Why embedded iPaaS are a bad idea

Introduction

Embedded iPaaS platforms promise the dream: let non-technical users build integrations with prebuilt blocks, skip the engineering backlog, and scale effortlessly. The reality? It rarely works out that way.

Here’s why:

1. The myth of mon-technical integration builders

Embedded iPaaS platforms are built on the assumption that non-technical folks can handle integrations 100%. But real-world integrations are never that simple.

• You need deep knowledge of your own product’s data model, which is often nuanced and constantly evolving.
• You have to reason about edge cases: retries, failures, rate limits, partial data, API inconsistencies.
• When something goes wrong (and it will), debugging is nearly impossible without dev tools.
• In practice, engineers end up using the tool anyway, and the DX is far worse than if they just built it with code.

2. Prebuilt blocks don’t work

Prebuilt connectors and actions sound great in theory. In practice, they almost never align with what your product actually needs.

• Every product’s integration logic is different. One-size-fits-all blocks can’t account for that.
• If they’re wrong, you’re stuck! You can’t extend them without writing code.
• Building custom blocks usually means learning a proprietary in-browser framework. Not fun. Not fast.

3. The wrong abstraction for developers

Embedded iPaaS tools don’t offer the primitives developers actually need for robust, long-term integration infrastructure.

• No end-to-end type safety.
• No support for continuous syncs, just disconnected triggers and actions.
• No way to merge polling with webhooks cleanly.
• No unified abstraction to present a cohesive API or data model.
• Rarely support 2-way syncs.
• Rate limit handling is basic or non-existent.

At best, they act as a fancy proxy for API calls. Most of the heavy lifting still lands on your product team.

4. They break at scale

Most embedded iPaaS platforms aren’t built to handle meaningful scale.

• Data passed between blocks gets serialized and deserialized repeatedly, which slows everything down.
• Some platforms cap out at 10M API calls per month, a drop in the bucket for most SaaS at scale.
• We’ve spoken to multiple B2B SaaS teams who had to rip out their iPaaS setups after repeated failures and timeouts.
• Migrating integrations mid-scale-up is a nightmare. Do it once, do it right.

So what’s the alternative?

Use tools built for developers, not low-code abstractions.

A tool like Nango gives engineers full control over their integrations, without reinventing the wheel:

• Write integration logic in code, your way
• Handles OAuth, pagination, retries, webhooks, rate limits out of the box
• Supports continuous syncs, unified APIs, and custom data models
• Built to scale with you—from day one

You get speed, flexibility, and reliability, without the iPaaS headaches.

Conclusion

If you’re serious about offering integrations that are reliable, scalable, and developer-friendly, embedded iPaaS won’t get you there. They’re a tempting shortcut, but one that leads to more pain, not less.

Build with primitives your engineers understand. Pick tools that fit and scale with your product, not ones that force your product to fit them.

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