How Integration Platform Pricing Models Work (And What Each One Hides)
You budget out how much you think you’ll pay for an integration platform. The first month goes off without a hitch as your team starts experimenting with integrations and seeing some small productivity gains. Then, month two changes everything.
Your $200 bill turns into a $1,400 bill. You’re looking through the platform’s dashboard, trying to understand where the surcharge is coming from, but you can’t figure it out. You reach out to customer support who tells you their pricing is usage-based, and your usage blew past the plan you were using and you were automatically upgraded to a pricier plan.
Not understanding an integration platform’s pricing plan can lead to these surprises. In this guide, you’ll learn how to avoid them by picking the right one.
Integration platform pricing model #1: Per-task
The per-task pricing model has a simple logic. Every time an integration creates or updates a task, it charges you. Platforms with these pricing models typically use if-this-then-that logic to support basic automations across a wide range of apps and platforms. Users choose a trigger (e.g., creating a task manually in one tool) and an action (e.g., creating a task in another tool), and the integration automates that action each time it finds the trigger. Simple automations can handle migrations between tools, linear workflows, and simple updates.
Plans in this model start with a minimum number of tasks for a monthly (or yearly) fee, and that fee increases as you use more tasks. For example, Zapier’s Professional plan (its most affordable) starts at $29.99 a month for 750 monthly tasks. It scales up from there, supporting up to 2,000,000 monthly tasks for $5,099 a month.
Low-volume, simple workflows benefit most from this model. As long as your total task volume stays low, this model is often the cheapest option.
This model’s hidden cost
When each step in their workflow can lead to an increase in their monthly bill, teams are tempted to “skip” some of these steps. That means an integration might push tasks from tool one to tool two, a team might manually update tasks in tool two, and the tasks are then automatically pushed to tool three.
Integration platform pricing model #2: Per-connector
This is one of the simplest pricing models for integration platforms. Instead of paying a fee that scales with the number of tasks you automate, you pay a flat fee based on the connectors you use. With some tools, that fee might be per connector while others will lock specific connectors behind higher-tier plans. The actual integration logic varies for each platform; one-way automations, two-way sync, and other technologies aren’t specific to this pricing model. You’ll find options with this pricing model across all integration types.
Getint is a popular integration platform using this pricing model. It offers two different types of plans: one for Jira integrations, and one for all other integrations. Jira integrations allow you to pay a single cost for each integration, which changes based on the number of users you need. Other integrations are grouped under one of GetInt’s three plans: Team, Professional, and Enterprise. Most non-Jira integrations are offered in the Team plan, while integrations like ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Azure DevOps are only available with pricier plans.
Teams with high-volume workflows between a few tools are best-served by per-connector pricing. But when most organizations are growing their tool stack, the cost for these platforms is more likely to grow than to stay content.
This model’s hidden cost
Even when you only need a single “premium” integration, you’ll often need to pay for a plan that includes more than just that integration, meaning you’re paying extra for integrations you don’t need. Getint’s Professional plan, for example, is the least expensive that supports ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Azure DevOps, at $4,800 a year. But if you only need ServiceNow, you’re essentially overpaying by $3,200 (assuming you value each integration at $1,600).
Integration platform pricing model #3: Per-user
Per-user pricing is exactly what it sounds like; you pay a rate for each user who has access to the integration platform. There may be a different cost based on the type of user (i.e., an admin vs. a regular user). This pricing model is common across SaaS apps, from project management tools to CRMs. That being said, it’s much less common with integration platforms, with none of the major integration players using this pricing model.
This pricing model is best suited to organizations with predictable headcount, with rates staying relatively flat as your workforce grows and contracts naturally. But if you’re about to scale rapidly, this pricing model might actually hinder you, with your monthly cost quickly becoming prohibitive. The value of your integration platform doesn’t scale linearly the more seats you add, making calculating the ROI of this model more difficult — compared to per-task or per-item-in-sync models.
This model’s hidden cost
When the cost of your integration platform scales with users, license sharing becomes a common workaround. While this allows you to save on budget, it creates other costs and risks. For one, with no clarity on who built your integrations or changed them, your integrations lose audit trails and accountability, creating compliance issues and security risks.
Integration platform pricing model #4: Flat/Custom
Some integration platforms only offer custom, or flat pricing. The price is typically negotiated between an organization’s stakeholders and a sales team. Plans are built specifically for each organization, usually along a few variables, such as:
- Number of work items supported.
- Specialized development (e.g., building new integrations).
- Dedicated integration consultants.
- Priority customer.
- SLAs (service level agreements).
The exact prices for an integration platform following this model aren’t public, though Vendr data shows that providers like Mulesoft have an average yearly contract value of about $69,000. Integrations following this model have the highest bar to entry, and they’re best-suited for enterprise organizations. That being said, even enterprise organizations with enterprise-sized budgets can easily end up paying for more than they need, since the price is negotiated before the contract starts but you might only have a concrete idea of your needs after it does.
This model’s hidden cost
The negotiated cost of your contract is just the first cost you pay. Integration platforms that use this pricing model typically involve a significant implementation period, with lengthy onboarding for anyone who needs to use the platform. This sometimes comes at an additional cost but, even when it doesn’t, you’ll lose productivity until implementation and onboarding are complete.
