simple automation that connects a few different tools or products you use, you aren’t planning on sending a lot of data through that integration, or you don’t need it to be perfectly reliable, then the no-code, recipe-based workflow builders are probably a good starting point for you. They will let you quickly put together a basic automation to make your day easier, and usually don’t require you to pull in engineers.
But if you’re looking for a solution that will be a core part of your business or product, allow you to connect to an entire market category of products, or enable your customers to build complex workflows in your software product, then you’ll probably find yourself looking at Unified API or Embedded iPaaS solutions. We break down the tradeoffs between Embedded and Unified solutions below.
There’s also a small chance that none of the current tools on the market satisfy your needs. We have seen many companies go down this route, but there are some major pitfalls to be cautious of - we break all of these down in our section on “Build vs. Buy”.
Embedded iPaaS vs. Unified APIs - which is right for me?
Start by asking yourself:
“Do I want every customer to build and tweak their own workflow inside my product? Or do I want my application to connect seamlessly with many providers across a market segment, without customers needing to configure workflows?”
If you’re looking to connect to a whole category of products, and you want to do so as fast as possible, you’ll want to look at Unified APIs. All you need to do is build one connection to the Unified API provider, and that in turn unlocks access to all integrations they offer.
One normalized API that abstracts dozens of third-party services (e.g., CRMs, HRIS, Accounting).
Add a new provider in hours—usually just need to set up authentication + configure field mapping.
Little or no UI to embed; stays in your backend.
Generally focused on “common-denominator” fields - niche objects or specialized endpoints may be missing unless the vendor specializes in that vertical.
→ Best fit for teams that want to ship quickly, expand into a category of systems, and avoid wrestling with each provider’s quirks or a complex in-product builder. We break down the differences between the major Unified API providers in our market comparison here.
If you need deep, per-customer workflow control, you’ll want to use an Embedded iPaaS platform. Rather than simplifying or abstracting connections in a market segment, these platforms provide a framework for integrations that live inside your app.
Provide a white-label integration framework (UI builder, workflow engine, monitoring) accessible from within your application.
Support multi-step logic, fine-grained field mapping, tenant-level customization and specialized triggers.
More engineering lift up front: you embed the SDK, design the first flows, and own some UX.
Typically come with higher platform fees and higher ongoing maintenance requirements.
→ Best fit for products that must offer dozens or hundreds of native integrations and let each customer tailor them—think granular RevOps syncs, multi-app project automation, or industry-specific data pipelines. Want to see how the various Embedded iPaaS platforms on the market stack up? Check out our full comparison here.
| Category | Unified API | Embedded |
|---|---|---|
| Core Idea | A single API that abstracts dozens of third-party APIs in one vertical (CRM, HRIS, Accounting, etc.). Build once, swap providers via the same objects/endpoints. | Drop-in integration framework—UI, workflow engine and integration solution runtime—that you embed inside your product so customers can configure their own integrations. |
| Typical Features |
• Canonical data models (e.g., Contact, Ticket) across integrations • One authentication flow • Webhooks & sync engine • Provider-specific “passthrough” when you need it |
• Pre-built “Connect ___” UI • Low-/no-code workflow builder • Data mapping & transformation layer • Multi-tenant runtime + monitoring |
| Depth vs. Breadth | Broad, common-denominator coverage. You get the 70–80% of fields and operations that are shared across providers; niche features may not be mapped or require specialized platforms (e.g. Grid Squid for CRMs). | Deep, per-customer customization. You expose almost every endpoint a provider offers and wire them together with conditional logic. |
| Who Builds What? | Your engineers call the unified API directly; no end-user builder is included, so business logic lives in your back-end. | Your engineers assemble the integration UI/flows; non-technical CSMs or customers tweak them per tenant. |
| Primary Buyer Persona | Dev teams that need to ship fast across a category of systems—often read/write data sync or enrichment—without owning every provider’s quirks or dealing with maintenance. | SaaS Product & Engineering teams that need dozens–hundreds of native integrations with fine-grained per-tenant logic, and have the resources to implement these. |
| Speed to First Integration | Fast: one integration can be live in hours; adding new providers is mostly config. | Medium–Slow: you embed the SDK + frame the UI, then design each flow. Gains slowly compound as you reuse the framework. |
| Customization / Edge Cases | Limited to what the normalized model or “passthrough” endpoints expose. Generalist providers typically lack depth, vertical-specific providers offer more. | High customizability—add custom nodes, write inline code, branch per customer. |
| Vendor Lock-in Risk | You code against the vendor’s canonical models; swapping means refactoring those models everywhere. With well-abstracted models this is typically fairly manageable. | Integrations stay provider-specific, so switching frameworks later is feasible but still effort. |
| Typical Cost Drivers | Number of linked accounts or records synced; some charge per API call. Some are flat-rate, “all-you-can-eat” models. | Number of active tenants + runtime load. |
We’ve heard this from countless engineering teams. A year later, they’re inevitably firefighting auth token refresh bugs and untangling broken customer data after an API end point changes. Angry customers start leaving after their data goes missing again.
