With Affix, companies can integrate with dozens of HR/Payroll systems via a vertically integrated API – with access to any system, endpoint, or use case. This allows customers to get access to the data they need to build innovative products, serve their customers in a seamless and secure way, and integrate with multiple providers with just one integration.

A vertically integrated API is a single API into dozens of different systems. Unlike traditional Unified APIs or API aggregators, such as Merge and Kombo, which aggregate the publicly-provided APIs of the underlying systems, a vertically - integrated API, such as Affix, builds its own API into these underlying systems – whether these systems have a public API or not. This enables unfettered access to systems, endpoints, and use cases that aren’t available via the public API, and by virtue, are inaccessible to traditional Unified APIs. 

Affix is an employer side integration. Anything an HR or Payroll admin can see in their cloud software, is data that can be sent via API, with as much or as little data shared as possible (i.e. custom scopes).

Affix is an OAuth 2.1 application that allows developers to access certain data collected from HR/payroll systems, without developers needing to manage integrations or collect login credentials from users for these third party systems. Affix uses both official and internal developer APIs from the providers themselves to collect data from certain third parties while that data is en-route to be displayed on web pages.

No. As discussed above, Any cloud system, even if it doesn’t have a publicly available API, still has an API that connects the systems’ back-end to its front-end. Affix uncovers this internal API, and integrates directly into it, rather than using the API of the underlying provider. That being said, if, for whatever reason, you’d like to use the standard underlying API, we also have an "official" mode that enables that.  

Affix is designed to be extremely intuitive. Your customers will click a button in your dashboard that links to the Affix connect flow. Affix will ask them to enter their credentials for their payroll or HRIS. They connect once, providing long-lived access. This will take them less than 20 seconds. You can see it in action here.

Yes. When your potential customer has their entire company’s data backed up into one system, it can be pretty difficult to make them switch. Affix can make data migration easy, allowing new customers to port their data over from their old provider with a click of a button, and onboard into your product seamlessly.

This can significantly decrease time-to-value, and, depending on your industry – your competitors’ switching cost along with it.

Integrating Affix is easy. If you have a developer that is familiar with Oath, they should be able to add it in an hour or so. If you already use OAuth integrations, such as Plaid, it’s very easy to integrate Affix, as there are familiar paths to follow. 

It's on your team to know how you'll use the data to enhance your product. This may take a little longer, maybe a few days to a week, depending on your system and how clear your product team is on where the data is going.

We have a sandbox token publicly on our docs that your engineers can start using and integrating right now: https://docs.affixapi.com/#topic-sandbox-keys-developer-mode

‍We also have SDKs in whichever language you use for your back end. For the front end, we have a drop-in React library– you just add it to your dependency, which gives you a button to allow users to connect their HR/Payroll system. We also have an html snippet you can add to your page. 

In addition to our sandbox, we also have a pre-production environment, as well as a starter kit to provide code examples. 

We provide all the resources to make integrating Affix easy.

Yes! We have both a development environment (also referred to as pre-prod or staging environment) and a production environment, as well as a sandbox. Additionally we have demo accounts for several systems which you can test.

The JSON Web Token (JWT) we issue has the scopes that our customer authorised. Our Authoriser service validates that 1 ) the JWT is correctly signed and 2) the JWTs contain the scopes to authorise the endpoint.

Yes! Use your own account to test our system or use one of our demo accounts. You can also use our sandbox.

Yes. Our uptime is between 99%  - 100% for the past three months, depending on the specific service. You can follow it here: https://status.affixapi.com/ 

For the sandbox, you can make POST requests and get the data you passed back in. Other than that, the sandbox data is not stored. We use a seed, so the data stays consistent across calls, but you cannot modify it and later retrieve it. 

We can provide you with a demo account to certain providers (Sage, Humaans, Staffology, etc) which will store state (your created and modified objects). You can create and modify these in demo accounts of live providers, as you wish.

Additionally, feel free to bring an account on whichever system we support - that can be your sandbox, and you don’t even have to let us know

You call our API. When you make a call to us, that turns into a live request to the provider. There is no “data sync/synchronisation process,” like other unified APIs. However, we do have webhooks. In this case, you don’t need to call our API for changes –  we’ll let you know when something’s been changed. 

You can get data back at any interval you’d like, and even in real-time. Our system is designed differently from other API aggregators’ like Merge and Kombo. We don’t store data and we don’t have a synchronisation process. You call our endpoint and you get the data back in real-time, or you can enable webhooks and we can let you know when something’s been changed. We can update you at any interval or in real-time.

