Boomi vs Relay.app

Boomi is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) from Boomi, LP, headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Rick Nucci founded it in 2000, its cloud integration service launched in 2007, Dell bought it in 2010, and Francisco Partners and TPG acquired it from Dell in 2021 for about $4 billion. Steve Lucas has been chairman and CEO since 2022. It connects applications, data and APIs across cloud and on-premise systems for more than 30,000 customers, by its own count.

The platform covers low-code integration with a large connector library and runtimes that can run in Boomi's cloud or on your own servers, B2B/EDI, event streams, Flow for low-code apps, and managed file transfer from the 2025 Thru acquisition. API Management grew through the 2024 purchases of Mashery and APIIDA's business, Data Hub handles master data, and Data Integration (from Rivery) adds ELT and CDC. Agentstudio and Agent Control Plane build and govern AI agents with MCP tools. Pricing is a $99/month pay-as-you-go tier plus usage, or annual editions quoted by sales.

Boomi fits mid-size and large IT teams with hybrid estates of ERP, CRM and legacy systems. It is complex for business users, edition pricing is opaque, and Zapier or Make are far simpler for SaaS-to-SaaS automation. Workato targets business-led automation, while Fivetran and Matillion focus on warehouse ELT.

In March 2026 Boomi was named a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for iPaaS for the 12th year in a row, placed highest for Ability to Execute. Prototype on the 30-day trial or pay-as-you-go before negotiating an annual edition.

Relay.app was a workflow automation tool built around a simple observation: many real business processes cannot be fully automated because a person needs to approve, review or add information at some point. Relay let teams build automations that connected apps like Zapier or Make, but with first-class human-in-the-loop steps that paused a workflow, assigned a task to a teammate and continued once it was done. The service shut down in September 2026, and its Free, Professional and Team plans are no longer offered.

Workflows were built in a clean visual editor with triggers and actions across popular tools such as Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana and calendar apps. Human steps included approvals, manual data entry, review of AI output and assignments with due dates and reminders. AI steps, powered by leading language models, could summarize meeting notes, extract structured data from emails or documents, categorize requests and draft replies, without users managing their own API keys. Templates covered common processes such as client onboarding, content approval and meeting follow-ups.

Relay.app appealed to small and mid-sized teams in operations, marketing, sales and agencies that wanted automation with oversight and an approachable interface. Former users now need a replacement: Zapier has by far the largest app catalog, Make is cheaper and more flexible for complex branching at volume, and n8n can be self-hosted for technical teams who want full control.