Building an integration in-house is no small task. At the core of it, it’s a simple concept. But once you add in authentication, rate-limiting, monitoring, maintenance, and inevitably keeping up with API changes in all connected platforms, the cost adds up. It typically takes companies 18-24 months to build a single robust commercial-grade integration, costing well over $1MM in development alone. Once built, analyst surveys put the total cost of ownership of an integration at around $250‑400k in just the first year of operation. Keep in mind these numbers do not factor in the opportunity cost and risk involved in building a connector.
In our experience, buying an integration solution wins in almost all cases:
Time-to-ROI: Off-the-shelf solutions ship integrations in days to weeks, not quarters to years.
Focus: Keeping your engineering team working on what makes your product stand out, rather than reinventing the wheel on integrations. Consider the opportunity cost of what else your engineering team could be working on.
Operational Scale and Infrastructure: Commercial solutions include things like retry queues, UI to map fields and set up connections, observability and error handling, and are built to handle large scale deployments.
Expertise Baked In: Specialized providers have years of expertise in handling complex data and integrations. For example, a CRM-specific integration platform will know how to resolve complex parent-child objects and custom fields better than generic SDKs.
Low Risk: Paying for an existing solution means you don’t risk spending large amounts of time and money on building something that might not perform as expected.
If Building Your Own Integration is Your Only Option:
If your business is working with extreme edge-case protocols, on-prem ERPs, or other highly specialized applications, building your own integrations may be the only option. In order to build a mature integration that can reliably support production-scale data volumes, companies generally need a full engineering squad working for around two years.
Build vs. Buy
“It’s just REST calls — how hard can it be?”
| Engineers | 5 | Need to hire for expertise in APIs, integrations, and specialization in target domain. |
| Management, PM | 1 | |
| Average Engineer Salary | $150,000/yr | |
| Time (months) | 18 – 24 | More than a year, if you were starting from scratch. |
| Total | $1,350,000–$1,800,000 | Does not factor in risk/opportunity cost. |
While there are ways to cut corners when building integrations in-house, it almost never works out to be less expensive than buying an existing solution. In most cases, existing solutions are about an order of magnitude cheaper than an in-house build - and that’s before you factor in risk and potential customer churn involved as your DIY integration is being built and tuned.
Maintenance and Outage Risk:
Once your integration is built, you’ll also need to maintain it. Generally a good rule of thumb to estimate your maintenance expense is to budget half of an engineer’s time per integration built. Commercial platforms handle maintenance and upkeep of their service as part of your subscription, which saves you time and money.
Another important factor to consider is the outage risk: an integration outage can have large impacts on your business, frustrate customers, and drive business to your competitors. Even the best DIY integrations are generally going to have a higher outage rate than commercial platforms, mainly due to the maturity and experience that commercial providers have built over years of optimizing their integrations.
| DIY (Per Integration) | Commercial Platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual maintenance | 0.5 FTE ≈ $75k | Bundled in subscription |
| Outage risk | High (single env) | SLA 99.9% + 24·7 NOC |
Important Criteria to Consider When Choosing an Integration Solution:
It can be overwhelming to try and compare all of the different options you have for integration solutions. But making the best choice for you or your business comes down to a few criteria, and which are important will come down to your use case.
We’ll start with the main criteria that will narrow down your choices:
Compatibility - does this platform connect to the apps/data sources you need today and next year? Most integration solutions list what specific platforms they connect with on their website - but make sure they actually offer full functionality with each of them before committing. We’ve seen some providers list integrations that are in reality not available yet, or require you to use their SDK to code your own connection. Keep in mind too that more isn’t necessarily better here - more on that below in our point on degree of specialization.
Pricing - how much is this going to cost me? Does this scale well as my business grows? Is there a low-risk way for me to try this or test the product, or do they require annual upfront contracts? Integration solution providers tend to use three main billing styles:
Most “classic” providers such as Merge, Rutter, Alloy or Nango meter cost directly to the number of end-customers you sync.
Platforms like Apideck (tier + API-call) and Syncari (record-based, quote only) lean on usage-based curves that expand with traffic volume or record counts.
Newer entrants such as Grid Squid, Unified.to and Knit wrap generous allowances into a flat-rate package with monthly billing options —so budgeting is dead simple.
