And why your partner and product teams are pushing so hard for it
Every executive team I talk to is wrestling with the same dilemma going into 2026:
You need to do more with tighter budgets, you need cleaner attribution, and you need strategies that actually move bottom-line metrics. But you’re also staring at twenty competing internal requests for ecosystem funding: more integrations, a better marketplace, a real developer portal, partner enablement… the list is always long.
And the question you’re asking is fair:
Does any of this really impact revenue, retention, or efficiency?
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: as AI accelerates software consolidation and buying behavior evolves, ecosystem strength is quickly becoming a moat. The companies with the most robust integrations, the most discoverable solutions, and the easiest developer experience win customer trust faster and keep it longer.
This is the part most exec teams underestimate:
Ecosystem investment is not “partner marketing.” It’s product strategy. It’s retention strategy. It’s efficiency strategy.
Let’s break down why.
Customer behavior has shifted, and your ecosystem is now part of the product
Buyers don’t just want integrations. They expect them. They evaluate them before talking to sales. They use them to justify switching costs internally. And they rely on them to reduce complexity in their tech stack.
That’s why the strongest SaaS companies now treat their ecosystem as a core growth engine. When customers can clearly see what you integrate with, how it works, and how it helps them get their job done, three things happen:
1. They convert faster because integrations reduce friction in buying decisions.
2. They adopt more features because integrations increase product stickiness.
3. They expand more because ecosystem breadth unlocks new use cases.
This is where a partner marketplace comes in. It’s not just a directory. It’s the place where your customer sees the bigger story:
“Here’s everything this product can do when connected to the tools I already use.”
If your integrations are buried in help docs or scattered across landing pages, you’re leaving revenue and trust on the table.
Your internal teams are tired of duct-taping this together
Candidly, the ecosystem asks you’re seeing from your partner and product teams aren’t random. They’re telling you that the current state isn’t scalable.
Most organizations grow their ecosystem tools the same way they grow their tech debt: reactively. A one-off page here, a spreadsheet there, a form for partners, a Notion doc for integration requirements… and suddenly you have five teams trying to manage mission-critical infrastructure in tools never designed for it.
This creates two big issues:
1. Efficiency bottlenecks
Partner ops, PMs, and engineers spend hours onboarding partners, updating integration listings, chasing missing assets, coordinating releases, and manually supporting external developers.
2. Slow integration velocity
If external developers can’t self-serve documentation, submit integration builds, and track review cycles, everything bottlenecks on your internal team.
The result is fewer integrations launched, slower adoption, and less expansion revenue — the exact opposite of what executive teams need right now.
A proper developer portal changes this equation.
It lets external teams build on your APIs without hand-holding, so you multiply your product roadmap without multiplying your headcount.
Why ignoring ecosystem infrastructure is becoming an existential threat
Here’s the truth no one likes saying out loud:
In the AI era, every SaaS product is competing on two vectors — core value and connected value.
If your integrations are limited, hard to discover, or slow to improve, customers feel that as product limitations. They evaluate alternatives faster. They bring up gaps in renewal conversations. They ask for one-off integrations that crush your roadmap.
Meanwhile, your competitors are quietly building ecosystems that do four critical things:
- Make their product “plug and play” in a customer’s stack
- Increase activation, adoption, and stickiness
- Reduce support debt and implementation headaches
- Attract third-party builders who expand the product for free
This is why ecosystem maturity is becoming a board-level conversation.
It directly affects renewal risk, expansion revenue, and customer lifetime value.
And the moat is widening: companies with strong marketplaces and mature developer experiences are pulling ahead faster because they compound value across every team — product, sales, CS, partnerships, support.
So what should a 2026 ecosystem investment actually look like?
Executives don’t want tools. They want outcomes.
Your partner teams will likely come to you with some version of this proposal:
Two pillars of ecosystem maturity:
1. A Partner Marketplace
- Makes integrations discoverable where buyers and customers already are
- Reduces sales cycle friction
- Drives adoption and expansion
- Gives leadership visibility into what’s working and what isn’t
2. A Developer Portal
- Gives external developers everything they need to build without friction
- Increases integration velocity without adding headcount
- Reduces manual support and partner ops burden
- Expands product value even when internal engineering is at capacity
Together, they form a unified ecosystem engine:
easy to explore, easy to build, easy to adopt.
And that’s ultimately what drives measurable ROI — not the number of partners you have, but the infrastructure that turns ecosystem demand into actual revenue.
If you're evaluating 2026 ecosystem budgets, start here
Before you approve or deny any ecosystem request, ask your team these questions:
- How many integrations do customers find on their own?
- How many integrations are stalled because of internal bottlenecks?
- How dependent is the product on manual processes to support ecosystem growth?
- How often do buyers or renewals mention integrations as a blocker?
- What revenue could we unlock with better visibility and faster integration delivery?
If those answers aren’t clear, that’s your signal.
This is exactly why we created the 2026 Ecosystem Budget Guide — to help partner, product, and exec teams speak the same language and quantify ecosystem ROI with confidence.
Whether you’re validating a proposal or building one, you’ll get the frameworks, metrics, and planning models that top SaaS companies are using to justify ecosystem spend next year.
