What are API Requests and How Many of Them Do You Need?

Optimizing eCommerce Efficiency: How API2Cart's Support Revolutionized

During the last year here at API2Cart we helped to improve functionality and enlarge profitability of numerous companies that work in the eCommerce field, including e-mail marketing, mobile commerce, repricing systems, etc. Each time we had a new case and each time we're ready to solve it. However, one of the most commonly asked questions that we faced during the last year was the mechanism of API requests that we work with. We often heard questions like: how much API requests is generally performed by a single client’s store?

The truth is that there is no standardized formula that could be applied for every case. It depends on the number of products, orders and customers, frequency of requests and a dozen other factors. So, in each concrete situation, there will be another answer. However, to make it more clear for you, we created a small model that includes a more or less standard store with a certain amount of entities and calculated average number of API requests that this shop will perform per month.

As an example we took a test store with an already existing database that includes 10 000 products, 1 000 customers and 1 000 orders and supposed that this shop will daily add 50 more entities of each type. We also decided to evaluate the situation when a client uses the Events System that allows him or her to track new orders and update order statuses in real-time.

Full data API integration of your customer’s store with your system via API2Cart will take approximately 240 requests per 12 000 entities since one request can handle up to 50 products, customers, orders. You can also set up system configuration to get 100 entities per 1 request but that will increase your system (shopping cart) load and as a result, may affect slower performance speed. That is why a recommended number of entities per one request is 50.

In case if you would like to use our Event-like System, for instance, to track new orders and update order statuses, it will take 1 request per order and order status + approximately 100 requests per day for real-time monitoring your client’s store in order to find out if there were any changes. As a result you will get 198 requests per day * 30 days = 7 440 requests per month for a single store. Add 240 requests that you need to transfer already existing data and you will get 7 680 requests for the first month.

So, now you can easily calculate how much client’s stores do you have and how much API requests they will perform monthly. As a result, you can choose the best pricing plan for your integration with API2Cart. So, don’t hesitate and contact API2Cart Team in order to start expanding your market right now!