No. We charge based on employer (token) connection per month. You can call our API as much as you need.

You can think of Affix in two buckets: preventing costs, and increasing potential revenue. 

First, the costs: If you were to build integrations yourself, without a third party like Affix, you may have to spend months negotiating integrations with the HR/Payroll provider. You’ll then spend weeks of valuable developer hours, just on a single integration. That integration will likely have some issues, so you’ll also spend hours maintaining it every month as well. If you don’t build integrations, and simply go with CSVs full of data, you're spending valuable time ingesting and uploading this data into your system. Not to mention the security risk of sending data over CSV, or the costs of errors from data entry…After all that, you may not have access to all the data you might want, because the underlying provider limits access to it. 

Secondly, on revenue: Oftentimes, integrations are a key reason as to why a buyer chooses their software partner. If you don't integrate with their existing systems, and your competitor does, don’t be surprised when you lose out on that customer. You may also have a desire to move into new markets, or build new features– all of which could enhance your revenue opportunities– but you’re prevented from doing so by lacking the necessary integrations, or the necessary endpoints. With Affix, you can accelerate your integrations, and claim those revenue opportunities before your competitors do. 

Lastly, using Affix to optimize onboarding can help you remove the perceived switching cost that potential customers might see when considering whether to leave their current HR/payroll system and to come use yours. Removing your competitors switching cost and allowing new customers to switch in just a few clicks can unlock entire markets that were  previously locked up.

We have a disconnect endpoint. This will wipe all the data in the token.

Our system is designed differently from API aggregators’ like Merge/Kombo. We don’t store data and we don’t have a synchronisation process. You call our endpoint and you get the data back in real-time. When you make a call to us, that turns into a live request to the provider.

We also have webhooks - in which case we will let you know when something’s been changed, rather than you calling our endpoints. How this works is we configure JWTs to run at a certain interval, store data in a temporary cache (with TTL set); detect if there’s been a diff, and then send you the diff’d records. That interval can be 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, once a day, or any other interval you’d like. 

Yes. Affix is ISO27001 compliant, and we’re currently undergoing our ISO ISO27001 audit to receive our certification, which should be by February 10, 2024 at the latest.

No. Affix does not scrape copyrighted data like photographs or text paragraphs for reproduction. The data collected by Affix wouldn't be subject to copyright as it doesn't meet the standard of originality, creativity, and authorship.

Affix doesn't infringe on database rights, because the data is factual or non-original.

No. Affix operates as an intermediary between the end user, the HR/payroll providers, and our customer. Any action taken by an HR/Payroll system would be against Affix, not its customers, and would be about a policy violation, rather than a legal one.

Affix is designed to avoid detection in the first place. From our experience, if the providers notice the activity, the most aggressive action they take is to increase the technical challenges Affix needs to make in order to access the data, such as bot challenges, or attempting to ban IP ranges of Affix’s servers.  Between the resources needed to do so, and the risk of churning their customers, the payroll providers are not too likely to, let alone discover it’s happening to begin with. However, even if they were to, that’s something Affix is experienced with and would be able to overcome in short-order.

Yes, Affix is GDPR compliant, does not violate copyright or trademark rights, and is built with security at the forefront of design decisions. While the areas of law are complex, Affix has barristers registered in England, Wales, and Ireland on its advisory council, is in good legal standing, and operates with due diligence. 

Yes– Affix has public indemnity insurance, cyber insurance, directors and officers insurance, and employer liability insurance as well. 

At Affix, our success is directly aligned with our customers. As such, we believe in fair and transparent terms. For any partnership we enter, we establish mutual agreements on pricing that provide protections from unfair price hikes, providing for long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships.

At Affix, our success is directly aligned with our customers. As such, we believe in fair and transparent terms. For any partnership we enter, we establish mutual agreements on pricing that provide protections from unfair price hikes, providing for long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships.
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Affix is designed from the ground up by an engineer to be the API that an engineer would want to use. It provides access to systems, data, and use cases not found anywhere else. It's intuitive, it just works, and it gives you everything you could need such as canaries, industry standard endpoints, and webhooks.

And, it's secure and compliant. Affix is serverless and doesn't store sensitive employment data. If you enable webhooks, there's a brief cache, but it's heavily encrypted. We are GDPR compliant, and ISO 27001 certified.

Lastly we provide free, no risk trials. No set up fee. No fee per API call. With pricing that fits your use case and the value our integrations provide to you. ‍

The product is live now. Claim your place for onboarding by booking a discovery call with our team below.