A guide to white label integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solutions

As you look to scale your customer-facing integrations, you may end up needing to outsource them to a 3rd-party solution. 

At the same time, you may not want customers worrying about the 3rd-party solution’s security posture, reliability, and policies and procedures for handling integration data.

To accommodate both needs, you can invest in a white label integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solution.

We’ll break down how this solution works, share real-world examples, and highlight their pros and cons so that you can decide whether it’s the right fit for your integration strategy.

But first, we’ll provide context on the type of integration solution that’d offer a white label iPaaS—an embedded iPaaS.

Embedded iPaaS overview

An embedded iPaaS is simply an iPaaS that can be incorporated into your product in a few different ways. 

You can, for example, embed certain application connectors, automation templates, and the workflow builder so that customers can build integrations and automations within your product. And/or your team can build the integrations and automations themselves and allow customers to use them.

Embedded iPaaS solutions aim to help organizations reap the benefits of product integrations. More specifically, these organizations would improve customer retention by making their products more valuable; increase their close rates by providing the integrations prospects need; and expand to new markets by offering integrations with the applications that are popular in certain regions, industries, and/or with a specific company size(s).

These solutions also attempt to minimize the downsides associated with building integrations in-house, or natively; this primarily includes significant developer time spent on building and maintaining each integration.

All of this said, embedded iPaaS solutions may not actually be the right approach for scaling your product integrations. To better suss out whether it’s the right type of product integration solution for your organization, it’s worth comparing it to your alternative option—unified API platforms.

What is a white label iPaaS?

It’s an embedded iPaaS that lets you remove any of the integration vendor’s branding within your platform. This leads customers to believe that your pre-built application connectors, automation templates, and workflow builder are provided and supported by your own engineers.

Related: A guide to white label integrations

Examples of white label iPaaS solutions

Given the pain associated with building and maintaining customer-facing integrations in-house and the demands SaaS companies face in adding integrations to their products, the embedded iPaaS market has exploded in recent years.

The majority of these vendors provide a white label component as part of their offering. We’ll break down how a few of these solutions provide this component below.

Related: A guide to white label integrations

Workato

Workato’s embedded integration solution lets you white label various facets—depending on your implementation.

If, for example, you allow clients to build integrations and automations, you can white label the workflow builder, your integration library, and your automation templates; and if you only allow clients to use pre-built integrations and automations, both will appear natively within your UI.

Related: The top alternatives to Workato

Prismatic

The embedded iPaaS solution also allows you to white label their workflow builder and integration marketplace solution. 

The latter allows customers to browse through integrations on your application and activate and configure any—all with your branded UX. 

Pros and cons of white label iPaaS Solutions

Before deciding whether to invest in a white label iPaaS solution, it’s worth considering the benefits and drawbacks of using any.

Pros

• Fewer customer concerns; since customers don’t know that you’ve outsourced your integrations, they won’t worry about the risks associated with using the 3rd-party solution. This, in turn, should make them more likely to adopt your integrations

• Lets you reap the benefits of a 3rd-party solution; building integrations with an embedded iPaaS should take less time and consume fewer developer resources than if you were to build the integrations in-house

• Helps your engineering function appear larger and more productive; by showcasing many white labeled integrations, your customers and prospects may be more inclined to believe that you have significant and productive engineering resources in-house. This can persuade prospects and customers alike that you innovate quickly and have stable financial footing

Cons

• Integration issues are largely out of your control; in other words, you’re wholly dependent on the 3rd-party provider delivering reliable integrations and addressing issues as soon as possible. If they don’t, your customers will only have you to blame 

• White labeling integrations can come at an additional cost; to access their white label offer, most embedded integration providers will charge an additional thousands of dollars per year or force you to select one of their most expensive pricing plans. In either case, you may not be able to afford the additional investment

• Embedded iPaaS solutions come with several drawbacks; even if the integrations are white labeled, you have to deal with several issues inherent to an embedded iPaaS: your engineers have to learn a new tool; your integrations and automations aren’t built within your code base, so they won’t go through your SDLC; your team is forced to build one integration at a time, and more 

White label your customer-facing integrations at scale with Merge

Merge lets you avoid the drawbacks of using an embedded iPaaS—as the platform lets you add hundreds of integrations across software categories from a single integration build. 

In addition, Merge lets you white label your integrations by both letting you incorporate your own branding and removing nearly all mentions of Merge within the UI component customers use to set up their integrations (i.e., Merge Link). 

This even includes the resource documentation Merge provides within Merge Link.

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You can learn more about Merge’s approach to white labeling integrations by scheduling a demo with one of our integration experts.