TL:DR:
Finch is a leading unified API player, particularly popular for its connectors in the employment systems space, enabling SaaS companies to build 1: many integrations with applications specific to employment operations. This translates to the ease for customers to easily leverage Finch’s unified connector to integrate with multiple applications in HRIS and payroll categories in one go. Invariably, owing to Finch, companies find connecting with their preferred employment applications (HRIS and payroll) seamless, cost-effective, time-efficient, and overall an optimized process. While Finch has the most exhaustive coverage for employment systems, it's not without its downsides - most prominent being the fact that a majority of the connectors offered are what Finch calls “assisted” integrations. Assisted essentially means a human-in-the-loop integration where a person has admin access to your user's data and is manually downloading and uploading the data as and when needed.
Pros and cons of Finch
Why chose Finch (Pros)
●Ability to scale HRIS and payroll integrations quickly
●In-depth data standardization and write-back capabilities
●Simplified onboarding experience within a few steps
However, some of the challenges include(Cons):
●Most integrations are human-assisted instead of being true API integrations
●Integrations only available for employment systems
●Limited flexibility for frontend auth component
●Requires users to take the onus for integration management
Pricing: Starts at $35/connection per month for read only apis; Write APIs for employees, payroll and deductions are available on their scale plan for which you’d have to get in touch with their sales team.
Now let's look at a few alternatives you can consider alongside finch for scaling your integrations
Finch alternative #1: Knit
Knit is a leading alternative to Finch, providing unified APIs across many integration categories, allowing companies to use a single connector to integrate with multiple applications. Here’s a list of features that make Knit a credible alternative to Finch to help you ship and scale your integration journey with its 1:many integration connector:
Pricing: Starts at $2400 Annually
Here’s when you should choose Knit over Finch:
●Wide horizontal and deep vertical coverage: Knit not only provides a deep vertical coverage within the application categories it supports, like Finch, however, it also supports a wider horizontal coverage of applications, higher than that of Finch. In addition to applications within the employment systems category, Knit also supports a unified API for ATS, CRM, e-Signature, Accounting, Communication and more. This means that users can leverage Knit to connect with a wider ecosystem of SaaS applications.
●Events-driven webhook architecture for data sync: Knit has built a 100% events-driven webhook architecture, which ensures data sync in real time. This cannot be accomplished using data sync approaches that require a polling infrastructure. Knit ensures that as soon as data updates happen, they are dispatched to the organization’s data servers, without the need to pull data periodically. In addition, Knit ensures guaranteed scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA. Thus, it ensures security, scale and resilience for event driven stream processing, with near real time data delivery.
●Data security: Knit is the only unified API provider in the market today that doesn’t store any copy of the customer data at its end. This has been accomplished by ensuring that all data requests that come are pass through in nature, and are not stored in Knit’s servers. This extends security and privacy to the next level, since no data is stored in Knit’s servers, the data is not vulnerable to unauthorized access to any third party. This makes convincing customers about the security potential of the application easier and faster.
●Custom data models: While Knit provides a unified and standardized model for building and managing integrations, it comes with various customization capabilities as well. First, it supports custom data models. This ensures that users are able to map custom data fields, which may not be supported by unified data models. Users can access and map all data fields and manage them directly from the dashboard without writing a single line of code. These DIY dashboards for non-standard data fields can easily be managed by frontline CX teams and don’t require engineering expertise.
●Sync when needed: Knit allows users to limit data sync and API calls as per the need. Users can set filters to sync only targeted data which is needed, instead of syncing all updated data, saving network and storage costs. At the same time, they can control the sync frequency to start, pause or stop sync as per the need.
●Ongoing integration management: Knit’s integration dashboard provides comprehensive capabilities. In addition to offering RCA and resolution, Knit plays a proactive role in identifying and fixing integration issues before a customer can report it. Knit ensures complete visibility into the integration activity, including the ability to identify which records were synced, ability to rerun syncs etc.
As an alternative to Finch, Knit ensures:
●No-Human in the loop integrations
●No need for maintaining any additional polling infrastructure
●Real time data sync, irrespective of data load, with guaranteed scalability and delivery
●Complete visibility into integration activity and proactive issue identification and resolution
●No storage of customer data on Knit’s servers
●Custom data models, sync frequency, and auth component for greater flexibility
Finch alternative #2: Merge
Another leading contender in the Finch alternative for API integration is Merge. One of the key reasons customers choose Merge over Finch is the diversity of integration categories it supports.
