Background: I’m working on a B2B SaaS tool for sales teams and we’re in early development stages. Our product really needs to connect with popular platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Pipedrive, and Slack. We need proper authentication and two-way data syncing capabilities.
Our business model focuses on low average revenue per user with product-led growth, so budget is a major consideration.
Building all these connections from scratch seems like it would take forever for our small team, but I’m exploring other options first.
My findings so far:
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Looked into Merge and Paragon but the pricing is way too high for us. Most of these enterprise-focused solutions don’t even show their prices upfront.
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Found some open source alternatives like Nango and Supaglue. Nango appears more active on GitHub. For anyone using these self-hosted solutions: How much time do you spend on maintenance, updates, and fixing issues? Would you recommend building integrations from scratch instead?
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Looking for solutions with usage-based pricing that start cheap. I’m okay treating this as operational costs if it saves development time.
What integration strategies are you using for your products? Am I overlooking any good options?
zapier is a solid choice if ur users r familiar with it. we integrated via their dev API, and it was way simpler than building everything ourselves. they offer usage-based pricing, so it’s affordable at lower volumes.
Hit this exact issue six months ago with our CRM. Wasted two weeks trying to get Salesforce working, then switched to Zapier’s platform API like SpinningGalaxy suggested. Here’s what worked: let Zapier handle data transformation and auth, then build a simple wrapper API on your end. Users set up zaps once, you handle everything through webhooks. Way less complex. If you’re watching budget, check out Pipedream too. Free tier’s solid and pricing doesn’t hurt when you scale. We use it for Slack notifications and HubSpot syncing. Rate limiting will kill you though - every platform does it differently and that’s where DIY solutions die in production. Third-party tools handle this automatically. Also, don’t underestimate OAuth complexity. Token refresh, error handling, edge cases - we spent more time debugging auth than building features.
Been there three years ago scaling our customer success platform.
Skipped the big enterprise players for the same reasons. Went with a hybrid approach that worked great.
Used Latenode for core integrations. Their pricing actually works for startups - you pay per operation instead of flat enterprise fees. The visual workflow builder saved us weeks vs coding everything from scratch.
Handled OAuth flows ourselves since most platforms use standard flows anyway. Build the auth pattern once, others follow the same template.
Key was prioritizing integrations smartly. Launched with just Salesforce and Slack, then added based on actual user requests instead of guessing.
Nango’s decent if you’ve got maintenance bandwidth, but the time cost adds up quick. Every API change means you’re troubleshooting instead of shipping features.
Start with webhooks when possible instead of polling APIs. Saves API calls and gives real-time updates.
Which integrations are your beta users asking for most? That’s your priority list right there.