How to Choose an Integration Platform in 2026: The Engineer's Checklist

The integration platform market has fragmented. MuleSoft and Boomi still dominate enterprise RFPs, Workato and Tray own the mid-market, Zapier handles the long tail, and a new wave of AI-native platforms is emerging. Choosing between them is harder than it should be.

Most comparison guides are written by vendors. They optimize for whatever axis makes their product win. This guide is different — it’s the checklist we wish we’d had when we were on the buying side.

The Eight Criteria

1. Config-as-Code

The question: Can you version-control your integration definitions in git?

This is the single most predictive criterion for long-term maintainability. If your integrations live inside a vendor’s proprietary GUI with no exportable, diffable, reviewable format — you’ve built a black box.

What good looks like:

Integration definitions stored as YAML, JSON, or code files
Full git workflow: branch, review, merge, rollback
CI/CD pipeline support for testing and deploying changes
Diff-friendly format (not serialized binary blobs)

Red flags:

“Export as JSON” that produces 10,000-line generated files
No CLI for programmatic access
“Version history” that’s just timestamps in the GUI

2. Self-Healing Capabilities

The question: What happens when an upstream API changes its schema?

APIs change constantly. Salesforce ships three major releases per year. Shopify deprecates fields quarterly. If your platform can’t detect and adapt to schema drift, you’re running a manual break-fix operation.

What good looks like:

Automatic schema drift detection
Suggested or auto-applied field remappings
Validation against recent payloads before deploying fixes
Queue-and-replay for data that arrives during an outage

Red flags:

“Monitoring and alerts” as the only answer to breakage
Manual re-mapping required for every API change
No payload replay — data lost during outages

3. Pricing Transparency

The question: Can you predict your bill 12 months from now?

Enterprise iPaaS pricing is deliberately opaque. Per-connector fees, per-connection pricing, execution-based tiers, overage charges — the bill you see in the sales deck bears little resemblance to your invoice in month six.

What good looks like:

Published pricing on the website
Usage-based or flat-rate models with clear unit economics
No per-connector fees (you shouldn’t pay extra to use an API)
Free tier or self-serve trial without talking to sales

Red flags:

“Contact sales for pricing”
Per-connector or per-connection charges
Minimum annual commitments above $50K
Separate charges for “premium” connectors

4. Deployment Flexibility

The question: Where does your data flow through?

For European companies, this isn’t optional — GDPR and data residency requirements dictate where integration traffic can be routed. Even US companies increasingly care about data sovereignty.

What good looks like:

Multi-region deployment (EU, US, APAC)
Option for self-hosted or hybrid runtimes
Clear documentation on data routing and storage
SOC 2 Type II and relevant regional certifications

Red flags:

US-only hosting with no EU option
Vague answers about data residency
No self-hosted option for sensitive workloads

5. API-First Architecture

The question: Can you manage everything programmatically?

If you can’t automate the platform itself, you’ve just added another manual tool to your stack. Every operation — creating flows, deploying changes, monitoring health, managing credentials — should be API-accessible.

What good looks like:

Comprehensive management API
CLI tool for local development and CI/CD
Terraform or Pulumi provider for infrastructure-as-code
Webhook/event system for platform events

Red flags:

GUI-only management
“API available on Enterprise plan”
No CLI

6. Observability

The question: When something fails at 2 AM, how fast can you diagnose it?

Integration failures are inherently cross-system — the problem might be in the source API, the transformation logic, the target API, or the network between them. Your platform needs to surface the full picture, not just “step 3 failed.”

What good looks like:

Structured logs for every execution step
OpenTelemetry-compatible traces
Integration with your existing monitoring stack (Datadog, Grafana, PagerDuty)
Payload inspection for debugging (with PII controls)

Red flags:

Proprietary logging with no export
“Check the dashboard” as the debugging workflow
No trace correlation across systems
Payload data not accessible for debugging

7. Vendor Lock-In Risk

The question: How hard is it to leave?

