What Is an API and How to Connect Your Company's Systems

Every time someone on your team exports an Excel file from one system to key it by hand into another, you're paying the cost of not having an integration. An API (application programming interface) is the official door a piece of software offers so that other systems can query it or load data into it directly, without going through the screen. For a company it means one concrete thing: you can connect the systems you already use —accounting, e-commerce, CRM, logistics— so they pass data to each other on their own, without migrating or replacing anything.

What an API is, with examples you already use every day

You don't need to be technical to get it, because you already use APIs without realizing it:

• When a delivery app shows you the map, it didn't build its own Google Maps: it requests the map from the Google Maps API.
• When you pay a bill from inside another app's banking feature, that app talks to the bank's API.
• When your online store charges a card with MercadoPago, the payment travels through the MercadoPago API.

The classic analogy is a restaurant waiter: you don't walk into the kitchen (the other system's database) to serve yourself; you ask the waiter (the API) using a menu of possible orders, and they bring you the dish. The menu —what you can order and how— is the API's documentation. If a piece of software has a documented API, any competent developer can integrate it.

Integrate instead of migrate: the business decision

This is where the biggest savings live. When systems don't talk to each other, the instinctive reaction is usually "let's replace everything with a new system that does it all." That means data migration, retraining the team, months of transition, and a cost 5 to 10 times bigger than the original problem.

The alternative we almost always evaluate first: let each system keep doing what it does well and connect them by API. Your accountant stays in Tango or Colppy, sales stays in its CRM, the e-commerce stays in Tiendanube — and a piece of middleware moves the data between them automatically. It's the foundation of programmatic automation, and it's our bread and butter in API development and integrations.

An honest metric for deciding: if the current system handles its core function well and the only pain is double data entry between systems, integrate. If the system fails at its core function, then yes, consider replacing it with a custom management system — but for the right reasons.

Do your current systems have an API? The most common cases in LATAM

System	Has an API?	What it allows, in practice
Tango Gestión	Yes (Tango API / connectors)	Query and load vouchers, customers, stock; requires the right version and licensing
Colppy	Yes	Invoices, customers, accounting reports; documented and accessible API
Xubio	Yes	Invoicing and accounting; popular for SMB integrations
Shopify	Yes, excellent	Orders, products, stock, customers; one of the best-documented on the market
Tiendanube	Yes	Orders, products, shipping; de facto standard in regional e-commerce
Mercado Libre / MercadoPago	Yes	Listings, sales, questions, payments; requires an authorized app
Old custom systems (90s-2000s)	Usually not	Integrated via database, files, or RPA

Two warnings from someone who integrates these daily: "has an API" doesn't always mean "has a good API" — some APIs don't expose exactly the operation you need, or charge extra licensing for access. And the cost of the integration depends much more on the quality of the API than on the size of your company.

Not sure whether your systems can be integrated? Book a 30-minute call: give us the names of your systems and we'll tell you on the same call what can be connected and what can't.

What happens when your system does NOT have an API

It's not the end of the world, but it helps to know the options in order of preference:

1. Scheduled file exchange: the old system exports (or you set up an export for it) and a process reads that file every X minutes and loads the destination. Crude but reliable.
2. Direct database access: if the system runs on your server, you can often read (and, carefully, write) its database directly. Requires analysis so you don't break anything.
3. RPA: a bot that operates the system's screen the way a human would. It's the most fragile option and we save it for when there's no other — we explain why in what RPA is and when it makes sense.

Any of the three is a perfectly doable project; the key is choosing the right path for each system, which is part of the diagnosis in any custom software project.

Checklist: the questions to ask your software vendor

Before signing (or renewing) with any software vendor, send them these questions in writing:

• Does the system have a documented, public API? Can you send me the link to the documentation?
• What operations does it allow: read-only (query data) or also write (load vouchers, update stock)?
• Does API access have an additional cost, or is it included in my license?
• Does it emit webhooks (automatic real-time notifications) when something happens, or can you only query it? The difference matters, and we explain it in what a webhook is.
• Are there usage limits (queries per minute) that could throttle a high-volume integration?
• If I leave tomorrow, can I export all my data in a standard format?

If the vendor dodges these questions or answers "that's not possible," take it as valuable information: you're measuring how captive you are to that software.

How much an API integration costs and how long it takes

Reference ranges for LATAM in 2026, assuming documented APIs:

• Simple integration, two systems, one-directional flow (e-commerce orders into the management system): USD 1,000-4,000, 2 to 4 weeks.
• Two-way integration with business logic (stock and prices synced in both directions, per-channel rules): USD 4,000-8,000, 4 to 8 weeks.
• Integration hub (three or more systems connected through an orchestrator in the middle): USD 8,000-15,000, 2 to 3 months.

Two factors move the price more than any other: the quality of each API's documentation and the number of edge cases in your operation (what happens with an order canceled halfway through? with a duplicate customer?). And a budgeting tip: set aside 10% to 20% per year for maintenance — platforms update their APIs and someone has to keep up with those changes so the integration doesn't go stale.

When it's NOT worth integrating by API

• If you're going to replace the system within a year, don't invest in integrating it: the integration dies with it.
• If the data flow is minimal (ten records a month), exporting and importing by hand can be perfectly reasonable.
• If neither system has an API or data access, the cost of the alternative paths can exceed that of modernizing one of the two.
• If both systems' data is dirty, integrating duplicates and errors only spreads them faster. Clean first, connect later.

Connect what you already have, in weeks

The practical takeaway: before you budget a migration or a new system, find out whether what you need is an integration. It usually costs a fraction, doesn't interrupt your operation, and ships in weeks. At Deepyze we do exactly that for companies in Argentina and LATAM: we survey your systems, tell you what can be connected, and build it at a fixed price agreed upfront, with a team that works in your time zone. Tell us which systems you want to connect and within 24 hours you'll get a concrete proposal with scope, timeline, and cost.