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Best Integration Platforms In 2024

Abhishek Agrawal
By Abhishek A Agrawal
December 5, 2023
Table of Contents

    Introduction

    With Integration Platforms helping you bid farewell to manual headaches, choosing the best one can be overwhelming! Check out the top contenders that we have shortlisted to help you say goodbye to manual connections and hello to streamlined processes. No more scratching your head or pulling your hair out trying to figure out the best fit for your business.

    What is an Integration Platform

    An Integration Platform is a tool that helps connect your applications and services to communicate seamlessly. Imagine you have many apps on your phone, like messaging, social media, and online shopping. Sometimes you want to share information between these apps, like sending a picture from your camera app to your messaging app to send to a friend. An integration platform does exactly that!

    Why Use an Integration Platform

    Well, it’s like asking –  Why use a blender to make a smoothie rather than mashing all the ingredients together with a fork? 

    I’m sure you imagined the entire mess and hard work that goes into it. The same goes for business; several apps are used every day! From the simple ones like Gmail to the more complex ones like accounting softwares, they are all being used at a large scale. So in such cases, having an Integration Platform helps businesses effortlessly manage data between different apps and automate processes or tasks. It helps you:

    Reduce 🡇Improve 🡅
    • Menial tasks
    • Manual Errors
    • Execution Time
    • Resources required
    • Streamlining of processes
    • Productvity
    • Efficiency
    • Flexibility

    How does an Integration Platform work

    An Integration platform connects one application to another to facilitate the following:

    • Workflow and Process Automation: By triggering actions in one app based on events or data changes in another app
    • Data exchange using APIs.
    • File transfer  
    • Data Mapping – transform and map data from one system to another using predefined rules or custom mapping configurations.

    With many no-code and low-code Integration platforms rising on the horizon, using an Integration Platform has become easier. You don’t need to have any coding skills or be a technical expert to use them.

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    Best Integration Platforms in 2024

    With answers to those What, Why, and How questions – Let’s now skip to the good part 😉

    Although dozens of Integration Platforms exist, deciding which one to vouch for is not an easy task 🤯. 

    It requires careful consideration of your business needs and resources and a thorough evaluation of different platforms’ capabilities, limitations, and pricing. 

    No need to Worry; we have curated 5 of the Best Integration platforms for you to opt for in 2024.

    Integrately

    Integrately  Pricing

    Overview

    In a short time, Integrately has become the go-to automation solution due to its ease-of-use and affordable pricing. With 1000+ apps integrated in just 2 years, it is giving a tough time to its competitors. Whether it be the millions of ready-to-use 1-click automations or a dedicated account manager, Integrately has many lucrative features that give its rivals a run for their money.

    Pros and Cons

    Pros

    • Extremely user-friendly UI
    • 1000+ apps integrated  
    • Millions of ready-to-use 1-click automations
    • Webhook feature for connecting custom apps
    • Outstanding 24×5 support with fast problem resolution
    • Dedicated account manager at no extra cost
    • Step by Steps, video tutorials, and easy-to-fix error solutions
    • Crystal clear Task usage details. No hidden costs

    Cons

    • Multi-step automation requires the re-selection of apps in the ‘Automation Builder’ stage
    • Does not support multiple selections in Dropdown lists

    Best Suited For: Freelancers, Startups and Businesses

    Pricing

    Integrately offers a freemium trial after which you need to choose from one of the 4 paid plans:

    PlanMonthly pricing (when billed annually)Tasks
    Starter$19.992,000 tasks
    Professional$3910,000 tasks
    Growth$9930,000 tasks
    Business$239150,000 tasks

    Celigo

    Celigo

    Overview

    `Hundreds of applications. Thousands of business processes.Millions of combinations.ONE iPaaS’ – says the tagline of Celigo. And why not? From offering app integrations to automating processes like payout to reconciliation, employee onboarding, and offboarding, it even offers a marketplace that can make you fall for it.

    Pros and Cons

    Pros

    • User-friendly UI 
    • Support for real-time and batch integrations
    • Supports Complex Orchestrations
    • Provides prebuilt automations with embedded business logic 
    • Employs industry best practices in the business process automations

    Cons

    • Diagnosing and fixing errors can be challenging
    • Setting up complex workflows or customized automations can sometimes seem daunting
    •  Unclear pricing

    Pricing

    Celigo does not provide its pricing details on the website. Rather, you need to contact them for pricing details. 

    Best Suited For: IT professionals and Business users

    Informatica

    Informatica power center

    Overview

    Informatica is an Integration Platform tailored for cloud data warehouses like Amazon, Azure, Snowflake, etc. Backed by Artificial Intelligence, its simple, logical interfaces and connectors eliminate the need for complex coding and help easily set up intelligent hyper-automation. A helping hand to the DevOps and IT departments in building integrations quickly and enabling real-time updates, it is preferred by many enterprises.

