What is low-code integration?

Traditionally, developers integrated systems by writing custom code, using various programming languages to build point-to-point integrations, or by using enterprise middleware, like enterprise service buses (ESBs). It was a time-consuming process that created a heavy dependency on specialized software development resources.

At the same time, enterprise IT environments have grown more complex, further straining the integration status quo. Applications and data are now scattered across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and the rapid adoption of numerous software as a service (SaaS) tools has led to “SaaS sprawl” (the unchecked proliferation of SaaS product adoption and use within an organization). As a result, application, data and API integration have become increasingly challenging for IT teams already stretched thin.

Low-code integration platforms, often offered as platform as a service products (low-code iPaaS), were introduced to help solve these challenges. These cloud‑based platforms include low-code tools, such as drag-and-drop canvases, flow-chart style workflows, graphical configurations, and pre-built nodes and blocks representing operations or tasks in a workflow, that reduce reliance on custom code and specialized development skills. These visual, user-friendly tools help both technical teams and non-technical users build, deploy and maintain integrations more easily.

Low-code iPaaS solutions can also help team members design and automate workflows, eliminate repetitive tasks and maintain data consistency across applications and platforms. Low- and no-code tools broaden access to integration capabilities, enabling more people across the business to participate in building solutions, reducing bottlenecks and streamlining delivery.

Executives estimate that nearly 28% of their application portfolios are managed with low‑code or no-code technologies today, a figure expected to rise to almost 40% within the next five years, according to IDC.1 This rapid growth reflects the advantages low‑code integration brings to both IT teams and citizen developers alike.

Low-code iPaaS solutions share several core capabilities designed to make building and managing integrations faster and more accessible. Their common components include:

A visual interface lets teams design integrations quickly while the platform translates those designs into metadata that the runtime engine executes. This feature makes integrations easier to build, maintain and deploy across environments without custom code.

Teams can use rich connector libraries to manage authentication, protocols and system‑specific logic, integrating applications without dealing with low‑level implementation details. Alongside these connectors, reusable workflow templates, logic blocks and built‑in modules for tasks such as authentication and error handling help standardize integrations and reduce development time. Additionally, some platforms support the use of open-source connectors, which helps reduce the risk of vendor lock-in by giving more flexibility and control over integration components.

Users can build, publish and manage APIs directly within many low-code iPaaS platforms, with features such as access control, throttling, policy enforcement and usage monitoring. Together, these features support secure, stable access to data services. This approach also makes it easier to surface capabilities from custom applications, ensuring they integrate seamlessly across the broader technology ecosystem.

Low-code iPaaS solutions typically support multi-step processes with branching logic, scheduling, approval steps, data routing and automated retries.

Integrations can also run continuously, processing data in real-time as events occur—triggered by webhooks (automatic notifications sent when an event occurs), for example—or on schedules that make sense for the business. This flexibility accommodates different integration requirements, from instant order processing to nightly data synchronization.

Many low-code iPaaS solutions include built-in dashboards and reporting tools that help users track integration performance, identify bottlenecks and troubleshoot issues.

When deciding how to integrate systems, an important factor to consider is who needs to build and maintain the integration. No-code integration is often used when business users or operations teams want to automate simple workflows, such as syncing leads between a form and a CRM system, without relying on IT. These tools tend to emphasize speed and simplicity, which can make them a practical option for lightweight, team-level automations where requirements are well defined.

Low-code integration is often a good fit when workflows are more complex, span multiple systems or benefit from added governance, error handling, security and scalability. These platforms can support collaboration between technical and non-technical users using visual tools while still supporting advanced logic, data transformation and API orchestration. As a result, low-code integration platforms are well-suited for core business processes such as customer onboarding or financial reconciliation that tend to evolve over time.

Point-to-point integrations, whether built natively into an application or custom‑coded by internal teams, are commonly used to connect individual systems directly. These approaches can work well for a small number of integrations, but they tend to become difficult to maintain as the number of connected applications grows.

Over time, this approach can limit visibility, increase dependency complexity and make it harder to support data integration and more robust, cross‑system workflows. For organizations operating at larger scale, these challenges often prompt exploration of more centralized integration approaches that are better suited to managing many interconnected applications.

The terms low-code integration platforms and low-code integration platforms as a service are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different aspects of the same underlying technology.

LCIPs describe a category of software that lets teams design, build, deploy and manage integrations using visual tools instead of traditional coding work. These platforms provide the core capabilities such as connectors to applications and data sources, workflow orchestration, data mapping and error detection and recovery, but they do not, by themselves, specify where or how the software runs.

An organization might run the platform on‑premises, in its own cloud or self-hosted environment, taking responsibility for infrastructure, scaling, updates and operations.

Low-code iPaaS solutions, on the other hand, deliver the same integration technology through a fully managed cloud service. In this model, the vendor operates the infrastructure, handles security, scaling, updates and reliability, and delivers the platform through a browser-based interface and APIs. Customers focus on building and running integrations rather than maintaining the underlying software.

And while LCIPs focus specifically on connecting systems and automating data flows, a low-code development platform (LCDP) is designed for building complete applications. Many organizations use both, pairing app-building tools with low-code iPaaS solutions to integrate those apps with the rest of their technology stack.

Low-code iPaaS is designed for a world where applications, data and processes span SaaS, cloud and on-prem infrastructure, often with overlap, and evolve continuously. It provides visual tools and cloud-based orchestration so teams can build and modify integrations quickly without heavy coding or infrastructure management. The emphasis is on agility, event-driven workflows and end-to-end automation with enterprise-grade scalability and security.

