Ecommerce integration agencies

The two shapes of integration work

Connector-based: an off-the-shelf integration platform sits between the two systems and is configured rather than written. It is faster and cheaper, and it fails when your process has a wrinkle the connector does not model — which, with a business more than a few years old, it usually does.

Custom middleware: code you own, doing exactly your process. More expensive, and it becomes your responsibility forever, including the day one of the two APIs changes.

The mistake is choosing between them on price. Choose on whether your process is standard, and be honest about the answer.

Who owns it when it breaks

Integrations fail silently and asymmetrically. An order that does not reach the warehouse looks fine in your store, and you find out when the customer asks where it is. So the questions that matter are about failure, not about the happy path:

• What happens to a failed message? Retried, queued, dropped, or emailed to someone who has left?
• Who is alerted, and how would you know the alerting still works?
• Is there a reconciliation? Something that counts orders on both sides daily and flags a mismatch is worth more than any amount of careful mapping.
• What is the runbook when the ERP is down for maintenance?

Questions worth asking

Ask whether the agency has integrated your specific system before, and ask for the version. “We’ve done NetSuite” covers a very wide range of experiences. Ask who owns the API credentials, and ask what the licence position is on any middleware they write — you want it, not a perpetual dependency.

What it costs

A single well-trodden connection using an existing connector — store to accounting, store to a mainstream 3PL — is commonly $2,000–$8,000 plus the tool’s own subscription. Custom middleware for one process starts around $15,000. Full ERP integration for a business with real operational complexity routinely reaches six figures, and the discovery phase alone is worth paying for separately before anyone commits to a number.