What are the Best iPaaS for Midsized Companies?

As integration needs become more complex and burdensome, the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) market has matured to offer products targeted at midsize companies. These companies require more customization and integration with some enterprise products than what smaller-scope products like IFTTT and Zapier specialize in.

However, they also lack either the IT labor force, budget, or integration requirements to effectively manage or need the functionality of Enterprise iPaaS products like Mulesoft or Oracle. If this sounds like your organization, here’s a primer of what mid-market iPaaS services can offer you, and breakdowns of some of the main players in the mid-market space.

What Mid-Market iPaaS can Do

Mid-market iPaaS is a less clear-cut market segment compared to EiPaaS and small-scale vendors, and usually includes some characteristics of products on both ends of the market spectrum. This wider range of functionality emerges from servicing mid-market companies who are also more variable in size and scope than small businesses or enterprises. The cloud-based nature of iPaaS is already well suited for differently sized companies with different levels of IT support and labor on hand.

Like smaller vendors, mid-market vendors include workflow automation and codeless interfaces for citizen integrators. Mid-market vendors have adopted these features since small businesses and enterprises can also benefit from greater accessibility.

In most other respects, mid-market iPaaS look like more accessible forms of EiPaaS. These features include integrations with enterprise-scale SaaS, hybrid integration between on-premise and cloud-based apps, API management, multi-tenancy for continual uptime, and specified data security measures (which is tailored to what other services the vendor offers).

Mid-market iPaaS offer both codeless and code-based interfaces. This binary has traditionally been the difference between using prebuilt integrators and building your own, but the technical barrier to entry for citizen integrators to build their own integrations without code is lowering as well.

Meet the Players

These are some of the primary vendors for mid-market iPaaS products, listed alphabetically. 

Cloud Elements

Cloud Elements is an API integration platform that positions itself as a more accessible alternative to main Enterprise iPaaS players like Mulesoft. Cloud Elements’ goal is for users to not need IT experience or support to use the platform, and reviewer data indicates that IT presence is still common but not ubiquitous.

Demographic data from Cloud Elements reviewers on TrustRadius indicates the majority of users are from mid-sized companies (51-1,000 employees by TrustRadius’s metric), and are usually in IT organizations or departments, with a sizable minority of users in product management and professional services.

The platform’s feature list is consistent with most mid-market products. In addition to providing prebuilt connectors and capabilities to develop custom connectors, it empowers more technical users to build their own tools for data mapping and transformation, as well as orchestrating workflows.

Cloud Elements manages endpoint maintenance to ease the technical burden, and includes integrations for enterprise products from vendors like SAP. While Cloud Elements is usable without IT background, reviewers advise that technical experience helps unlock the most potential from the product.

 Reviewers also note Cloud Elements’s customer support as a standout service connected to the platform. It also has a relatively high uptime according to some users’ experiences. 

However, users draw issue with Cloud Element’s price compared to similar products. It also has a higher technical requirement to use with a comparatively less friendly user interface. 

Jitterbit

Jitterbit provides two primary services: hybrid integration and strong API development platforms. The majority of users come from mid-size companies, but Jitterbit has also worked to expand into the enterprise market segment as well. Given the vendor’s eye towards enterprise customers, it’s unsurprising that users are most frequently IT specialists, but Jitterbit is also used in a wider range of industries than some other competitors.

Enterprise-level features include customizable integration timing between scheduled integration events, triggered events, or real-time integration, data mapping and transformation, and data encryption and user-based access permissions to secure your organization’s information. Jitterbit also works to keep these tools accessible to citizen integrators with a point-and-click interface and templates. 

Jitterbit’s differentiator is its API development platform. It supports a wide range of uses for this level of product, including microservices development and product white labelling, while demanding a lower technical knowledge from users.

For many users, the differentiator between Jitterbit and other iPaaS is its prebuilt Salesforce integrations, and the robust ETL functionality within it. Reviewers also praise Jitterbit for its ease of use, and its multi-step automation capabilities.

Reviewers do note drawbacks to the platform. Several users complain about a comparatively limited prebuilt integration library, and difficulty in finding more complex automation and data transformation features. Reviewers also find Jitterbit pricey if primarily using it as an ETL tool. 

Workato

Workato comes to the iPaaS mid-market offering the integration depth of an EiPaaS and the rapid deployment of a much smaller product. Per the rest of the products, the majority of users are from mid-size companies with computer science or IT backgrounds. The platform offers hybrid integration, user management and security features, and a codeless integration and automation interface. 

Workato more clearly delineates its offerings for enterprises vs. mid-size companies, such as containing its API platform for enterprise plans and scaling the variety and number of integrations offered by pricing plan. The tradeoff for a more rigid tiering system is more rapid deployment, with Workato advertising 78% of platform deployments going live within 7 days of beginning implementation. The rapid deployment and ease of use is reflected in the review data, with an emphasis on the accessibility of automation and bot integrations. 

Workato is the only vendor in this segment list to post pricing on their site. The vendor offers a free personal version with two connections and a limited integrations library. Pricing then scales up to $2999/month for 7 connections and a much larger prebuilt integrations library. Greater functionality is custom priced with the vendor. 

One of the most frequently-identified benefits of Workato according to reviewers is the prebuilt integration library. A smaller subset of users also note that Workato didn’t have the specific integrations they needed, so make sure you double-check what integrations you need from your iPaaS. Reviewers also praise accessible API development tools and an easy to use interface.

The robust prebuilt integration set comes with a tradeoff. Customization and build-your-own integrations tend to require more technical knowledge than citizen integrators possess. The mechanics for managing high volumes of recipes is also difficult, as is error tracking and management. 

Want to compare Workato vs. Jitterbit directly? Check out their comparison page here. Still figuring out which size of iPaaS is the best fit for you? See our iPaaS market overview here.Think that Enterprise iPaaS may be a better fit for you? Our EiPaaS analysis can be found here. Are you client-facing or a marketer looking for helpful tricks for using a smaller iPaaS for just you or you team? Still not sure what exactly iPaaS is? Check out our iPaaS 101 primer, as well as other content on iPaaS technology and markets.