By contrast, earlier integration approaches were built for narrower, more static environments. Enterprise service buses (ESBs) were designed as centralized backbones for routing messages among a small number of internal systems, relying on tightly controlled, synchronous communication and specialized development skills—making them slower to adapt to modern cloud and SaaS ecosystems. Traditional extract, transform, load (ETL) tools, meanwhile, excel at batch data movement and complex transformations for analytics but aren’t suited for real‑time events, application workflows, or bidirectional integrations.

In practice, many organizations now use low-code iPaaS as the connective layer between applications, users and data, while ESB and ETL play more specialized roles. ESB remains useful in highly regulated or legacy-heavy environments that need strict message control, and ETL is still essential for large-scale analytics pipelines.

As integration needs grow and technical environments become more distributed, low-code iPaaS provides a flexible way to streamline and scale integration work. Common benefits include:

Low-code iPaaS solutions function by providing a visual development environment where users can design, configure and deploy integrations without hand-coded programming. The process typically involves several steps:

Identify the applications, databases and services that need to share data or trigger processes. Users identify the systems involved, such as CRM platforms, finance tools, HR applications or cloud storage services, and define the direction of data flow between them. This helps establish the scope of the integration and ensures the low-code iPaaS platform can apply the appropriate connectors, authentication methods and data models during setup.

At the foundation of a typical low-code iPaaS solution is a library of prebuilt connectors for popular software systems such as ERPs, HR systems, databases, payment gateways and cloud services. Once authenticated, a connector acts as a ready-made bridge, enabling users to send or receive data from an application.

Next, users design integration workflows using visual integration tools. Instead of writing lines of code, they drag and drop components onto a canvas, creating a flowchart-like representation of how data should move between systems. For example, a workflow might begin when a new Salesforce opportunity is created and the data is automatically routed to downstream systems for fulfillment or reporting.

The low-code iPaaS platform then handles data transformation automatically or through simple configuration. Since different systems often use different data formats and structures, the platform provides tools to map fields between systems, convert data types and apply business rules. A user, for instance, might specify that a “customer_name” field in one system should map to a “clientName” field in another, and the platform handles the conversion.

Once configured, the integration runs either on a schedule or in real-time based on triggers. The low-code iPaaS platform manages all the technical details—API calls, authentication, error handling and data transfer—behind the scenes. Users can monitor integrations through dashboards that show data flow, identify issues and provide performance metrics.

Many low-code iPaaS platforms also include built-in testing environments where users can validate their integrations before deploying them to production. This reduces the risk of disrupting business operations and makes it easier to iterate on integration designs.

Low-code iPaaS solutions support a range of common integration use cases that have become more prevalent as technology environments expand and diversify. Each use case below highlights a typical business scenario, along with the underlying pain point it addresses.

Pain point: “Our systems don’t talk to each other”

As companies add applications and platforms, data can become fragmented and harder to find. Low-code iPaaS solutions can create a single layer where information flows cleanly between systems, reducing the internal questions and confusion that arise when data is scattered across apps.

Pain point: “We spend too much time on manual work”

Instead of employees wasting hours moving data between spreadsheets and internal tools, Low-code iPaaS can automate these handoffs, enabling teams to focus on clients and growth. 

Pain point: “Customer experiences feel inconsistent”

When data isn’t synchronized, customers receive duplicate emails, inaccurate invoices or unnecessary redirects to the FAQs section. Organizations can implement a low-code iPaaS platform to keep systems aligned without requiring teams to understand databases or write SQL queries.

Pain point: “We can’t trust our reports”

Different systems store and update information separately—often in complex data formats—resulting in reports that show conflicting values, making it difficult for teams to determine which data is accurate. Low-code iPaaS can help improve data quality by synchronizing records across applications in real time, applying consistent rules and validations and making it easier for teams to debug discrepancies so everyone works from a single, reliable source of truth.

Pain point: “IT is always a bottleneck”

Instead of requiring developers to write one-off scripts or rules for new requests, low-code iPaaS can let teams visually define custom logic and reuse integration logic and components, so changes happen faster without waiting for long development cycles.

Pain point: “Our tech stack is out of control”

As companies adopt more SaaS tools, managing integrations becomes just as challenging as running numerous applications. One solution is to build a centralized integration layer that fits naturally into modern DevOps environments without adding more infrastructure to manage.

Low- and no-code platforms are becoming increasingly intertwined with artificial intelligence, each amplifying the value of the other. AI funding is surging: executives predict AI investment will surge approximately 150% between 2025 and 2030, according to a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV).² Yet, the same study found that 68% of executives worry that their AI efforts will fail due to lack of integration with core business activities.

The study also notes a shift in needed human skills, with “execs say[ing] problem‑solving and innovation are the most important today—and generative AI will make them even more important over the next three years.”

As organizations accelerate their use of generative AI, the role of AI-powered tools within no- and low-code platforms becomes even more important. Beyond speeding up delivery, applying AI to these platforms can improve how integrations and workflows are designed and operated. For instance, by analyzing data flows, usage patterns and dependencies to suggest more efficient routing or resource usage.

Combined with visual development tools, these insights can help users rapidly test ideas, automate workflows and build AI-driven applications without relying heavily on specialized development resources. This approach streamlines prototyping and supports faster iteration, helping low-code platforms bridge the gap between innovative AI concepts and operational reality, and increase the likelihood that AI initiatives succeed.