Steve Brewer

The Obstacle Course of API Integration: When Data Transfer Feels Like Herding Cats

Have you ever tried herding cats? Not the metaphorical kind—actual furry felines who look at your earnest attempts to organize them with utter disdain. You can see them all. They’re right there in front of you. But getting them to go where you want? That’s a different story entirely.

This is precisely what building API integrations feels like. The data exists—clients can see it in their system’s UI—so they naturally assume transferring it to another system should be as simple as saying “shoo” to a cat. They call you, wondering why your software isn’t delivering, and you’re left explaining why these digital felines (APIs) simply refuse to be herded.

Let’s explore the obstacle course that is modern API integration—and why it’s significantly more complex than most people realize.

Challenge #1: The Invisible Obstacle (a.k.a. It Doesn’t Exist)

Just because data appears in a system’s interface doesn’t mean it’s accessible via API. Many features are built UI-first, with developers promising “We’ll add API access later.”

Guess what: Later never came.

It’s like being told there’s a door to the next room, only to discover its actually just wallpaper painted to look like a door. Sometimes entire datasets are completely absent from the API. Or perhaps there is an API, but crucial fields are missing. You might even be able to create certain records in the UI that the API flatly refuses to acknowledge.

“But I can see it right there in the website!” Yes, and I can see the moon, but that doesn’t mean I can reach out and grab it.

Challenge #2: The Single-File Bridge

Many APIs are designed as if a lone user is casually strolling through the system—not as though an integration needs to transport thousands of records across a digital chasm.

Want to pull a complete donor record? That’ll be six separate API calls. Need to sync 50,000 of them? Hope you’ve cleared your calendar until retirement.

Some systems restrict you to fetching one record at a time, with no bulk endpoints, minimal pagination options, and rate limits so strict you’d think you were trying to download classified documents from a government facility. Side note: Did you hear the rumor that Area 51 has better API documentation than most enterprise software? You can’t google that one.

Challenge #3: The Square Peg, Round Hole Problem

Imagine working with a nonprofit that processes recurring donations. They need to:

• Pull recurring plan details from their donation system into their CRM
• Capture actual payments processed against the plan
• Link these payments back to the original plan

You check the API documentation with hopeful eyes. Turns out the recurring plan endpoint doesn’t exist. Or it exists but doesn’t connect to payment data. Or worst of all, every payment includes the entire plan again, creating a duplicate nightmare that would make even Marie Kondo weep.

Whoever built this API clearly never had to use it themselves—or they’re secretly investing in antacids for all the heartburn they’re causing integrators.

Challenge #4: The Information Tsunami

Sometimes you politely request a sip of data, and the API opens the floodgates.

You only want recurring plans when they’re created or meaningfully changed (canceled, amount adjusted, etc.). But the API enthusiastically sends the entire plan record every time a payment processes. That’s 300 identical records flooding your system monthly, leaving you to play a high-stakes game of “spot the difference.”

It’s like asking someone the time and having them recite the entire history of clockmaking before finally telling you it’s 2:30.

Challenge #5: The Velvet Rope of Rate Limits

Picture a nonprofit sending 50,000 emails. Their marketing platform diligently tracks sends, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. They want all that activity data in their CRM by day’s end.

Plot twist: Their CRM allows a mere 25 API calls per minute and 10,000 per day.

To properly handle this, you need to fetch email activity, match it to constituents, create or update records, log the activities, and manage any duplicates or mismatches. You hit the daily cap before you are even a fifth of the way through, and your integration goes dark until tomorrow.

When your customer asks why it’s taking so long, showing the user the 429 errors feels like explaining quantum physics to a toddler. “Yes, that 429 error means we hit the maximum number of API calls for today and your system can’t accept any more data” Their eyes glaze over, but they’re still certain it’s somehow your fault. If only you had that magic integration wand everyone seems to think exists.

Challenge #6: Death By A Thousand API Calls

Sometimes the data is technically available, but accessing it requires more steps than assembling IKEA furniture without instructions.

To build a complete donor profile, you need:

• One call for basic information
• Another for custom fields
• Another for interaction history
• Another for contact details
• Another for communication preferences

And each endpoint requires its own pagination dance.

You’re now ten API calls deep for a single donor. With 30,000 donors, your integration might complete before the weekend (and it’s only Monday morning).

And the cherry on top? When you need to update that same system, you must first fetch all that data again to make informed decisions, followed by even more API calls to actually make the changes.

The Integrator’s Reality: Digital Duct Tape and Prayer

Behind every functioning integration is an elaborate system of workarounds. We implement exponential backoff for rate limits. We cache data like digital hoarders. We deduplicate records with the precision of forensic scientists. We build monitoring systems just to prevent everything from silently imploding overnight.

Integrators aren’t just developers—we’re digital diplomats negotiating peace treaties between systems that were designed to be islands, not continents.

A Message to Vendors: Your API Is Not a Second-Class Citizen

If you’re building software, your API isn’t optional. Along with your UI, it’s how your product connects to the wider world.

Talk to customers. Consult with partners. Interview integrators. Design your API as if it is just as important, if not more, than your UI.

When implementing rate limits (which you should), ensure your endpoints are efficient enough that integrators don’t need to burn through their quota just to perform basic operations.

Stop forcing integrators to download your entire database just to identify what changed in the last 24 hours.

The bottom line? Integration isn’t a luxury—it’s table stakes. Your beautiful, feature-rich system is just one piece of your customer’s technology ecosystem. If it can’t play nicely with others, it might as well be running on a computer buried in concrete.

Fellow Integrators: We Can Be Better Too

While these API challenges are real, we can also improve our approach. We can build smarter caching mechanisms, implement proper token refreshing, and reduce unnecessary calls. This work is complex, but excellence is still our responsibility. There will always be limitations we can’t overcome, but let’s conquer the ones we can.

Customers: Partners in the Integration Journey

To our valued customers: thank you for your trust. Help us help you by viewing us as partners rather than vendors. Challenge us to improve, but let’s tackle API obstacles together.

You may need to reconsider how you use your data, perhaps even adapting your CRM practices. You might require multiple integration approaches—combining tools with native import/export capabilities or file-based transfers. That’s okay! Even these hybrid approaches can deliver substantial ROI.

And yes, please challenge the vendors who built these APIs. When more voices (especially those making purchasing decisions) demand improvement, change becomes possible. As Patrick Swayze wisely said in Roadhouse, “Be nice… until it’s time to not be nice.”

Conclusion: Building Better Digital Highways

APIs are the highways connecting our digital cities. But currently, too many are narrow dirt roads with unexpected tolls, random closures, and potholes that could swallow a sedan.

If we truly want connected systems, we need better APIs. Until then, we’ll keep patching these integrations together with retry logic, error handling, and perhaps a ritual sacrifice to the integration gods.

Maybe someday, the digital landscape will be seamlessly connected. And maybe someday, cats will come when called.

(I’m not holding my breath for either.)

Brewer