Why is my integration giving me an error?

AWeber’s API allows developers to create a variety of awesome integrations that can help you grow your business. Mistakes and unexpected situations can happen to the best of us though so the API can also return a variety of errors that help developers and AWeber customers fix any problems that might occur.

A full list of errors is available on our troubleshooting page but this article provides an overview of the most common errors you might see when using an integration and what you can do about them.

Expired Timestamp

If you have an expired timestamp error it will look like this (the numbers will differ):

Expired timestamp: given 1548432179 and now 1548432483 has a greater
difference than threshold 300

AWeber expects a timestamp when any request is made to our server. We compare the timestamp to our server's time, and if it's more than 5 minutes (or 300 seconds) different, we return an error. This is a security measure in our API to prevent something called replay attacks.

Those numbers it gives you actually tell the number of seconds since midnight January 1st, 1970. That's called Unix time and it's how computers know what time it is. There are servers out there that send out times to all the other computers, and that's how everything around the world stays in sync. Examples of these internet time keeping services are time.windows.com, time.apple.com, time.nist.gov, etc. When a computer isn't able to check in on the time or isn't set to do so, the clock can "drift" away from the official time and then you'll run into issues like the expired timestamp error. It's much like an analog clock running out of battery and slowing down.

When you see this error it means whatever server is making the requests to our API has the wrong time. We keep our API server synchronized with an internet time keeping service, and the server making the requests needs to do the same so their timestamps will match. That server is likely wherever your website is hosted. You should contact your web host and ask that your server's time be synchronized to the internet.

Account Temporarily Suspended

If you see the message “Account Temporarily Suspended.” it has two potential causes:

• The integration is using the incorrect account ID
• The AWeber account in question has an outstanding billing issue
  
  

The developer can make sure they have the right account ID by making a request to the accounts endpoint. Most integrations should do this correctly since it’s the first step in making an integration and the account ID is required before doing anything else!

The next step is to make sure your account is current and not overdue. If you have a balance on your account, pay online and you will no longer receive this error. If you believe your account is in good standing or need help bringing it current, contact our customer solutions team and someone would be happy to assist you! If you need to provide a credit card number, please call us - we cannot accept credit cards over email or chat. Once all billing problems are resolved, the integration should work properly.

Permission Errors

You may see the error “Missing required scopes:" with a list of permissions required like "subscriber.read-extended". This error is related to the permissions (also called scopes) requested by the integration. To help protect your AWeber account, we require an integration to ask permission before accessing sensitive subscriber information or sending any email on your behalf. These permissions are configured by your integration.

You can read more about permissions in our knowledge base article. If your integration is returning these errors, the developer will need to change their settings then you will need to disconnect and reconnect the integration.

Rate Limit Error

If you see a message that says “Rate Limit Error” it means the integration you are using has made too many requests to AWeber’s API or has made them too quickly. In order to keep our servers available for everyone, we put limits in place. If you see this error, contact the developer of your integration and send them this knowledge base article.

Have a different error?

If you don’t see your error on this list check our troubleshooting page as it has a more comprehensive list.

If you’re still not sure, feel free to reach out to us at api@aweber.com. Send us a screenshot or copy and paste the error into your message and we’d be happy to help you!