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API Development Services

We engineer modern API's that allow our customers to develop products and integrate services

We Construct Scalable and Secure APIs that Serve Your Users

Overview

As an API development company that specializes in software development, we’ve seen how excellent APIs can allow an application to grow by allowing other programs to easily communicate and scale. We’re here to walk you through what an API is and why using APIs are essential in today’s technology landscape.

What is an API?

Before we continue further, let’s define what an API is and what they allow companies to do. Short for “Application Programming Interface,” an API is a method or set of instructions for computer programs to communicate with each other.

APIs are the backbone and driving force of modern web-based applications. They allow applications to integrate with each other, and for users to efficiently make requests and receive data from back-end applications.

API's use cases

Whether you’re using a mobile app to allow customers to order a pair of shoes, or have a website that allows customers to book flights, you’re likely requesting data and information that’s delivered from another source through one or more APIs. Some of these APIs may also be custom, allowing a service like a flight booking website to deliver a unique experience to their customers.

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What is Custom API Development?

We’re an experienced back-end and API development company that has worked across many diverse product types and use cases.

Whether you need to build an API to serve content, integrate with another program or application, serve external customers, or support microservices within a larger application and product, our API development services can help you design, plan, and build the architecture and functionality for your API.

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Reasons to develop APIs

Developing an API can be a strategic move for a company that wants to serve multiple applications or use cases with a single back-end development project. Companies that benefit the most from developing a custom API generally have one or more of the following use cases or needs for applications and software:

Develop front-end applications that require extensive amounts of data

Developing mobile, web, or desktop applications

Leverage modern front-end technologies

Sync and distribute data with performance in several types of applications

Features, functionality, and integrations for other software programs and customers

While it is not an exhaustive list of reasons to develop a custom API for your business’s use case, this should give you a good idea of some of the core reasons to hire a trusted development company.

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API Architecture Considerations

As an API development company with various API development services, we help companies think through and strategize API architectures and features to accomplish their unique development needs. Here are some important aspects and features to think through when considering building a custom API:

Authentication

Security is a top priority when developing a custom API. Regardless of your API’s use case, building an authentication and permissions layer into your API is a great place to start. API authentication plays a critical role in API development, and your vendor should use trusted industry-standard services like O-auth when developing APIs for customers.

Permissions

Rate Limiting

Rate limiting should be a consideration from the start of any custom API. Rate limiting is the ability to restrict the number of requests made to your API at once or by individual users. Removing the ability for a developer to extract all your essential data at once or to crash your application through too many heavy requests, among other possible mistakes, will benefit your API’s stability as well as your customer’s experience.

Performance

Depending on the API’s functionality use case, performance and response time may be even more important. APIs being used for real-time information, such as stock or flight prices, will need to be tightly optimized for speed. API performance is best understood by its response time. In general, API response times are measured in milliseconds, and a performant API response time is generally in the range of 20-60 milliseconds, depending on the use case.

Scalability

Scalability refers to an API’s ability to serve a large increase in requests at once without suffering outages or even performance challenges. A scalable API should be able to serve hundreds of users at one time and also hundreds of thousands of users at a different time with a minimal negative impact on performance. We develop robust scalable APIs using sound architecture and dynamic cloud infrastructure, alongside our other development best practices.

Analytics

Analytics and logging, while often overlooked, are important parts of any reputable API development company’s development process. When your API returns an error, a user should be able to understand what happened, and a developer should be able to determine the fix. Creating a logging system for your API will help your team understand issues and fix them before they create issues for your users.

Documentation

Depending on your API’s audience and plans for maintenance and ongoing development, documentation will allow other developers to maintain and customize it in the future. Good API documentation should describe how requests should be made, including both standardized and custom formats. We take the time to create useful and clear documentation that ensures others can understand and work on the APIs we build.

A powerful and versatile means to connect applications

Types of API’s and Use Cases

API’s have a wide range of use cases and corresponding complexity.

Accomplish any task

APIs vary from simple to complex. A very simple API may access a simple database and return simple data in a standardized format using a JSON structure. A more complex API or series of APIs and their services will require multiple connections and sets of data that then must be brought together. An example of a potentially more complex API system is an application that lets you purchase a flight and then automates, tracks, and updates you about your luggage’s status once you’ve checked in for your flight.

Develop scalable business models and B2B services

API-focused companies are often categorized as offering infrastructure as a service (IAAS). Notable IAAS companies include Stripe (payment processing), Plaid (bank connections), and other companies that take the development legwork out of tedious and time-consuming yet frequently built operations. These companies have developed their APIs to streamline operations for other companies to access, consume, and integrate into their own software.

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Customized solutions

The value of APIs

APIs allow companies and their customers to access valuable data. An example of an API product could be a payroll API developed for companies to consume and customize into their own payroll workflows. With a product such as a payroll API, the customer would be able to leverage the payroll API to run payroll operations such as tax calculations and payments instead of developing customized payroll software for themselves.

Efficiency and innovation

API development companies spend years developing integrations, features, and edge-case support so their customers experience easy integration, scalability, and frictionless use with complex flows and customization. Other companies that develop APIs to serve only consumers like their customers or their internal teams can spend much less time on development and can get fast functionality on the timescale of months.

Looking for a Custom API Development Company?

Whether you are a consumer products company, software company, or B2B services company, we have the API development services and experience to define, develop, and deliver custom API solutions for your use case.

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