Ask HN: How hard is it to offer 3rd party integrations in my product?
I’m trying to learn about adding 3rd party integrations into saas applications and haven’t done it before. I was curious if anyone here has done that and what their experience was like.
Below is a list of things I'm interested in:
Is it a monumental task to incorporate these 3rd party integrations? Does it require a ton of additional coding, API management, and data handling capabilities? How do I handle support and troubleshooting for these 3rd party services? Would my team be responsible for the services we didn't develop? What is the ongoing maintenance like? Is the updating process complex, especially considering that third-party services might update their APIs? Do these integrations really provide that much value to users? Is the extra effort and resources worth the increased user satisfaction? If so, are there any particular third-party integrations that are more beneficial than others in general or specific to certain types of products or services? Are there any tools or libraries available that could ease the process of adding these integrations?
I'd love to hear the experiences of those who have walked this path. What were your key learnings, pitfalls to avoid, or success stories? Does it make sense to build a project that provides a framework or toolset for facilitating such integrations? All insights and feedback are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!