Integration platform pricing model #5: Per-item-in-sync
At first brush, this might seem similar to the per-task pricing model of tools like Zapier, but there’s one key difference. Where automation tools count the number of tasks they create or update, the per-item-in-sync model counts each work item once. So if you use one of these platforms to integrate Jira with Asana, and the platform creates an Asana task to match a Jira work item you create manually, that Asana task is counted once, no matter how many times it’s updated. Tools like Zapier would count every update it makes as a separate task, driving up your monthly bill. Note, however, that both the Jira work item and the Asana task will count as items in sync.
Unito is one of the most popular examples of an integration platform with this pricing model. Both its self-serve and enterprise plans charge users based on the number of items in sync they use, scaling from 750 items a month to 100,000 items a month, depending on the plan you choose. Enterprise plans have a similar pricing structure, but they add premium connectors, advanced syncing capabilities, a dedicated integration consultant, and more.
This pricing model is best-suited for teams that need deep integrations (e.g., comment and attachment support) without paying for custom development or seeing their monthly bill increase exponentially as they integrate new projects and dashboards.
Smaller teams with low-volume integration needs might not benefit as much from this pricing model as some others, since there’s typically a minimum number of items in sync required before you see significant ROI on your integration.
Per-item-in-sync models mean your plan scales with usage, but not nearly as quickly as with per-task models. Two-way sync integrations monitor relationships between work items in real time, updating them automatically without charging you for every single change.
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Comparison framework: How to choose the right model
It’s one thing to know how each pricing model works. Now you need to know how to choose between per-task, per-connector, per-user, flat, or per-item-in-sync pricing. The goal isn’t to rank pricing models from best to worst. You need to compare each pricing model to your specific needs, your workflows, and your tool stack. Remember that each integration platform uses a different variable to bill you. You need to find the variable that leads to a better price for your team — and isn’t likely to skyrocket. The two go hand in hand. The cheapest model for you now might not be the cheapest when you scale over the next few years.
So here’s how you choose the right one with just four questions.
How many items do you need synced/updated?
You don’t need an exact figure here. Just knowing whether the tasks you’ll sync are in the tens, the hundreds, or the thousands can give you an estimate of how much you’d pay with a per-task pricing model. Consider the frequency at which these tasks need to be updated, as well.
If your workflows require frequent updates but you have a low overall volume, then a per-item-in-sync model might work best for your needs. Per-connector and per-user models might be a solid option as well. Per-task models aren’t a good fit if you need to sync hundreds of tasks with several updates each.
How complex are your individual workflows?
Linear workflows with a long chain of sequential steps and workflows that involve back-and-forths between multiple tools aren’t suited to per-task pricing, since you’ll be punished both for the volume of data going through your workflow and the multiple steps it has to go through.
The per-item-in-sync model can be a better fit here, since it charges based on data volume rather than the complexity of your workflows. Per-connector models are excellent here as well, since you’ll pay a flat price for access to the connectors, no matter how complex your workflows.
How many people need access?
In most cases, not everyone whose work requires integrations needs access to your integration platform. Some organizations choose to restrict access to a few experts, like the IT team, while others want to make integrations more accessible across teams.
If you only expect to give a few users access to your integration platform, then a per-user model might be the best fit. If you expect to democratize access, with multiple users as you scale, then other models are a better fit.
Can you forecast task volume accurately?
Flat-tier and custom pricing have a higher entry cost and a longer procurement time than self-serve options. But for enterprise organizations, this model eliminates the need to accurately forecast task volume to know what you’ll pay.
With usage-based pricing, you need a forecast to be roughly accurate so you’ll know what you’re paying. If you know you’re about to scale operations or headcount, usage-based pricing might not be the best fit.
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FAQ: Integration platform pricing model
Is per-user pricing ever cheaper than usage-based pricing for integration tools?
Per-user pricing is cheaper when your task volume outpaces your headcount. That being said, per-user pricing has become exceedingly rare with integration platforms; it’s more common with other SaaS tools. Usage-based pricing is most common, and the real question is which type of usage-based pricing is best for your needs.
Can a single workflow accidentally put me in a higher pricing tier overnight?
Absolutely. A change in the integration platform you use (e.g., adding an extra workflow step, changing a rule in a sync tool) can lead to a sudden influx of new work items or tasks, putting you into a higher pricing tier. Similarly, a user building a new integration can accidentally push you over your expected pricing tier.
What counts as “one item” or “one task” in usage-based pricing?
This varies depending on the integration platform you use. Here are a few examples across popular integration platforms:
- Zapier: A task being created or being updated counts as one task. For example, an Asana task Zapier creates to match a work item in Jira counts as one task. Updating the due date in that Asana task to match an update in Jira also counts as one task.
- Unito: Unito counts any task, item, or record it keeps up to date as an item in sync. For example, if a Unito flow pairs a Jira project and an Asana project, with a rule that includes all work items with a specific label, each item in both tools counts as a work item for pricing purposes. Both items, kept in sync by Unito, count as an item-in-sync.
- Workato: Both the creation of a task or transfer of a single unit of data between two tools counts as a single task. For example, a Slack message being created to match an update in Jira would count as one task.
Is custom or negotiated enterprise pricing always more expensive than self-serve plans?
Custom enterprise pricing isn’t always more expensive than self-serve plans. The advantage of custom enterprise pricing is you know what you’re going to pay ahead of time, so you won’t get pricing spikes that come with self-serve plans. With self-serve plans, you never really know how much you’ll pay until you’re already using the tool, and sometimes their cost can blow past your expectations. Enterprise pricing can sometimes be cheaper per transaction at high data volumes than self-serve plans.