Okay, I need to vent and see if I'm the only one hitting this wall lately.
I'm building a dashboard to sync Salesforce contacts with our email platform stats (opens/clicks). Simple stuff, right? I look at the "premium" or "enterprise" connectors in my automation platform (won't name names, but you know the usual suspects). For a native, managed Salesforce-to-[Email Vendor] sync, they want an **additional $200/month** on top of the base platform fee. It's literally just an OAuth flow and some API field mapping!
I rolled my own in about two hours using the direct APIs. Here's the core of it in Make (formerly Integromat):
```json
{
"module": "http",
"method": "GET",
"url": "https://[email-api]/v1/campaigns/{{campaignId}}/stats",
"parsing": {
"dataType": "json",
"dataPath": "recipients"
}
}
```
Then a simple iterator to map fields to a Salesforce update.
My cost? Maybe $5 in extra compute if we're being generous. Theirs? $200/month. That's a **4000% markup** on the actual resource cost. It's getting absurd.
I'm seeing this pattern everywhere now:
* **CRM connectors** that charge per "connected object" (e.g., $50/month just to sync Leads)
* **Database read/write modules** priced per 10k operations, when direct API calls are a fraction
* **"Enhanced" webhook support** as an add-on for simple HTTP POST
Are we just paying for the convenience of a UI now? Or is this the new normal—basic connectors are loss-leaders, and real workflows require premium tax?
What's the breaking point for you all? When does it become more cost-effective to just maintain a small custom integration server? I'm starting to think my next "integration" project will just be a set of lightweight Node.js scripts on a scheduler.