Today’s digital classrooms rely on more tools than ever. According to the EdTech Top 40 report by Instructure, the 22-23 school year had 2,591 edtech tools used per district. Since the 19-20 school year, that number hasn’t dropped below 2,200 tools per district. That translates to roughly 42 unique edtech tools accessed per student and per educator in a single year.

That’s a crowded ecosystem for teachers, students, and IT teams to manage. This explosion of technology is also one reason why more schools and districts are requesting integrations, and why LMS integration is becoming a core part of many products’ strategies. LMS integrations can typically support 4 main types of functionality:

  1. Single Sign-On (SSO): Authenticates users based on existing credentials to provide a simpler login experience.
  2. Rostering: Automates the creation of classes, enrollments, and other student data, eliminating the manual work of account setup.
  3. Assignment Sync: Pulls assignments from one platform into another so users can access everything in one place.
  4. Grade Passback: Pushes grades back into the LMS, eliminating the need to copy and paste them manually.

Ensuring that student data is accurate and updated across all systems is one of the most challenging tasks that learning institutions face. For third-party edtech products, smoothing out  that challenge is a major value-add. Entering this data separately for each system or application is time-consuming and error-prone. LMS integrations allow data to flow seamlessly between systems, reducing human error and giving time back to users.

Competitive Advantage for Edtech Products

Beyond the obvious benefits to end users, integrations also benefit the products themselves. In many districts, especially large ones, the presence (or absence) of LMS integrations can directly impact whether a product is chosen. While 42 tools per user might sound like a lot, it’s still a finite list. Products that integrate more deeply with LMS platforms often win more adoption and stay relevant longer.

A Smoother Sales Process

It is understood that products with integrations experience a more streamlined sales process. Imagine two products that offer the same features. If one integrates with an LMS and the other doesn’t, the integrated product can immediately check an important box on a district’s requirements list — often making procurement faster and easier. Though there isn’t any “hard evidence” to support this idea, the product with integrations would expect to have a smoother sales process since it can just say “yes” to the learning institution about integrations.

Higher Product Retention

Another major benefit of LMS integration is increased product “stickiness”, or product retention. Products that integrate deeply into an LMS become harder to replace because schools rely on those integrated functionalities. Products without similar integration capabilities are often easier to remove or replace, especially if competitors offer a more seamless experience. If a product isn’t connected to anything, experiences more data errors from manual inputs, or wastes more time for users, it really doesn’t make sense for a learning institution to use it.

How LMS Integrations Work

At the heart of every LMS integration is a network of APIs (application programming interfaces). These APIs are what make it possible for third-party products — like assessment platforms, curriculum tools, or classroom apps — to securely authenticate users, exchange data, and trigger actions within the LMS. Instead of treating the LMS as a closed system, APIs open it up (in a secure way), allowing your product to become part of the daily workflow that teachers, students, and administrators already use.

When a third-party app integrates with an LMS, the integration is handled through an API. APIs define the “rules” for how different systems talk to each other. It also enables secure communication between systems without exposing sensitive information.

Strategic Considerations for Your Integration Approach

Once you’ve decided that LMS integration is the right move for your product, the next question becomes how to approach it. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy — the right decision depends on your company’s technical resources, growth plans, and long-term goals. Thinking strategically about how you build, scale, and maintain integrations early on can save time, money, and customer frustration down the road.

a) Scalability
Supporting a one-off connection to Canvas is very different from supporting dozens of LMS platforms across hundreds of districts. Each LMS has its own API structure, data model, quirks, and compliance requirements, and districts often expect support for these systems without knowing how complex supporting all of these systems at once might be.

Without a scalability plan, what starts as a simple project can turn into a significant engineering drain. Thinking about scalability from the start ensures your integration strategy can support future growth instead of slowing it down.

b) Maintenance & Compliance
Building an integration isn’t a one-and-done task — it’s an ongoing responsibility. LMS vendors frequently update their APIs, add new functionality, or deprecate old endpoints, which means your engineering team will need to monitor changes and update your code to maintain compatibility.

Compliance is another critical consideration. Because integrations handle sensitive student data, they must comply with data privacy regulations such as FERPA in the U.S. or GDPR. Maintaining secure data handling practices, ensuring encryption in transit and at rest, and building clear data deletion workflows are all non-negotiable parts of any integration strategy.

c) Integration Roadmap Planning
Finally, your integration approach should align with your product roadmap and customer growth stages. Early-stage products might prioritize a single LMS integration to meet the needs of a key pilot district. As the product matures, supporting additional platforms, adding more syncing capabilities, and expanding into deeper functionality features can help unlock new growth opportunities.

Integration Methods

While many LMS platforms provide APIs, there are different methods on how to connect to these APIs, which impact your integration strategy overall.

Standard Integration

  • One way to connect is through popular protocols like LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability). These standards define which data — like user identities, rosters, assignments, or grades — should be formatted and exchanged from different LMS providers.

Direct Integration

  • A second method includes direct API integrations. These are connections built directly from the edtech product to the LMS. By doing so, the integration can be more customized and tailored to fit the product’s data needs, but it will also have to define how to collect data from each LMS when trying to scale across different systems.

Unified Integration

  • A third option to integrate is by using a unified API (read: aggregator), like Edlink. A unified API is building one integration to get access to several connections across systems. By using an aggregator, edtech products have a unified way to access information across several systems without being limited in ways through using a standard. At the same time, the aggregator might not be as customizable as a direct integration.

Conclusion

Integrating with an LMS isn’t just about meeting institutional demands — it’s a strategic decision that can shape the long-term success of your product. Beyond improving user experience and simplifying sales, LMS integration ensures that student data flows securely and accurately across systems, aligns your product with district expectations, and positions your platform as part of the daily classroom workflow.

The right integration strategy — whether you build in-house, partner for scale, or leverage a unified API — also future-proofs your product as technology, standards, and compliance requirements evolve. And in a market where hundreds of tools compete for space in the same classroom, the products that can sync seamlessly, scale reliably, and evolve quickly are the ones that will stay top of mind for districts.

*Updated | 9.26.25

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