What is Sequin?
Sequin is a new platform for integrations. We remove all the limitations of HTTP APIs by letting developers interface with third-party services like Salesforce or HubSpot using SQL.
The Sequin platform is powered by a Postgres database. The platform consists of a few major components that make building integrations fast and easy:
1. Data mapping: Select the API collections and fields you want to work with, like Salesforce Contacts or HubSpot Companies. Specify how you want these collections and fields to translate into tables and columns in your Postgres database.
2. Sync: Sequin runs a real-time sync process that pulls data from the API and into your Postgres database. Any time a record changes in the API, that change is synced to your database.
3. Read: With your data in Postgres, you can now read your API data with low-latency, high availability, no rate limits, and all the expressiveness of SQL.
4. Write: Sequin intercepts mutations you make to records in your database. Sequin applies those mutations to the API and your database at the same time.
Sequin's write strategy means that all your mutations are validated with the API first. And that your database never contains changes not in the API. With Sequin, the upstream API is always the primary source of truth, which avoids reconciliation issues.
When you build with Sequin, you'll never need to worry about all the complexity that comes with API integrations, like:
- Rate limits
- API queries
- Pagination
- Background jobs
- Cache invalidation
- Out-of-sync data
At the moment, we support HubSpot, Salesforce, and Airtable.
Getting started
Most developers are up and querying their data in no time. See our platform-specific guides to get a step-by-step walk-through:
Key features
Backfills
After you setup your sync, Sequin will backfill all the collections from the API you're syncing to your database. This means your database contains a copy of all the data present in the API.
Learn more about backfills.
Real-time sync
Sequin runs a real-time sync process to pull data out of the API and into your database. By replicating API data to your database, you can now read that data without limits.
For most APIs and most collections, changes in the API propagate to your database in less than a minute.
Learn more about our sync process.
Postgres Proxy
You'll connect to your database via Sequin's Postgres Proxy.
When you make inserts, updates, and deletes to your Sequin-synced tables, Sequin's Postgres Proxy applies those changes to the API first. If the API accepts those changes, they are applied to your database. This means the API is always the source of truth and your database never has changes that are out-of-sync.
As important, your database changes are validated with the API. This means API-specific rules are applied to your database changes, synchronously.
Learn more about writing through the Postgres Proxy.
Token management
Don't worry about OAuth, refresh tokens, and expiries. If your code can query a database, it can query your API data.
Rate limit controls
You can apportion Sequin a specific allocation of your API rate limit. Don't write any rate limiting code or worry about handling 429s.
Schema management
Map API collections (e.g. Salesforce Contacts) to database tables (e.g. contacts). Sync all the columns or just a few.
If you want to add more tables or columns from the API to your database, you can add them with a few clicks. Sequin will migrate the tables for you and kick-off a backfill to make sure everything is populated correctly.
Sequin-hosted or self-hosted
To get started as fast as possible, Sequin can provision you a private database on a shared AWS RDS instance. This means you don't need to have Postgres in your stack to use Sequin.
Alternatively, connect Sequin to your existing Postgres database. Sequin supports tunneling to databases in a private VPC.
Not a shim layer
Importantly, Sequin is not a SQL shim layer to APIs. As long as a record is behind an HTTP API, its access is limited. You can't query it the way you like, as most HTTP APIs don't come close to SQL in expressiveness. Rate limits throttle access to it. And you have to guard against network issues.
Instead, your Sequin integration is powered by a real Postgres database. This means if it works with Postgres, it works with your Sequin integration.
Questions and support
Our docs won't be able to cover everything, so if you have any issues, don't hesitate to reach out. We'd love to hear what you're building.