Each of these pricing models have implications for what your costs are in the near-term, as well as how they will scale as your business grows. It’s important to ensure that your integration costs won’t increase at a rate that limits how much your business can scale. It’s also worth considering how predictable your costs will be - if your end-users create an unexpectedly high level of traffic volume, will your costs be manageable? Oftentimes per-usage or per-connection pricing models can feel like a “success tax” once your business scales and volumes spike.
Flat-rate pricing models have an advantage here - they give you a predictable cost ceiling and let you roll out new integrations and scale your business without worrying about surprise overages. And especially for early-stage SaaS companies, month-to-month pricing options can be very advantageous for both limiting risk and mitigating cashflow concerns.
Beyond pricing and compatibility, there are also some more nuanced factors that are important to consider when comparing integration solutions. Not all of these may be relevant for every use case, but they tend to be the most important differentiators we see in the market:
Degree of Specialization - is this a “jack of all trades, master of none” kind of product? Or does this platform specialize in a specific area or type of connection? Platforms that do it all often tend to fall apart in the details- offering only limited customization, functionality, or require a high degree of tailoring on your side (more work for you) to get working right. Platforms that do it all also often fall behind on maintenance, drop support for integrations that are costing them too much to support, or have limited support knowledge for less commonly used integrations.
Example: if you’re looking to connect your SaaS app with various accounting apps, then we would recommend looking into Unified API providers that specialize in Accounting integrations. It’s tempting to go with providers that offer a higher number of compatible “nice to have” integrations, but generalist providers will likely lack support for accounting-specific workflows or endpoints.
Level of Abstraction - this is an important one to consider if you’re planning on integrating with multiple, similar destinations - typically using a Unified API. Integration solutions that offer a high degree of abstraction - ones with unified object models - will format all data you interface with to look the same. That means you don’t have to map fields, customize error handling, or tweak record hierarchies whenever setting up a new connection. Low-abstraction platforms expose raw provider endpoints, so you gain access to a few more niche features, but each new integration will require engineering effort to map fields, customize error handling, and requires understanding the nuances of the particular provider.
Example: If you want to connect your app to multiple different CRMs, you’d want to find a Unified API service that offers a high degree of abstraction. That means no matter what CRM you end up connecting to, the data you interface with all looks the same. Once you set up your first integration with a CRM like Salesforce, adding Hubspot, Dynamics, or Insightly just takes a few clicks and your code never changes.
Performance, Reliability, and Scalability - If you’re just trying to automate some simple tasks, like adding a line to a spreadsheet whenever you receive a weekly email, then performance won’t be too important to consider. But if you’re working with large datasets, constantly updating data, or trying to synchronize data between multiple applications, you’ll need to look for a platform that can handle high data volumes and API call rates. Often simple transactional integration solutions will fall apart and start dropping data, which can cause data headaches and lose valuable information. Keep in mind the future of your business too, and what rates you might see in the future.
Implementation Support - Integrations can be complex, and support along the way can speed up integration timelines and get your business making money faster. Not all platforms offer the same level of support during implementation. Look for platforms that offer support from solutions architects, are available through support chats, and provide good documentation and code samples.
Long-term availability - If you’re looking for an integration that will become a key piece of your business or application, you’ll want to make sure you choose an integration solution that will still be around in a few years. Your customers and business will quickly come to rely on the new integration solution, and unfortunately it’s not uncommon for some integration providers to drop support or disappear entirely. Make sure that whatever you choose is incentivized to provide long-term support for your product - check their funding, profitability, or parent company’s stability.
Security and Compliance: Make sure your provider has basic security certifications and operates on secure cloud services. Look for SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent security standards.
While not all of the above factors may apply to your specific use case, these factors may allow you to narrow down your choice of integration solution fairly quickly.
Our Methodology for Evaluating
Integration Solutions
We originally began this evaluation as part of a consulting project where a large customer asked us to do a full analysis of the integration solution landscape. Along the way, we learned a tremendous amount about the different categories of tools and the real-world tradeoffs between them. Our research team ran live demos to evaluate the experience from an end-user and developer perspective. We spoke directly with customers about which integration platforms they were using and the outcomes they were seeing. We reviewed publicly available documentation and pricing. We also talked with the companies themselves to hear their positioning, and we checked review sites to capture feedback from actual users.
What we found is that this space has matured dramatically in the past decade. Whether it’s workflow automation, embedded integrations, or unified APIs, a product team today can solve their connectivity challenges with far less effort than in the past. The right integration strategy doesn’t just save engineering time — it accelerates sales cycles, reduces deployment friction, and empowers Customer Success, Operations, and Product teams to deliver more value. Without a strong integration solution, your product risks feeling isolated in a world where customers increasingly expect everything to work together out of the box.