Pricing: Starts at $7800/ year and goes up to $55K
Why you should consider Merge to ship SaaS integrations:
●Higher number of unified API categories; Merge supports 7 unified API categories, whereas Finch only offers integrations for employment systems
●Supports API-based integrations and doesn’t focus only on assisted integrations (as is the case for Finch), as the latter can compromise customer’s PII data
●Facilitates data sync at a higher frequency as compared to Finch; Merge ensures daily if not hourly syncs, whereas Finch can take as much as 2 weeks for data sync
However, you may want to consider the following gaps before choosing Merge:
●Requires a polling infrastructure that the user needs to manage for data syncs
●Limited flexibility in case of auth component to customize customer frontend to make it similar to the overall application experience
●Webhooks based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery
Finch alternative #3: Workato
Workato is considered another alternative to Finch, albeit in the traditional and embedded iPaaS category.
Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement; Demo and free trial available
Why you should consider Workato to ship SaaS integrations:
●Supports 1200+ pre-built connectors, across CRM, HRIS, ticketing and machine learning models, facilitating companies to scale integrations extremely fast and in a resource efficient manner
●Helps build internal integrations, API endpoints and workflow applications, in addition to customer-facing integrations; co-pilot can help build workflow automation better
●Facilitates building interactive workflow automations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, with its customizable platform bot, Workbot
However, there are some points you should consider before going with Workato:
●Lacks an intuitive or robust tool to help identify, diagnose and resolve issues with customer-facing integrations themselves i.e., error tracing and remediation is difficult
●Doesn’t offer sandboxing for building and testing integrations
●Limited ability to handle large, complex enterprise integrations
Finch alternative #4: Paragon
Paragon is another embedded iPaaS that companies have been using to power their integrations as an alternative to Finch.
Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement;
Why you should consider Paragon to ship SaaS integrations:
●Significant reduction in production time and resources required for building integrations, leading to faster time to market
●Fully managed authentication, set under full sets of penetration and testing to secure customers’ data and credentials; managed on-premise deployment to support strictest security requirements
●Provides a fully white-labeled and native-modal UI, in-app integration catalog and headless SDK to support custom UI
However, a few points need to be paid attention to, before making a final choice for Paragon:
●Requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to custom-code solutions or custom logic to catch and debug errors
●Requires building one integration at a time, and requires engineering to build each integration, reducing the pace of integration, hindering scalability
●Limited UI/UI customization capabilities
Finch alternative #5: Tray.io
Tray.io provides integration and automation capabilities, in addition to being an embedded iPaaS to support API integration.
Pricing: Supports unlimited workflows and usage-based pricing across different tiers starting from 3 workspaces; pricing is based on the plan, usage and add-ons
Why you should consider Tary.io to ship SaaS integrations:
●Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates for different use cases
●Helps build and manage API endpoints and support internal integration use cases in addition to product integrations
●Provides Merlin AI which is an autonomous agent to build automations via chat interface, without the need to write code
However, Tray.io has a few limitations that users need to be aware of:
●Difficult to scale at speed as it requires building one integration at a time and even requires technical expertise
●Data normalization capabilities are rather limited, with additional resources needed for data mapping and transformation
●Limited backend visibility with no access to third-party sandboxes
TL:DR
We have talked about the different providers through which companies can build and ship API integrations, including, unified API, embedded iPaaS, etc. These are all credible alternatives to Finch with diverse strengths, suitable for different use cases. Undoubtedly, the number of integrations supported within employment systems by Finch is quite large, there are other gaps which these alternatives seek to bridge:
●Knit: Providing unified apis for different categories, supporting both read and write use cases. A great alternative which doesn’t require a polling infrastructure for data sync (as it has a 100% webhooks based architecture), and also supports in-depth integration management with the ability to rerun syncs and track when records were synced.
●Merge: Provides a greater coverage for different integration categories and supports data sync at a higher frequency than Finch, but still requires maintaining a polling infrastructure and limited auth customization.
●Workato: Supports a rich catalog of pre-built connectors and can also be used for building and maintaining internal integrations. However, it lacks intuitive error tracing and remediation.
●Paragon: Fully managed authentication and fully white labeled UI, but requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to write custom codes.
●Tray.io: Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates and even helps in building and managing API endpoints. But, requires building one integration at a time with limited data normalization capabilities.
Thus, consider the following while choosing a Finch alternative for your SaaS integrations:
●Support for both read and write use-cases
●Security both in terms of data storage and access to data to team members
●Pricing framework, i.e., if it supports usage-based, API call-based, user based, etc.
●Features needed and the speed and scope to scale (1:many and number of integrations supported)
Depending on your requirements, you can choose an alternative which offers a greater number of API categories, higher security measurements, data sync (almost in real time) and normalization, but with customization capabilities.
