Klaviyo Incident Runbook

Overview

Rapid incident response for Klaviyo API outages and integration failures: quick triage, decision trees, mitigation steps, and postmortem templates.

Severity Levels

Level	Definition	Response Time	Example
P1	Complete outage	<15 min	All Klaviyo API calls returning 5xx
P2	Degraded service	<1 hour	429 rate limiting, high latency
P3	Minor impact	<4 hours	Webhook delays, single endpoint errors
P4	No user impact	Next business day	Monitoring gaps, deprecation warnings

Quick Triage (Run Immediately)

#!/bin/bash
# klaviyo-triage.sh -- run this first during any incident

echo "=== Klaviyo Quick Triage ==="
echo "Time: $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)"

# 1. Is Klaviyo itself down?
echo ""
echo "--- Klaviyo Status Page ---"
curl -s "https://status.klaviyo.com/api/v2/status.json" 2>/dev/null \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(f'Status: {d[\"status\"][\"description\"]}')" \
  || echo "Could not reach status page"

# 2. Can we authenticate?
echo ""
echo "--- API Auth Check ---"
HTTP_CODE=$(curl -s -w "%{http_code}" -o /tmp/klaviyo-triage.json \
  -H "Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key $KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY" \
  -H "revision: 2024-10-15" \
  "https://a.klaviyo.com/api/accounts/" 2>/dev/null)
echo "Auth response: HTTP $HTTP_CODE"

# 3. Rate limit status
echo ""
echo "--- Rate Limit Headers ---"
curl -s -I \
  -H "Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key $KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY" \
  -H "revision: 2024-10-15" \
  "https://a.klaviyo.com/api/profiles/?page[size]=1" 2>/dev/null \
  | grep -iE "ratelimit|retry-after" || echo "No rate limit headers returned"

# 4. Our app health
echo ""
echo "--- Application Health ---"
curl -s "http://localhost:3000/health" 2>/dev/null \
  | python3 -m json.tool 2>/dev/null || echo "App health check unavailable"

Decision Tree

Is Klaviyo API returning errors?
├── YES
│   ├── status.klaviyo.com shows incident?
│   │   ├── YES → Klaviyo-side outage
│   │   │   → Enable fallback mode
│   │   │   → Monitor status page for resolution
│   │   │   → Communicate to stakeholders
│   │   └── NO → Our integration issue
│   │       ├── 401/403? → API key problem (see below)
│   │       ├── 429? → Rate limit hit (see below)
│   │       ├── 400? → Payload validation error
│   │       └── 5xx? → Likely intermittent, retry with backoff
│   └── What status code?
│       ├── 401 → Key revoked/rotated → Verify & rotate
│       ├── 403 → Missing scope → Check API key scopes
│       ├── 429 → Rate limited → Reduce concurrency
│       └── 5xx → Server error → Retry, check status page
└── NO
    ├── Is our app healthy?
    │   ├── YES → Resolved or intermittent → Monitor
    │   └── NO → Our infrastructure → Check pods, memory, network
    └── Are webhooks arriving?
        ├── YES → Partial issue → Check specific endpoint
        └── NO → Webhook endpoint down → Check route, certificate

Immediate Actions by Error Type

401 -- Authentication Failure

# 1. Verify API key is set
echo "Key length: ${#KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY} chars"
echo "Key prefix: ${KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY:0:3}"

# 2. Test the key directly
curl -s -w "\nHTTP %{http_code}\n" \
  -H "Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key $KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY" \
  -H "revision: 2024-10-15" \
  "https://a.klaviyo.com/api/accounts/"

# 3. If key is invalid: generate new key in Klaviyo dashboard
# Settings > API Keys > Create Private API Key

# 4. Update in deployment platform
# GCP: echo -n "pk_new_***" | gcloud secrets versions add klaviyo-key --data-file=-
# AWS: aws secretsmanager update-secret --secret-id klaviyo-key --secret-string "pk_new_***"

# 5. Restart application to pick up new key

429 -- Rate Limited

# 1. Check current rate limit
curl -s -I \
  -H "Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key $KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY" \
  -H "revision: 2024-10-15" \
  "https://a.klaviyo.com/api/profiles/?page[size]=1" 2>/dev/null \
  | grep -i "ratelimit\|retry-after"

# 2. Reduce request volume immediately
# - Lower queue concurrency
# - Enable request sampling
# - Pause non-critical background jobs

# 3. Check for runaway processes
# Look for loops making excessive API calls

5xx -- Klaviyo Server Error

# 1. Check Klaviyo status page
curl -s "https://status.klaviyo.com/api/v2/status.json" | python3 -m json.tool

# 2. Enable graceful degradation
# Your app should continue working without Klaviyo
# Queue failed requests for retry when Klaviyo recovers

# 3. Monitor for recovery
watch -n 30 'curl -s -w "%{http_code}" -o /dev/null \
  -H "Authorization: Klaviyo-API-Key $KLAVIYO_PRIVATE_KEY" \
  -H "revision: 2024-10-15" \
  "https://a.klaviyo.com/api/accounts/"'

Communication Templates

Internal (Slack)

P[1/2] INCIDENT: Klaviyo Integration
Status: INVESTIGATING / MITIGATING / RESOLVED
Impact: [What users are experiencing]
Root cause: [Klaviyo outage / Our key expired / Rate limit exceeded]
Current action: [What we're doing right now]
ETA: [When we expect resolution]
Incident lead: @[name]

External (Status Page)

Klaviyo Integration -- Degraded Performance

Some features powered by Klaviyo (email subscriptions, event tracking)
are experiencing delays. Customer data is being queued and will be
processed once the issue is resolved.

No data loss is expected. We are monitoring the situation.

Last updated: [timestamp]

Post-Incident

Evidence Collection

# Generate debug bundle
bash klaviyo-debug-bundle.sh

# Export application logs
# (adjust for your logging setup)
journalctl -u my-app --since "2 hours ago" | grep -i klaviyo > incident-logs.txt

# Capture metrics snapshot
curl -s "localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=klaviyo_api_errors_total" > metrics-snapshot.json

Postmortem Template

## Incident: Klaviyo [Error Type]
**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM - HH:MM UTC
**Duration:** X hours Y minutes
**Severity:** P[1-4]
**Incident Lead:** [Name]

### Summary
[1-2 sentence description of what happened]

### Timeline (UTC)
- HH:MM - Alert fired: [description]
- HH:MM - Incident acknowledged by [name]
- HH:MM - Root cause identified: [description]
- HH:MM - Mitigation applied: [what was done]
- HH:MM - Service restored
- HH:MM - Monitoring confirmed stable

### Root Cause
[Technical explanation]

### Impact
- Affected users: [number/percentage]
- Failed API calls: [count]
- Data queued for retry: [count]

### Action Items
- [ ] [Action] - Owner: [name] - Due: [date]
- [ ] [Action] - Owner: [name] - Due: [date]

### Lessons Learned
- What went well: [...]
- What could improve: [...]

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Can't reach status page	Network issue	Use mobile or check Twitter @klaviyo
Metrics unavailable	Prometheus down	Check direct API with cURL
Key rotation panic	No backup key	Always have a rotation procedure documented
Alert fatigue	Too many false alarms	Tune thresholds based on baseline

Resources

• Klaviyo Status Page
• Klaviyo Support
• API Error Alerts

Next Steps

For data handling, see

klaviyo-data-handling

.