10.1 Connections
Connections are authenticated OAuth sessions between Creator and external services, stored and reused by Deluge scripts, integration fields, and integration flows. They represent the authentication layer for all external integrations in Creator. As of late 2025, Creator supports over 1,200 built-in connectors covering popular enterprise, cloud, and SaaS services (November 2025 Upcoming Updates).
Connection limits per plan: 10 (Standard), 50 (Professional), 100 (Enterprise) (Pricing Comparison).
10.2 Custom Connectors
For services not covered by built-in connectors, developers can create Custom Connectors that define the service's API endpoints and authentication mechanism. As of recent enhancements (Custom Connectors Enhancements), supported authentication types now include:
- OAuth 2.0 with client authentication mode (include in authorization header or request body)
- AWS Signature Version 4 authentication for direct AWS service integration (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, EC2, etc.)
- Bearer Token authentication
- Basic authentication and API key authentication
Custom connector limits per plan: 5 (Standard), 10 (Professional), 20 (Enterprise). Data source limits: 5 (Standard), 15 (Professional), 30 (Enterprise).
10.3 Bring Your Own Credentials (BYOC) for Connections
Released March 23, 2026, BYOC (Bring Your Own Credentials) allows organizations to authenticate built-in connectors using their own OAuth application credentials registered in the target third-party service, rather than using Zoho's shared OAuth applications. When creating a connection, users choose between:
- Quick Connect (default): Uses Zoho-managed OAuth credentials; fast setup, shared rate limits.
- Custom (BYOC): Uses OAuth credentials from the user's own third-party account; independent API rate limits, stronger security control, reusable across multiple connections, and better scalability.
This addresses a significant enterprise pain point: shared Zoho-managed OAuth applications can hit third-party provider rate limits due to aggregated usage across many Creator customers. BYOC gives each organization an isolated API quota (BYOC Announcement).
10.4 Integration Fields
The Integration field (described in Section 2.3) is an advanced form field that performs live lookups into an external service on each user interaction. It supports:
- Display of up to 3 fields from the selected external module
- Per-field separator configuration
- Real-time search with at least 2 characters required
- Search behavior varies by service (starts-with vs. contains)
- Sync option for updating existing records with current external data (November 2025)
Supported external services: Zoho CRM, Zoho Recruit, Salesforce, QuickBooks, Zoho Projects, Zoho BugTracker, Zoho People, ManageEngine SDP OnDemand (Understand Integration Field).
10.5 Data Bridge
The Data Bridge feature (shipped in 2025 H2 per the release projection) enables a secure connection between on-premises databases and Zoho Creator's cloud. It is a lightweight utility installable on-premises that transfers data between local databases (MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and JDBC-supported databases) and Creator without exposing the local network to inbound connections. Cloud database support includes Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Microsoft SQL Azure, and others (Data Bridge API Integration).