Every platform creates some lock-in. The question is whether it’s incidental (you’d have to rewrite configs) or structural (your business logic is trapped in proprietary constructs with no equivalent elsewhere).

What good looks like:

Standard formats (YAML, JSON) for integration definitions
Portable transformation logic (not proprietary expression languages)
Data export capabilities for all platform-managed state
Documented migration paths

Red flags:

Proprietary DSL with no external tooling
Business logic embedded in visual canvas with no text representation
No bulk export of flow definitions
Long-term contracts with costly exit clauses

8. AI Capabilities

The question: Is the AI generative or cosmetic?

Every integration vendor now claims “AI-powered.” Most have bolted a chatbot onto their existing GUI. A few have fundamentally rearchitected around AI as the primary interface.

What good looks like:

Natural language to working integration config (not just suggestions)
AI that understands both source and target schemas
Generated configs that are human-readable and reviewable
AI-assisted debugging and remediation

Red flags:

“AI assistant” that just searches documentation
“Smart field mapping” that’s basic fuzzy string matching
AI features behind an additional paywall
No way to review or override AI decisions

Scoring the Market

Here’s how the major platforms stack up against these eight criteria — scored from our experience evaluating them:

Criteria	MuleSoft	Boomi	Workato	Zapier	AI-Native
Config-as-Code	Partial	Weak	Partial	No	Strong
Self-Healing	No	No	Limited	No	Yes
Pricing Transparency	Low	Low	Medium	High	High
Deployment Flexibility	Strong	Strong	Medium	Cloud-only	Varies
API-First	Strong	Medium	Medium	Limited	Strong
Observability	Strong	Medium	Medium	Weak	Medium
Vendor Lock-In Risk	High	High	Medium	Low	Low
AI Capabilities	Cosmetic	Cosmetic	Moderate	Basic	Core

A few notes:

MuleSoft excels at enterprise requirements (deployment flexibility, API management, observability) but scores poorly on pricing, lock-in, and AI. If you’re a Fortune 500 with a dedicated integration team and Salesforce enterprise agreement, it’s still the safe choice. For everyone else, the TCO is brutal.

Boomi is MuleSoft’s closest competitor with a friendlier UX but similar lock-in concerns. The acquisition by Francisco Partners and subsequent strategic shifts have created uncertainty.

Workato hits a sweet spot for mid-market companies that want something more powerful than Zapier without the MuleSoft price tag. The recipe-based model is approachable but hits limits at scale.

Zapier is unbeatable for simple, low-volume automations. It’s not an integration platform — it’s a trigger-action tool. When you outgrow it, the migration path is a full rewrite.

AI-native platforms (including Fyrn) are the newest entrants. They score highest on AI, config-as-code, and lock-in avoidance, but are still building out enterprise features like SOC 2 compliance and on-premises deployment.

The Decision Framework

Don’t buy a platform. Buy an answer to this question:

“In 18 months, when we have 3x more integrations and half the original team has rotated, will this platform make our lives easier or harder?”

Platforms that optimize for easy setup often create long-term maintenance debt. Platforms that optimize for maintainability sometimes have a steeper initial learning curve. Know which trade-off you’re making.

Choose traditional iPaaS (MuleSoft, Boomi) if:

You’re a large enterprise with existing Salesforce/SAP investments
Regulatory requirements mandate specific vendor certifications
You have a dedicated integration team of 5+ engineers
Deployment flexibility (on-premises, hybrid) is non-negotiable

Choose mid-market iPaaS (Workato, Tray) if:

You have 20-100 integrations to manage
Your team is technical but integration isn’t their full-time job
You need pre-built recipes for common SaaS-to-SaaS patterns
Budget is $30-100K/year

Choose AI-native if:

You want config-as-code and git-native workflows
Self-healing and automated maintenance matter more than connector count
Your team thinks in APIs and YAML, not visual canvases
You’re building new integrations, not migrating legacy ones

The integration platform you choose today will be the backbone of your data infrastructure for years. Pick one that gets easier to maintain over time, not harder.