Complete Guide: Steps to Integrate Third-party Services in Custom Saas Application

by Rahul Das Digital Consultant

All Saas applications are very popular because they help enterprises to smoothen their operations and cut down costs to a great extent. When you create a Saas application you can make your user enjoy multiple features. But if your users are not satisfied with the features then you have to get some more features. Well, this can be done if you integrate third-party services while creating a custom Saas application.

Steps to integrate third-party services in custom Saas applications

Identification of the Service

In order to integrate third party services for all SaaS software development companies have to examine or identify the service which is to be used. Third-party services are numerous like payment gateways, e-mail marketing and customer relationship management. Once you have identified the service that you want to use, you can start the integration process.

Selection of Integration Approach

In the second step, selection of the integration approach comes into play. For integrating third-party services in your custom SaaS application, many integration approaches are available. Among all the integration approaches, API integration is commonly used. Other than API integration, also some common ones are webhooks and plugins. If you use Webhooks you can activate some events in your Saas application while some activities are drawn in third-party service. Plugins are off-the-shelf integrations which you can directly install into your SaaS application.

Creating the Integration

Post the selection of an approach, you have to begin with the integration. When using API integration, you have to apply third-party services documentation for making the integration. This typically involves writing code that connects to the API and retrieves the necessary data. If you are using webhooks, you will need to create an endpoint in your custom SaaS application that can receive the webhook. If you are using a plugin, you will need to install the plugin and configure it to start working.

Testing the Integration

Finished with the creation of the integration? Now you have to test it completely. Doing this will help you to guarantee the fact that the integration which you have done is properly functioning. By testing the integration you can also make sure that data is being transferred between the third-party service and your custom SaaS application. You can use test data to simulate real-world scenarios and test the integration under different conditions.

Maintaining the Integration

After having a test of the integration, all SaaS software development services will act to maintain the integration. So, here you will need to maintain the integration to ensure that it continues to work correctly. Maintenance of the integration involves some strict actions like updating the integration while third-party service updates API resolving any types of bugs so that possible expectations are arrived.

Reaching the End

Integrating third-party services into a custom SaaS application can provide businesses with additional features and functionalities that are not available in a normal SaaS application. When more and more features are coming up SaaS app developers have made their end goal to integrate third-party services in Saas apps. For doing that they are following all the above steps and hence all businesses can ensure that the integration is successful and provides value to their operations.