A website that does not talk to your CRM creates manual work forever. Integration is where web project budgets are most often underestimated, because from the outside it looks like plugging in a cable.
Website integrations connect your site to the systems that run your business: CRM, email marketing, booking, payments, inventory. Simple integrations using an existing plugin or native connector take hours. Custom integrations against an API take days to weeks. The cost driver is almost never the connection itself, it is matching data between two systems that describe the same thing differently.
What usually needs connecting
| System | What it does | Typical complexity |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | Enquiries land where sales works | Low to medium |
| Email marketing | Signups sync to lists | Low |
| Booking or scheduling | Availability and appointments | Low if embedded, high if native |
| Payments | Take money | Low with a hosted checkout |
| Inventory or ERP | Stock and pricing accuracy | High |
| Accounting | Invoices and reconciliation | Medium to high |
| Support desk | Tickets from web forms | Low |
Three ways to integrate
- Native or plugin. Someone has already built the connector. Cheapest, fastest, least flexible. Always check this first.
- Middleware. Tools like Zapier or Make connect systems without custom code. Quick to build, has a monthly cost, and can become fragile at volume.
- Custom API integration. Direct code against the other system's API. Most control, most cost, and needs maintaining when their API changes.
Start at the top and only move down when the tier above genuinely cannot do the job. Teams frequently commission custom work for something a plugin already handles.
Where the cost actually is
Not the connection. The cost is in reconciling two systems that model the same information differently: one has a single name field, the other has three; one requires a phone number, the other does not; one calls it a company, the other an account.
That mapping work, plus deciding what happens when data fails validation, is most of the effort in any real integration. Ask for it to be scoped explicitly rather than assumed.
Questions to settle before building
- Which system is the source of truth when they disagree?
- Does data flow one way or both?
- What happens when the other system is down? Is the enquiry queued or lost?
- How are failures reported, and to whom?
- What are the API rate limits and will we hit them?
- Who maintains this when their API version changes?
The failure question is the one skipped most often, and it is why some businesses discover months later that enquiries silently vanished whenever their CRM had an outage.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website integration cost?
A plugin or native connector may be under a thousand dollars to configure and test. A middleware connection is similar plus a monthly fee. A custom API integration typically runs from a few thousand upward depending on how differently the two systems model the data.
Is Zapier good enough for business integrations?
For low volume and simple flows, often yes, and it is far cheaper than custom work. It becomes a poor fit at high volume, where per-task pricing adds up, or where you need reliable error handling and retries.
What happens if my CRM goes down?
That depends entirely on how the integration was built. A well-built one queues the submission and retries. A naive one loses it. Always store enquiries in your own database first, then push to the CRM, so an outage cannot cost you a lead.
Can any system be integrated?
If it has an API, generally yes. If it does not, options narrow to file exports or screen automation, both of which are fragile. Check for an API before choosing a system you will need to connect.
Who maintains integrations?
Someone must. APIs change, credentials expire and endpoints get deprecated. Agree ownership at the start, because unmaintained integrations fail quietly and the failure is usually discovered through missing data rather than an alert.