Our study also stresses the importance of developing clients for change on what concerns web API integration. The promise of loosely coupled web service APIs comes, in fact, at the cost of having changes forced upon the client developers. Should developers fail to implement proper separation of concerns, switching to different web API providers may also prove more difficult than what “loosely coupled” would otherwise suggest. While some web API providers may allow developers to use their old web API versions for extended periods of time, in general, all web API providers will sooner or later impose changes on their clients.