High-growth SaaS teams know integrations drive retention, stickiness, and expansion. But the question is – should you build them or buy them?

Across B2B SaaS and fintech, hundreds of teams are hitting the same wall: end-users expect seamless in-product integrations, while product and engineering leaders are stretched thin trying to deliver them.

This playbook breaks down the real trade-offs, including velocity, opportunity, and team impact.

Integrations are no longer “nice-to-have.” They’re the connective tissue of every modern product.

But scaling them the wrong way burns time, budget, and momentum.

Teams are up against:

  • Roadmaps derailed by recurring integration fire drills.
  • Engineers spending weeks rebuilding brittle connectors instead of shipping core features.
  • Mounting maintenance costs as APIs evolve and authentication breaks.
  • Partnerships delayed because product can’t support co-marketing timelines.
  • Customers churning from less integration options than they expect.

Every sprint spent maintaining integrations is a sprint your competitors spend shipping product.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Real cost breakdowns of in-house builds, outsourced projects, and embedded iPaaS solutions.
  • Infrastructure considerations that affect scalability, compliance, and security.
  • Team impact analysis for product, engineering, and partnerships.
  • A practical decision worksheet you can use to calculate your total opportunity cost.

What you’ll take away

This guide distills years of “build vs. buy” decisions into practical, data-backed frameworks you can use immediately.

Including:

  • A detailed cost calculator comparing in-house, outsourced, and embedded approaches.
  • A checklist of infrastructure and compliance questions to de-risk your strategy.
  • Real-world examples from SaaS and fintech teams that scaled faster by offloading integrations.
  • How to communicate the ROI of “buy” to your exec team and board.
  • Clear signals for when it’s time to move from “build” to “buy.”

Achieve real results…

“Doing integrations in-house means coordinating a lot of unknowns. Alloy already understood the third-party apps and how integrations should work – saving us weeks of digging through documentation.” — Product Manager, Stay Ai

Stay Ai’s key results:

  • Engineers stayed focused on core product features.
  • New integrations shipped in only two hours.
  • More customer requests delivered, faster.

Brought to you in partnership with Alloy Automation.