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Choosing who to outsource customer-facing integrations to is critically important, as a poor decision can impact your customers, engineers, customer-facing teams, and, ultimately, your bottom line.
To help you decide if there are other product integration platforms worth using over Paragon, an embedded iPaaS, we’ll introduce you to several alternative solutions and break down their respective pros and cons.
Merge
Merge offers enterprise-grade API and MCP-based connectors through two products:
Merge Unified, which enables businesses to add hundreds of permissions-aware integrations to their products through a single, unified API
Integration Observability features for your customer-facing team, which include a dashboard, fully-searchable logs, and automated issue detection functionality
You need to take several integrations to market, quickly. Since Paragon forces you to build one integration at a time, and Merge lets you build once to access all the integrations you need, Merge is significantly more effective at scaling your integration offerings
You're looking for best-in-class support. The CEO and co-founder of Sandstone, a knowledge orchestration platform for legal departments, previously used both Paragon and Merge (ultimately fully transitioning to Merge) andhighlighted the difference in our levels of support:
"I could ask the same question in the Paragon Slack channel and the Merge Slack channel. Paragon’s team would take a day to respond, and Merge’s would take less than 10 minutes.”
You want to access out-of-the-box features for managing integrations. Unlike Merge, Paragon forces you to build custom logic to catch and debug errors
You don’t want your engineers using the platform beyond the initial integration build. Paragon requires technical expertise to use, forcing your developers to build and manage every integration themselves. Merge, on the other hand, maintains the integrations on behalf of your engineers and enables your customer-facing employees to manage integrations via a no-code, intuitive UI
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Finch
Finch allows you to build once to its unified API to access HRIS and payroll integrations.
In addition to “assisted integrations”, they provide API-based integrations
Make sandboxes and SDKs available to help build and test connections
When to choose Finch over Paragon
You need to scale your HRIS and payroll integrations more easily. You can build once to Finch’s Unified API to access numerous payroll and HRIS integrations
You’d like to provide a relatively easy onboarding experience. Users can add an integration via Finch through a few relatively simple steps
Pandium markets their integration engineering service on their site. And while this service can be beneficial, it reveals that implementing and maintaining integrations on the platform can be technically complex
You’d like to outsource the development and maintenance of your in-app marketplace
You don’t have the engineering resources to build and maintain integrations. You can outsource this work to Pandium’s engineering service
You’d like to access key integration analytics. The data can help you make the case for keeping your customer-facing integrations—if not also adding more
Workato offers a library of searchable, pre-built application connectors
Supports Workbot®, a customizable platform bot for Slack and Microsoft Teams
Provides copilots to help you build workflow automations faster
When to choose Workato over Paragon
You need to support more than customer-facing integrations. If you’re also looking to build and manage internal integrations, API endpoints, and workflow applications, it can make sense to use Workato
You want to access a richer set of application connectors. Since Workato supports a wider range of integrations and automations, it can probably better support your integration needs
You need an enterprise-grade embedded iPaaS. Given their stronger track record of supporting enterprise organizations, Workato will likely do a better job of meeting your security and compliance requirements
Tray.io
Tray.io is an embedded iPaaS solution, but, like Workato, it also provides additional integration and automation products. These include a traditional iPaaS and an API management solution.
Top features
Provides hundreds of pre-built integrations and automation templates that support different teams and their use cases
Powers Merlin AI, an autonomous agent that lets you build specific automations via a chat interface
Merlin AI, while still in its infancy, may be able to help you build internal workflow automations across your internal applications through written instructions
An API management solution that lets you design and manage API endpoints
When to choose Tray.io over Paragon
Your integration requirements extend beyond product integrations. The solution can also help you build and maintain API endpoints and supports internal integrations use cases
You want to build automations through plain text. While Merlin AI is still relatively new and may come with significant limitations, it can—in certain cases—help you build automations significantly faster by allowing you to simply use plain text to describe what you want
You’d like to validate your use cases through case studies. Tray.io has a more comprehensive library of case studies than Paragon, so there’s naturally a higher chance that they’ll provide more relevant case studies
A look at some of the integration categories Nango supports
Top features
Covers 10+ unified API categories, which include e-commerce, file storage, accounting, and ticketing
Open-sourced their platform, allowing engineers outside of the company to contribute (e.g., adding an integration to Nango’s unified API)
Complies with GDPR and SOC 2 Type II
When to choose Nango over Paragon
You want to integrate with specific applications that Nango supports and that Paragon doesn’t provide pre-built connectors for; this includes Gmail, Ramp, Brex, Figma, among a few others
You want to invest in a platform that your team can help improve over time
Interfaces allows you to build custom solutions, like a contact form for your application, that’s powered by zaps
When to choose Zapier over Paragon
You’re primarily looking to implement internal integrations
You want to invest in an integration solution that’s been in the market significantly longer and has proven success with a diverse set of customers
You don’t want your engineers involved in building and maintaining integrations and automations at any stage
Final thoughts
When it comes to evaluating and selecting a vendor for customer-facing integrations, you likely have several criteria in mind. This can be whether the integration vendor meets your security requirements—and that of your customers; the breadth and depth of integrations the provider supports; how quickly it allows you to scale your integrations—and so on.
Paragon may check off some of these requirements, but Merge likely meets more—if not all—of them, making our solution a better long-term integration partner for your business.
Jon Gitlin is the Managing Editor of Merge's blog. He has several years of experience in the integration and automation space; before Merge, he worked at Workato, an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solution, where he also managed the company's blog. In his free time he loves to watch soccer matches, go on long runs in parks, and explore local restaurants.
Learn how Merge can help you build more reliable and secure customer-facing integrations at scale by scheduling a demo with one of our integration experts.
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