A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API is a web service that uses a highly structured, XML-based messaging protocol to exchange information between applications. Unlike more flexible architectural styles, SOAP is a formal protocol with strict standards for communication, often defined by a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) contract. This structure makes it a reliable choice for enterprise-level applications, especially in sectors where security and data integrity are paramount.
SOAP's rigid structure provides significant advantages for specific use cases, particularly in enterprise environments. Its protocol-driven nature ensures that all parties adhere to a strict contract, leading to predictable and reliable interactions.
Given its emphasis on security and transactional integrity, SOAP is the go-to choice for many enterprise-level applications. It excels in environments where stateful operations and formal contracts are non-negotiable. These use cases often involve sensitive data and complex, multi-step processes.
While both enable communication between applications, SOAP and REST follow fundamentally different philosophies.
Implementing a SOAP API requires careful planning to leverage its strengths in security and reliability. Adhering to established standards ensures interoperability and maintains the integrity of data exchanges, especially in enterprise settings.
SOAP's main security advantage is its built-in WS-Security standard. This specification provides end-to-end security, ensuring message integrity and confidentiality through digital signatures and encryption. This robust framework makes SOAP a trusted choice for transmitting sensitive data.
Beyond message protection, SOAP supports various authentication and authorization methods. These include username/password tokens and X.509 certificates for identity verification. This layered security is crucial for enterprise applications demanding strict access control and compliance.
Is SOAP still relevant in the age of REST?
Yes, especially in enterprise settings. Its robust security features and strict contracts are essential for financial, healthcare, and government systems where data integrity and reliability are non-negotiable. It remains the standard for many legacy and high-security integrations.
Can SOAP APIs use JSON instead of XML?
While technically possible, it's highly unconventional. SOAP is fundamentally designed around XML and its associated standards like WSDL and XSD for validation. Using JSON would undermine the protocol's core benefits and is not supported by most standard SOAP tooling.
Is SOAP always slower than REST?
Generally, yes. The verbosity of XML and the overhead of processing strict protocols make SOAP messages larger and slower than lightweight REST/JSON calls. This performance trade-off is accepted in exchange for SOAP's built-in reliability and security features.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
A landing page is a standalone web page created for a marketing campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking an ad or email link.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
“No Spam” is a commitment to sending only relevant, solicited messages. It means avoiding bulk, unwanted emails to respect the recipient's inbox.
Enrichment is the process of adding third-party data to your existing customer profiles to get a more complete picture of your leads.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
A System of Record (SoR) is the authoritative data source for a specific type of data. It acts as the single source of truth for an organization.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
A custom API integration is a bespoke connection between software, enabling them to communicate and share data to meet unique business requirements.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
Account management is the post-sales practice of building and nurturing long-term relationships with a company's most valuable clients.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
A lead generation funnel is a systematic process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of your brand to becoming qualified leads.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
A sales coach is a mentor who trains and guides sales reps to enhance their skills, boost performance, and ultimately close more deals effectively.
Webhooks are automated messages sent by an app when a specific event occurs. They push real-time data to another app's unique URL.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
Data appending is the process of adding new data fields to your existing database records to enrich and complete your information.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
ABM orchestration aligns marketing and sales actions across channels to deliver seamless, personalized experiences to high-value accounts.
Gamification applies game mechanics like points, badges, and leaderboards to non-game activities to boost engagement and motivate users.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
An account is a company or organization that you're targeting for sales. It can be a prospective, current, or even a past customer.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Logo retention is a key B2B metric that measures a company's ability to retain its customers, or 'logos,' over a specific period.
Customer centricity is a business approach that puts the customer at the heart of every decision, aiming to build loyalty and long-term value.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers, including upsells, downgrades, and churn.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
The lead qualification process is how you determine which prospects are most likely to become customers by evaluating them against specific criteria.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers into specific groups to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused B2B strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to target and convert high-value accounts.
Learn about B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
A sandbox is an isolated testing environment where new or untrusted code can be run safely without affecting the host device or network.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Firmographic data is information used to classify firms. It includes attributes like industry, employee count, location, and annual revenue.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ethical gathering and analysis of market data to inform strategic business decisions and gain an advantage.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
Personalization in sales means tailoring outreach to a prospect's specific needs, interests, and context to make communication more relevant.
Event tracking is the method of collecting data on specific user actions, or 'events,' on a website or app, such as clicks or downloads.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Learn about B2B data enrichment, including benefits of B2B data enrichment, implementing B2B data enrichment strategies, B2B data enrichment vs. data cleaning.
Learn about business continuity, including understanding key components, steps to ensure continuity, common challenges, & best practices.
Learn about behavioral analytics, including implementing behavioral analytics successfully, & key metrics in behavioral analytics.
CRM enrichment is the process of adding third-party data to your existing customer profiles to make them more complete and accurate.
Learn about B2B data erosion, including causes of B2B data decay, strategies to combat data erosion, & measuring the impact of data erosion.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Sales workflows are a set of automated actions that streamline the sales process, helping teams engage leads consistently and close deals faster.
Revenue intelligence is the process of collecting and analyzing customer data to provide insights that help sales teams make smarter decisions.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Sales development is the process of identifying and qualifying potential customers to create a pipeline of sales-ready leads for closers.
An Operational CRM is a system that automates and improves customer-facing business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.
A persona map visually outlines a target customer, detailing their goals, behaviors, and pain points to help your team build genuine empathy.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
A canary release is a deployment strategy where new software is rolled out to a small user group first, minimizing risk before a full release.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is a key performance indicator that calculates the average revenue generated from each user or subscriber.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
A value statement is a clear, concise declaration of the unique benefits a company provides to its customers, outlining its core purpose.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
A Request for Information (RFI) is a formal process for gathering information from potential suppliers before issuing a more detailed proposal.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
Trigger marketing uses customer actions or events to automatically send highly relevant, personalized messages at the perfect moment.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
Lead enrichment adds third-party data to your raw lead lists, creating fuller prospect profiles for more effective and personalized outreach.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication method allowing users to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials.
Buying intent is the collection of online cues and behaviors that signal a prospect is actively researching and moving toward a purchase decision.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.