What is an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)?

Before iPaaS, connecting enterprise systems meant either buying and hosting an on-premises integration server (an enterprise service bus) or writing bespoke point-to-point code for every pair of systems that needed to talk. iPaaS moved that middleware to the cloud as a managed service: pre-built connectors for hundreds of common SaaS tools, a visual or low-code interface for mapping data between them, and hosted infrastructure that handles scaling, monitoring, and uptime, so the integrating organization doesn't operate any of it themselves. iPaaS products typically follow a hub-and-spoke integration architecture under the hood — every connected app is a spoke into the platform's central hub — and add governance features enterprises need: audit logs of every data flow, role-based access to who can build or modify integrations, and error-handling/retry logic so a temporary outage in one connected system doesn't silently lose data. The category sits between simple consumer automation tools (built for individuals, lighter governance) and full custom-built middleware (maximum control, maximum engineering cost).