    Pros and Cons

    Pros

    • Powerful AI-driven integration platform  that supports  hyper-automation 
    • Helps build complex data pipelines
    • Built-in capabilities for governance, security, enterprise data catalogs, and master data management.
    • Robust visual mapping with drag-and-drop capabilities

    Cons

    • Complex UI
    • Specific to cloud data integrations
    • Suitable for Enterprise applications

    Pricing

    It uses IPU as the unit for pricing. You need to buy the IPUs upfront and then subscribe to the service. From there, you can use as many or as few of the integration and quality services as you need and adjust your subscription level to fit your needs.

    Best Suited For:   Businesses of all sizes

    IBM

    IBM AppConnect Enterprise

    Overview

    One of the oldest players in the iPaas market, IBM has various products to manage your integration needs, including IBM App Connect, IBM Integration Bus (IIB), IBM API Connect, and IBM Integration Toolkit. They have recently come with IBM Cloud pak, a pre-integrated, containerized software used to build, run, integrate and manage applications in any cloud environment. Out of these, the most widely used  Integration Platform is that os IBM App Connect. 

    IBM App Connect is a cloud-based integration platform that helps users connect and integrate various applications and data sources. It includes a visual editor, prebuilt connectors, and real-time monitoring and debugging capabilities. The features like scalability, conditional formatting, batch processing, and multi-cloud support make it a preferred choice among enterprise users.

    Pros and Cons

    Pros

    • Easy-to-use visual builder
    • Highly scalable to handle large volumes of data and transactions without performance degradation
    • Prebuilt connectors for connecting with SaaS, cloud, and on-premises applications
    • Real-time monitoring and debugging

    Cons

    • Customizing the prebuilt workflows may be challenging at times
    • The pricing structure is on the higher end, thereby preferred mostly by Enterprises

    Pricing

    You can get started with IBM App Connect on IBM Cloud for free, and when ready can upgrade to a choice of Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans or Custom Subscription options.

    PlanMonthly pricing Tasks
    Lite Free1000 flow runs per month1 GB data transfer per month
    Pay as you goStarting from USD 40 1,000 flow runs with an additional 1 GB of data per unit
    CloudStarting from USD 400 50,000 flow runs with 50 GB of data per month
    HybridStarting from USD 1,600* per VPC per monthCustom
    EnterpriseCustomUnlimited flows and Data

    Best Suited For:   Enterprises

    Tray.io

    Tray.io pricing

    Overview

    Believing that every organization can and should automate, Tray.io helps citizen automators eliminate their daily menial tasks. Its intuitive visual builder, a wide range of connectors, and automation customizations using data mapping and transformation make it stand out. It provides 2 options:

    • Tray.io Platform : Used for integrating your technology stack to share data, automate tasks, and collaborate effectively
    • Tray.io Embedded: Used for integrating your product/service with other products/services to extend its functionality

    Pros and Cons

    Pros

    • Intuitive Visual Builder  that makes it easy to understand the workflows
    • Wide range of prebuilt connectors for popular web applications and services
    • Users can write their custom codes to extend the functionality of their automation
    • The team collaboration feature makes it easy to share automations

    Cons

    • Building complex automations requires a learning curve and some technical knowledge 
    • Debugging can get difficult at times
    ProsCons
    Intuitive Visual Builder  that makes it easy to understand the workflowsWide range of prebuilt connectors for popular web applications and servicesUsers can write their custom codes to extend the functionality of their automationThe team collaboration feature makes it easy to share automationsBuilding complex automations requires a learning curve and some technical knowledge Debugging can get difficult at times

    Pricing

    It provides 3 pricing variants for the Tray.io Platform – Professional, Team, and Enterprise.

    And for the Tray Embedded has 4 variants – Standard, Professional, Team, and Enterprise.

    However, all these plans have a custom pricing structure available on request.

    FAQs about Integration Platforms

    What is an API?

    An API, or Application Programming Interface, is like a middleman that helps two apps talk to each other. For example, when you look at a product on Amazon, the information you see is actually pulled from the supplier's database using an API and displayed on the Amazon store.

    What is a webhook?

    Webhooks also send data from one application to another but in real-time i.e whenever the data is available. They are often used to enable two applications to communicate with each other and exchange data in a seamless and efficient manner.

    For example, a webhook might be used to send a notification to a chat app when a new order is placed on an e-commerce website, or to trigger an automated email campaign when a user signs up for a newsletter.

    Abhishek Agrawal
    Author - Abhishek A Agrawal
    Abhishek is the founder of Integrately, CompanyHub, and Dreamwares. He is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship. He is always looking to leverage technology for the growth of the business. He has a deep understanding of how businesses work and uses this knowledge to build products that help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
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