What is your integration strategy?
Fritz Brumder
2 replies
Integrations are a requirement for any platform. No customer wants a silo tool, right! But creating and managing integrations can be tough. Integration roadmaps run wild. 3rd party intermediary connections (like Zapier) can lack customer flow and value. I just connected my Vidyard account to Zapier to Slack - it took multiple sign ins, google ALLOWS and all I got was a notification in slack that my video was uploaded.
As early stage makers we dream of our tool working seamlessly with the best but it seems to me that needs to be custom built. So how do you make that happen?
Replies
Alex Ciorapciu@alex_ciorapciu
Your assessment is quite right. There's the 'here's the API' or 'here's Zapier etc.' way. The API is the all powerful, get it right way. But it's difficult and costly. The Zapier way cheaper and more versatile, reaches technically a wider audience, but the scope is limited and you can't really control the experience.
It boils down to this: do you want the Apple style, utopian, experience? Build it yourself. Do you have a use case that is simple, where you can derive value from simple integrations to standard tools and not much can go wrong? Go Zapier.
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@alex_ciorapciu Thanks for responding. I think this is a critical topic for all makers so I hope others join in. Since I wrote this post, i disabled my Zapier connection between my video hosting solution and slack. There were no setting options and all it did was notify our team that a new video was posted. Does anyone have a Zapier success story where simple connections created value for your user base?