28 days, 28 APIs: Zapier adding an app a day to its integration library this month

In addition to Black History Month and the month of love, February is now the month of API integrations.

Zapier is a buzzy Y Combinator company that simplifies the process of connecting web apps and APIs. The company announced that February is the “28 days of integration love,” meaning it will release a new integration every single day this month.

This news comes shortly after Zapier relaunched its developer platform, making it easier for third-party developers to add their API into Zapier’s library.

“Of the 260 apps that we support, 140 have been added via the dev platform,” CEO Wade Foster said in an interview with VentureBeat. “There is no way we would be able to build that many ourselves and we were trying to think of cool ways to showcase the power of it.”

Zapier plans to roll out integrations for consumer and business applications, including Instagram, SoundCloud, Reddit, Intercom, Sqwiggle, and HelloSign this month — an ambitious task that is developer platform makes possible. The first three integrations of February are communication tool Slack, Facebook personal accounts, and backend payments provider Balanced.

APIs have become a crucial channel for developers to attract customers, extend the reach of their products, and form business partnerships. Experts predict that they will become the definitive means for data movement in the next decade.

However, knitting web apps together is challenging. It requires companies to offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) integrations, valuable developer time, and/or hiring people to build custom software.

Zapier’s goal is to make this process more efficient for developers and non-developers alike. Using its technology, you choose a trigger and an action to make a “zap,” and Zapier will automatically take care of the rest for you.

“There is so much app fragmentation nowadays — businesses use dozens of different products that are not all from the same vendor and don’t talk to each other,” Foster said. “People want to use ‘best of breed’ tools, but these aren’t the same tools for everyone. Since this morning, we have already had 50 suggestions from people about integrations they’d like to see.”

Available integrations include Gmail, Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter, Basecamp, Asana, Githb, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Hipchat, Eventbrite, Zendesk, Twilio, Stripe, and AngelList.

Foster said that software vendors also benefit from integrating with Zapier.

“We do all the maintenance and support, so it makes products much more sticky for vendors and lowers churn,” Foster said.

Zapier currently has more than 200,000 clients. The business runs on a freemium model, and Foster said it is close to breaking even with revenue — an impressive feat for a young software startup.

It was founded in 2011 and went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2012 batch. It raised a $1.2 million round from Bessemer Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurveston, as well as angel investors.