How Plain accelerated support integrations with Nango

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Before Nango: slow, complex, and limited scalability

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Building the Linear integration in-house

Plain began by building a Linear integration from scratch to create a “premium” experience tailored to their customers’ needs. However, this resulted in a significant amount of Linear-specific code scattered across the frontend and backend, making the process difficult to scale.

Challenges with scaling integrations

When considering integrations for Salesforce and Zendesk, the Plain team realized they would need to deal with retries, rate limits, and ongoing maintenance for each API. This felt unsustainable for their small team, as it would distract from focusing on core product features.

Experimenting with Merge.dev

The team experimented with Merge.dev but faced several blockers. Merge’s rigid unified schemas couldn’t accommodate the differences between Zendesk, Jira, and Linear, as these systems handle tasks in fundamentally different ways. Plain also struggled to implement customer-specific configurations, such as custom field mappings, without reverting to raw API responses. This workaround defeated the purpose of using Merge and reintroduced complexity into their integrations.

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Choosing Nango: a developer-first approach

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Flexible integration development

Nango allowed Plain to build tailored integrations with full control over how data was mapped and synced. The team could implement their exact requirements without being restricted by rigid schemas or workflows.

Supporting customer-specific needs

With Nango, customer-specific configurations, such as custom field mappings and toggled features, became straightforward. This flexibility allowed Plain to deliver high-fidelity integrations that met the unique needs of their customers.

White-label authorization

With Nango, Plain implemented their own branded, polished, best-in-class OAuth experience directly within their app. High-quality user experience in one of Plain’s differentiators, so they wanted to have full control over the authorization experience.

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Results with Nango

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Faster integration deployment

Plain built and deployed their Salesforce and Zendesk integrations in just two weeks, with an initial version ready in three days. Subsequent integrations were completed in as little as half a day, significantly accelerating their roadmap.

Simplified codebase

By leveraging Nango, Plain eliminated the need for API-specific code across their frontend and backend. This allowed them to maintain a clean, minimal, and manageable codebase while avoiding the complexities of ongoing maintenance for each integration.

Accelerating customer onboarding and deals

The streamlined integrations helped Plain onboard customers faster and close Enterprise deals that were previously dependent on delivering specific integrations.

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Future with Nango

Plain plans to build all future integrations using Nango, ensuring that their integration process remains efficient, scalable, and focused on delivering the features their customers need.

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