Integration Solution Market Comparison
We’ve gone over a lot so far. Now let’s help you choose the right platform for you.
To make this easy for you, we’ve broken down the space by what you’re trying to connect. Once you’ve identified what category of apps you fall into, we’ll help you understand how the different platforms compare based on the important criteria we outlined earlier.
Are you trying to…
1. Automate basic business tasks? (e.g. email to spreadsheet, slack notifications from Shopify)
→ You’ll want to check out the Workflow Automation category.
2. Quickly integrate with multiple providers in a market category using a single schema? (e.g. integrate your app with various CRMs)
→ You’ll want to take a look at the Unified API provider category.
3. Build complex multi-step logic, work with raw provider endpoints, and access all niche features? Or add 20-100+ integrations across many different market categories?
→ In this case, the Embedded iPaaS category will be a good fit.
Not sure which category you fall into? Check out our sections on integration solution types and embedded vs. unified solutions above.
Deep-Dive Category Analysis
of Integration Solutions
Now we begin our in-depth analysis of the different integration solutions available within each of the categories:
1) Workflow Automation Solutions
These tools are the “quick automation” layer of the market, built for ops teams and individual users who need to stitch everyday apps together without writing code.
Not sure if workflow automation is the right category for you? Check out our section on integration solution types.
Check out our full vendor comparison below to find the best tool to automate your workflows. In our comparison, we line up the key players in the market and present our research on compatibility, specialization, pricing, support, and more.
2) Unified APIs
Unified API solutions effectively flatten dozens of third-party APIs into the same objects and webhooks—perfect when you want to cover a whole category of integrations as quickly as possible, and you don’t need a ton of per-tenant customisation.
Not sure if unified APIs are right for you? Find more details in our section on integration solution types.
There are many different options available in the Unified API market, and many seem to claim to do very similar things. We untangle that for you in the vendor comparison, which summarizes who different providers cater to, what verticals or approaches they specialize in, pricing structure, as well as how much implementation help you can expect.
3) Embedded iPaaS
In the Embedded iPaaS category, you’ll find drop-in integration frameworks that live inside your product, giving every user or customer a white-label builder for multi-step workflows and deep field mapping. These solutions are perfect if you’re trying to offer hundreds of integrations within your product, or want a high degree of customization.
Not sure if embedded iPaaS products are a good fit for you? Check out our section on integration solution types.
Take a look through our vendor comparison below to gauge iPaaS solution compatibility and depth, pricing, and the caliber of onboarding support each vendor provides.
Conclusion
As the integration solution market matures, we are seeing a wide range of options develop. While most claim to do it all, our research revealed that the vast majority are tailored for specific use cases and market niches. No single “best” integration solution exists—there’s only the one that best fits your product strategy, customer expectations, and engineering bandwidth.
Use the criteria we outlined in this guide to narrow down what type of integration solution fits your needs (Workflow Automation, Unified API, or embedded iPaaS), and then head to the full comparison tables for that category to determine which provider is best for you. Keep in mind that specialization and depth in a vertical usually matters more than the sheer number of supported connections. Look for providers that are experts in what you’re trying to do.
Most teams find that running a limited-scope pilot with their top choice will reveal far more than any surface-level specs could. Once you’ve found a few integration solutions that seem like a good fit, book a time with them to demo the product, verify compatibility, performance, and pricing, and then try setting up one or two integrations with real data. This will quickly reveal real-world performance, limitations in their capabilities, edge-case handling, and how responsive their support team is. Products that offer month-to-month pricing or free trials make this easy.
We’re confident that with the help of this buyer's guide and a few real-world tests, you’ll be able to find the ideal integration solution choice for you. The right solution won’t just keep data flowing – it will accelerate your ability to capture new markets, make your product stickier, and free your technical teams to focus on innovation that truly differentiates your product.
And at MatrixPlace, we’re here to help with your market research needs!
Published by:
Preston Hurd has spent his career enabling sales teams to generate leads with technology. He is an expert in the MarTech field and his area of focus has been helping sales teams fill their pipelines with New Leads, in order to generate revenue.
MatrixPlace provides this guide as an informational resource for buyers evaluating technology vendors. This guide constitutes an independent assessment based on MatrixPlace’s research, analysis, and professional opinion at the time of publication. The evaluation incorporates publicly available information, including vendor websites, third-party analyst reviews, and other market research sources. The industry analysis presented herein reflects MatrixPlace’s market perspective and is supplemented by third-party user reviews to offer insights into the perspective on vendor's offerings. This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement, warranty, or guarantee of any vendor’s products or services. All logos and trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.