Integration partnerships
Integration Partnerships That Share Revenue
Two products that sell to the same users build into each other, the shared user gets the whole job done in one place, and the revenue the integration creates is split automatically. Ordana handles the matching, the plan, the contract, the tracking and the payouts — you write the integration.
An integration partnership is an agreement between two software companies to build into each other's products, so a customer they share can finish more of their job without leaving either app. That is the technical half, and it is the half everybody writes about.
The commercial half is where they die. As the practice stands, integration partners are usually paid nothing at all — referral partners see roughly 10–20% of first-year revenue and resellers 20–40% of ongoing revenue, while technology and integration partners co-market instead of sharing revenue. An integration nobody is paid for is an integration nobody maintains, and that is why so many go quiet a few months after the launch post.
Ordana structures the other kind: the integration is the revenue source. A signed multi-party agreement fixes what each side ships, which revenue is in scope, the split and the term — and every in-scope Stripe charge settles automatically out of the account that collected it. Each side keeps its own users, its own pricing and its own Stripe account; money is never pooled.
The four gates for a partner worth integrating with
Finding a partner is a qualification problem, not a discovery problem. Fail one gate and the integration will not earn, however good the logo looks.
Gate 1
Same customers
Not customers who resemble each other — the same people. If a founder can name three accounts that would use both products, the gate is passed.
Gate 2
Same job
Both products exist to help finish one larger job. Two tools a customer happens to own are not partners; two tools serving one outcome are.
Gate 3
A different step
A partner at the same step of the job is a competitor in a partner's clothing. The value is in the step you don't cover.
Gate 4
Something to plug into
Each side needs a surface the other can act through: an app UI, an API, an AI or agent surface, or control over its own checkout.
Every part of the play
SaaS integration partnerships
SaaS Integration Partnerships That Share Revenue
Find the SaaS tools already selling to your users, integrate into each other's products, and split the revenue the integration creates — on a signed agreement, paid out automatically.
Integration partnership revenue share
How Much Revenue Share Should an Integration Partner Get?
What integration partners actually get paid, the models worth copying, and how to make a split enforceable instead of a promise in an email thread.
How to find integration partners
Integration Partner Criteria: Who Should You Integrate With?
The four questions that decide whether a partner is worth integrating with — and why account-mapping tools can't answer them for a product with a few hundred users.
Integration partnership agreement
SaaS Partnership Agreement: The Six Clauses That Matter
The clauses that decide whether an integration survives its first outage — scope, split, support, exit — and why most integration deals never get one.
Cross-sell integrations
Cross-Sell Integrations: Sell More to the Users You Have
You don't need more traffic. You need more worth buying for the traffic you already have — and the fastest way to get it is a partner's product inside yours.
Partnerships without a BD hire
Integration Partnerships Without a Partnerships Team
The standard advice is to wait for product-market fit and hire a partnerships lead. Here's what is right about that, and what it costs you to believe at ten users a week.
Co-selling for startups
Co-Selling for Startups Without a Sales Team
Enterprise co-selling maps two CRMs and lets two sales teams work an overlapping account. Without a sales team, the same idea has to live in the product instead.
Integration partnerships for AI products
Integration Partnerships for AI Products and Agents
An agent that can call a partner's capability is worth more than one that can only describe it. The tool surface is the integration surface.
Frequently asked questions
What is an integration partnership?
An integration partnership is an agreement between two software companies to build into each other's products, so a customer they share can finish more of their job without leaving either app. The technical half is an integration. The commercial half — who is paid what, by whom, for how long — is the half that decides whether it survives, and it is usually missing.
What are examples of integration partnerships?
Familiar ones: Calendly creates a Zoom link for every meeting it books, and Slack lets people share and preview Google Drive files without leaving the chat. Each product does one step of a job the other's users already have. Between small SaaS it looks the same at a smaller scale, like a scheduling tool adding another startup's no-show checker, and the part worth agreeing up front is the commercial one: who charges the user and what share the partner keeps.
Do integration partners get paid?
Usually not. Published partner-program benchmarks put referral partners at roughly 10–20% of first-year revenue and resellers at 20–40% of ongoing revenue, while technology and integration partners typically share no revenue at all — they co-market and co-sell instead. That is the single best predictor of an integration quietly rotting a few months after the launch post: nobody is paid to keep it working.
How is this different from an affiliate or referral program?
Being paid per transaction is not what makes something an affiliate network. Two other things do: it is one-time, so the relationship ends at the handoff and neither side cares what happens next; and it is one-directional, so value only ever flows one way. An integration partnership on Ordana is perpetual for its term and reciprocal — each member is the host in one integration and the partner in the next. And an affiliate link moves a lead, while an integration changes what you can sell.
Do I need product-market fit first?
For most partnership types, yes — resellers and channel programs need staffing a small team does not have. The cross-sell integration is the exception, because it does not need a funnel to work: it raises what each existing account can buy. If your problem is that a small number of engaged users are not worth enough each, that is the one to run early.
What does Ordana actually do, and what do I do?
Ordana matches the partners, drafts the integration plan, generates the contract, verifies identities, tracks the revenue and pays out the splits automatically through Stripe. You write the integration. The code ships in your own codebase on your own schedule, and Ordana never asks for repository access — the generated integration prompt, the SDK and the revenue tag are not built yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
What does it cost?
Joining is free, with unlimited collaborations. Ordana takes a flat 10% platform fee off the top of collaboration revenue, before the split, so the revenue-share percentage applies to the remaining 90%. There is no subscription.
Find the products next door
Free to join. Ordana proposes the partners and what each one would integrate; you decide who is in. There is no cost until revenue actually flows.
Get started free