I've definitely felt that pain, too, especially for getting API access, which is required for essentially any integration. We started out on the Group plan, then quickly had to move to the next one, and then with only 3 people we needed to jump to $125/user + API fees at a ridiculous price per month just to integrate with our marketing platform.

That being said, we were willing to pay the price.

Salesforce could make this a bit easier to swallow by a bit better onboarding. They're going to need to as folks like HubSpot and the plethora of other CRMs continue to jump into the market.