What Is an Embedded iPaaS & Why Should You Care?

If you are a B2B SaaS company, you know that integrations are no longer optional. Your customers expect that integrations between your product and the other apps they use are part of what you offer.

There was a time when you could give your customers an API and expect them to build their own integrations. More recently, you might have been able to create a connector in Zapier for your app and let your customers take it from there.

But both approaches burden your customers and don't help you provide them with a first-class customer experience – one that now includes integrations.

How do you take integrations, commonly product afterthoughts, and move them into parity with your other product features?

This is where an embedded iPaaS comes into play.

An embedded iPaaS is a platform that enables a SaaS company to build integrations connecting its product to the other apps its customers use and deliver those integrations as product features.

Now, an embedded iPaaS solves a fundamentally different problem than an enterprise iPaaS, a unified API, a workflow automation tool, or even an ETL tool. However, it has features in common with those platforms and tools.

How Is an Embedded iPaaS Different?

Let's see how an embedded iPaaS differs from each item we just mentioned.

Embedded iPaaS vs enterprise iPaaS

An embedded iPaaS allows your team to build integrations between your SaaS product and your customers' other apps. The output of that platform is integrations for your customers' use.

An enterprise (or traditional) iPaaS is used by IT to create integrations between apps inside your company network. The output of that platform is integrations for your employees' use.

Embedded iPaaS vs. unified API

An embedded iPaaS allows you to connect your SaaS product to whatever APIs your customers use, regardless of how niche or custom those APIs may be. The platform provides flexibility in solving integration scenarios.

A unified (or universal) API allows you to connect your product to many different apps in a vertical (like CRMs) via a single API. The tool removes the complexity of connecting to multiple APIs and their underlying schemas.

Embedded iPaaS vs. workflow automation tools

An embedded iPaaS allows you to create integrations from the simple to the highly complex. The platform supports the full range of real-world integrations.

A workflow automation tool (such as Zapier) lets you quickly pull together simple integrations. The tool puts easy integrations in reach of everyone.

Embedded iPaaS vs. ETL tools

An embedded iPaaS allows you to perform data mapping and other data functions within the integration. The platform supports data transformation as a critical element of integrations.

An ETL tool allows you to build incredibly complex and data-rich transformations to aggregate data in data warehouses. The tool supports the efficient transformation of massive data stores.

Why Use an Embedded iPaaS Instead of Another Tool or Platform?

The simple answer to why you should use an embedded iPaaS for your B2B SaaS app is this: it's specifically designed for building, deploying, and managing the integrations your customers need.

Each of the tools and platforms listed above overlaps with embedded iPaaS functionality. Using one of these might get the job done – as many a wrench wielder has found out when pounding in a nail – but only an embedded iPaaS supports the creation of productized, scalable integrations for every integration scenario your customers bring to you.

How Do You Choose an Embedded iPaaS?

The best embedded iPaaS is the one that fulfills your B2B SaaS integration needs now and in the future. As you determine what embedded iPaaS is best for you, consider the following questions.

Does the vendor focus on embedded iPaaS?

An embedded iPaaS is a powerful platform for building B2B SaaS integrations. When you embed it into your product, it becomes critical to your product offering.

You need to know that the embedded iPaaS vendor is fully dedicated to building, supporting, and improving the platform that is now closely coupled with your product. This can be hard if the vendor has many other products besides the embedded iPaaS.

Does the platform fit nicely with your existing development ecosystem?

It's easy to add tools to your development process but hard to do so in a way that doesn't result in changing out processes that already work well.

When you add the embedded iPaaS, will your team be able to incorporate it into your current CI/CD pipeline? Does the platform make it easy to version and manage your integration code using your current repository? And does it let your devs build code for integrations using their favorite IDEs?

Can devs and non-devs create the integrations your customers need?

Every SaaS company has a different mix of devs and non-devs. And every company has unique integration scenarios that it needs to solve for its customers.

Does the embedded iPaaS give your devs the power to create complex integrations with a low-code builder? At the same time, does the platform let your devs step in and write blocks of code (that the non-devs can use with the low-code builder), and even write entire integrations entirely in code if that's what's best for your team and your customers?

Does the platform enable you to deploy and manage integrations at scale?

Anybody can build, deploy, and manage a single integration for a single customer. The old services model of doing integrations supported this approach. However, building one-off integrations for each customer is costly (in terms of time, effort, and opportunity).

Does the embedded iPaaS allow you to create a single integration to deploy it to as many customers as you have, but without substantially expanding your onboarding or support teams every time you spin up another dozen customers on that integration? Does the platform enable you to build integrations with flexible configuration options so a single integration can be accurately configured for hundreds of customers, giving each the precise functionality they need?

Does the platform give your customers a great user experience?

One of the common complaints about integrations is that customers are primarily left in the dark. When they need a new integration, they need to contact sales. When they want to turn an integration on, they must contact onboarding or engineering. When something fails to work as expected, their only recourse is to contact support.

Does the embedded iPaaS provide a marketplace that empowers your customers to select, configure, and activate their own integrations? Beyond that, do your customers have access to logs and alerts that allow them to perform first-level troubleshooting when things go wrong? Finally, does the embedded iPaaS give your customers the tools to create one-off, bespoke integrations with your product?

Integrations Are a Must; an Embedded iPaaS Can Help

An embedded iPaaS can help you stand out from your competitors by enabling you to create all the integrations your customers need without derailing your product's development schedule or requiring that you double or triple your team to make it happen.

If you need to start building integrations for your app or already have some built but are looking for a better way, consider the value of an embedded iPaaS. It could be the key to ensuring long-term success for your SaaS product.