Workato Integration Platform - Features, Pricing, and Pros and Cons

Louis-Victor Jadavji, Cofounder of Taloflow
November 26, 2022

Introduction to the Workato Integration Platform

Most organizations use various cloud tools and apps to tackle their business problems. And, of course, they need to integrate them to create a streamlined data flow. Traditional methods of integrating apps sometimes aren’t good enough, and that’s where iPaaS vendors come into the picture. One such prominent iPaaS vendor is Workato. They've raised over $415M in venture capital since its founding in 2013, and their cloud-based workflow automation tool enables secure integrations and complex business logic. In the following sections, we will form a clear understanding of the Workato Integration Platform.

In this post, we cover the following topics:

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Workato Integration Platform features

Workato provides recipes and prebuilt solutions that are handy for fast integration development. Workato’s workflows can produce simple, intelligent, intelligent, and powerful automations. Here are its main features:

1. Next-Gen iPaaS

This “next-gen” iPaaS is Workato’s core product, a low-code integration platform. Based on our interviews with developers, building and developing integrations with Workato is generally faster than other iPaaS platforms — we're talking about months to integrate versus just a few weeks. This is likely due to the over 500,000 pre-built recipes, 1,000 ready-made connectors for SaaS, etc.

2. Modern RPA

The Workato Integration Platform consumes fewer resources than other RPA tools, like UIPath, AutomationAnywhere, or BluePrism. For example, when automating the hire-to-retire process, there are a series of learning, human capital, and payroll management tasks to complete in tools that Workato already integrates with.

3. Enterprise Workflow Automation

Whereas other tools help create a free data flow between applications, enterprises can rely on Workato to apply more controls and securely automate entire business processes.

4. Smart Data Pipelines (ETL)

Workato reduces the complexity of maintaining APIs, infrastructure, schemas, etc. It also provides flexible, intelligent, and robust pipelines for higher data ingestion rates into different data warehouses.

5. Enterprise Chatbots

The Workbot by Workato is a useful communication interface between business processes and data. Customized bots and apps can be built for Microsoft Teams or Slack using the low-code Workbot platform.

6. Low code API management

Workato provides a business-level API platform to maintain and manage APIs. This low-code approach helps build APIs efficiently and also enhances performance.

Pros and Cons of Workato

Pros of Workato

  • Workato supports integrating many applications such as Slack, Jira, Salesforce, etc.
  • Has high-quality documentation for application integration.
  • Relatively easy to use and very reliable.
  • The Workato community provides plenty of recipes that can be customized further.
  • The ready-made connectors are key if you can’t afford to develop application integrations.
  • Provides ancillary tools, such as low-code API management, enterprise chatbots, and workflow automation.
  • Get a single platform for both automation and integration.
  • More than 500,000 recipes and 1,000 ready-made connectors for SaaS and on-prem databases.
  • Support a complete cloud-native architecture that minimizes operational costs and boosts performance.

Cons of Workato

  • Some of the connectors and integrations on the Workato marketplace are created by 3rd parties. These sometimes need to be tested and verified for quality. For example, if you’re building an integration with Qualis, Quickbase, etc., they have not been tested for many use cases.
  • Need help finding out why an error has occurred? Workato's stack tracing tools are lacking compared to Mulesoft, Boomi, and Informatica.
  • There’s a steep learning curve if you’re not leveraging Workato’s pre-built recipes.
  • Pricing is mainly based on the number of recipes you are building. So if you anticipate using a lot of recipes, you’re going to be paying through the nose.

Workato Pricing

Workato follows the ‘pay per use’ principle, meaning that you only need to pay for the integrations or the connectors in use. There are two different categories for Workato’s subscriptions: (1) Workato for your Business and (2) Workato for your Product.

Workato for your Business pricing

Workato for Business is an enterprise version of the platform that requires you to spend tens of thousands annually for the base workspace that includes unlimited apps, connections, users, etc. You can purchase recipes individually or in packages of 10, 25, 50, 100, and beyond.

Workato for your Product pricing

Workato for your Product is an embedded iPaaS to provide a better integration experience to clients of your product. Other iPaaS platforms have this option, including Tray.io, Cleo, and Celigo. Workato provides 24/7 support, single sign-on (SSO) from your app, lots of customization, and the ability to get customer insights into a dashboard.

The bottom line on Workato's pricing

Workato is usually only suitably priced if you are mid-market or enterprise because the base platform fee costs tens of thousands. If you’re an SMB, you’re better of with Zapier or Tray.io.

If you’re using lots of recipes and not buying bulk recipes (in batches of 10, 25, 50, 100, etc.), Workato can get expensive quickly. Incrementally paying for individual recipes is a poor strategy to employ.

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