The text explores the complexities and benefits of building product integrations, focusing on the use of third-party integrations versus native integrations. While native integrations require in-house development and maintenance, third-party integrations involve outsourcing to external vendors, which can alleviate the burden on internal developers and enhance scalability. The document details various third-party integration solutions such as iPaaS, RPA software, embedded iPaaS, and unified APIs, emphasizing the latter's scalability and efficiency by aggregating several integrations under a single API. It also highlights potential issues with third-party integrations, including technical expertise requirements and lack of performance visibility, while underscoring their advantages in breaking down data silos, saving developers’ time, improving client retention, and expanding the total addressable market. Best practices for using third-party integrations, such as testing before production and analyzing integration performance, are recommended, alongside strategies for evaluating vendors. Merge's Unified API platform is presented as a leading solution offering extensive integration capabilities and robust management tools.