This is the classic marketing technology debate: do you want the "best" tool for each function, or do you want tools that work well together? For enterprise teams with dedicated specialists, best-of-breed might make sense. For small business owners wearing multiple hats, integration usually wins.
Here's what best-of-breed typically looks like in practice: Buffer for social scheduling, ConvertKit for email, Canva for design, Google Analytics for tracking, Airtable for planning, and Slack for team communication. That's six different logins, six different interfaces, six different billing cycles, and zero integration between them.
All-in-one platforms like Enji take a different approach. Instead of being the absolute best at any single function, they're really good at the core functions and excel at making them work together. Your content strategy informs your social posts, which feed data back to your analytics dashboard.
The hidden costs of best-of-breed include: time spent switching between tools, manual data entry between systems, subscription management overhead, and the mental energy of remembering which tool does what. For small businesses, these "soft costs" often outweigh any feature advantages.
That said, there are exceptions. If 80% of your marketing happens on one channel and you need advanced features there, a specialized tool might be worth the complexity. But for most small businesses doing multi-channel marketing, the workflow benefits of integration beat the feature benefits of specialization.
The practical test: if you're spending more time managing your tools than using them to market, you probably need more integration, not more specialization.
