If I'm looking at an external service/API for use in one of our products the first thing I look for from a technical perspective (is this priced right) is good code samples of API usage, then I look take a look a whistlestop tour through the docs (mostly to get an idea of quality and completeness).
At that point I might whip up a simple project against their API (if they make it easy to do and without having to pay...) and if I like it then I'll buy, Another good example I ran into recently was Nexmo, very easy to use and good docs.
If I'm looking at an external service/API for use in one of our products the first thing I look for from a technical perspective (is this priced right) is good code samples of API usage, then I look take a look a whistlestop tour through the docs (mostly to get an idea of quality and completeness).
At that point I might whip up a simple project against their API (if they make it easy to do and without having to pay...) and if I like it then I'll buy, Another good example I ran into recently was Nexmo, very easy to use and good docs.