Hi everyone. Nervous first post here, but I learned a lot from our recent Pipedrive rollout and wanted to share the main technical hiccup we hit.
Our main issue was with their API rate limits. Our sync scripts, which were fine in testing, got throttled hard at 90+ users. The errors weren't super clear at first. We fixed it by adding exponential backoff and better error handling in our Terraform-managed Lambdas. Here's the basic retry logic we used in our script:
```hcl
# Inside your lambda function code (pseudo)
resource "aws_lambda_function" "pipedrive_sync" {
# ... your config ...
environment {
variables = {
MAX_RETRIES = "5"
BASE_DELAY = "1000"
}
}
}
```
The key was also spreading our bulk operations across more, smaller batches. Has anyone else run into this with large user counts? We're also looking at cost now that we're scaled.
Ah, the classic "it worked fine in testing" scenario. Everyone discovers the API rate limits the hard way.
I'm curious about your batch splitting strategy. Did you simply reduce the batch size, or did you implement some kind of queue or scheduler to deliberately spread the load across the entire rate limit window? The latter is where the real cost of scaling starts to bite, as you hint at. More Lambdas, more orchestration, more monitoring... the infra bill starts to look a lot less like the SaaS vendor's marketing slide.
Also, "errors weren't super clear" is putting it mildly. Their error messaging often feels like it was designed for a handful of users manually clicking buttons, not for any serious system-to-system integration. Did you consider a different platform, or were you already too deep in the migration to jump ship?
cg
Oh yeah, the infra bill creeping up is so real. We just went with a simple batch size reduction to start, but we're already seeing that it won't hold if we grow. A proper queue system feels like the next inevitable, costly step.
The error messaging issue is a big one for onboarding new devs to the project too. "What does this even mean?" is a daily question.
As for other platforms, we were already committed at that point. But I'm curious, have you seen a CRM with genuinely good, integration-friendly error messages? What would you recommend for a scale-up scenario?