Insightly Platform Help

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated platform knowledge.

1. What are you trying to do?
   - A) Build an API integration — read/write contacts, organisations, opportunities, leads, projects, tasks
   - B) Set up a webhook to push CRM changes into a warehouse/CRM/Slack
   - C) Fix an auth (401) or pod/base-URL problem
   - D) Fix a daily rate-limit (429) problem
   - E) Work with custom fields / custom objects
   - F) Pick or understand a plan — Plus vs Professional vs Enterprise (CRM, Marketing, Service, AppConnect)

2. Which module? Sales CRM, Marketing (email automation/scoring), Service (tickets/portals), or AppConnect (the no-code iPaaS). They are licensed and priced separately.

3. Auth: Single internal account/script → API key (Base64-encoded as the Basic-auth username). You must know your pod (e.g. na1, eu1) — it's printed under the API key in User Settings and sets the base URL.

Skip-ahead rule: if the user's prompt already provides enough context, skip to Step 2.

Step 2 — Route or answer directly

When routing, give the exact command, e.g. "This is a CRM-comparison question — run: /sales-crm-selection should I move from Insightly to HubSpot at 30 people".

Step 3 — Insightly platform reference

Read references/platform-guide.md for the full reference — the module map (CRM/Marketing/Service/AppConnect and what's API- vs webhook- vs UI-only), the project-linked-to-opportunity data model, pricing/plan gates, the data model with JSON shapes, and quick-start recipes (create a contact + opportunity; nightly incremental export with count_total; fire a webhook from a workflow rule).

Read references/insightly-api-reference.md for the integration surface — pod-specific base URL, the Base64 Basic-auth scheme, top/skip/count_total pagination, the resource list (Contacts, Organisations, Opportunities, Leads, Projects, Tasks, Events, Notes, Pipelines/PipelineStages, Tags, Products/Pricebooks/Quotes, Users, CustomFields), the CUSTOMFIELDS array shape, ETag/If-Match concurrency, the plan-gated daily quota + X-RateLimit-* headers, and the workflow-automation webhook payload/retry rules.

Answer using only the relevant section. Don't dump the full reference.

Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Focus on the user's specific situation:

• Base64-encode the API key. Auth is HTTP Basic with the API key as the username and a blank password — and the key must be Base64-encoded in the Authorization header. Forgetting the encoding is the #1 cause of 401. (The in-browser API sandbox doesn't require manual encoding, which trips people up.)
• Get the pod right. The base URL is https://api.{pod}.insightly.com/v3.1 — the pod (na1, eu1, etc.) is printed under your API key in User Settings. A wrong pod looks like an auth/DNS failure.
• Paginate with top/skip; count with count_total. top defaults to 100, max 500; page with skip. Add count_total=true to get the total in the X-Total-Count header (it's an extra cost, so don't send it on every page).
• Budget the daily quota. The limit is per-day by plan (~1,000 free/legacy → 40,000 Plus → 60,000 Professional → 100,000 Enterprise) plus a 10 req/sec ceiling; 429 when exhausted. Pull incrementally on DATE_UPDATED_UTC, not full scans.
• Webhooks come from workflow automation, not a subscription API. You add a "Webhook" action to a workflow rule (workflow automation is Professional+); it POSTs the record's fields and retries only twice before giving up. Make the receiver ACK fast.
• Custom objects are Enterprise-only. Custom fields exist on lower tiers, but custom objects, products/pricebooks/quotes, and sandboxes are gated to Enterprise — check the tier before designing a model around them.

If you discover a gotcha, workaround, or tip not covered in references/learnings.md, append it there.

Gotchas

> Best-effort from research (2026-06) — review these, especially pricing and plan-gated features, which change.

1. The API key must be Base64-encoded as the Basic-auth username (blank password). Un-encoded keys return 401. The help-page sandbox hides this because it encodes for you.
2. Base URL is pod-specific (https://api.{pod}.insightly.com/v3.1). Hard-coding na1 breaks EU/other-region accounts.
3. Daily rate limit, not per-second-only. You get a per-day quota by plan (free ~1,000 → Enterprise ~100,000) and a 10 req/sec ceiling; exhausting the day returns 429 until reset.
4. Webhooks are a workflow action and retry only twice. They require workflow automation (Professional+), fire on record add/update, and stop after two failed retries — a brief outage drops events silently.
5. No email sequencing on any plan. Surprising at this price; use a dedicated cadence tool for outbound.
6. Built-in reporting is limited. Multi-object/cross-object reporting is hard; teams often export to a warehouse or BI tool via the API.
7. British spelling: Organisations (not Organizations) in API paths and field names.
8. Custom objects, products/pricebooks/quotes, and sandboxes are Enterprise-only. Custom fields are available lower down.

Related skills

• /sales-crm-selection — CRM comparison, selection, and migration strategy across vendors (is Insightly the right CRM, or time to switch?)
• /sales-data-hygiene — CRM data quality: dedupe, record matching, enrichment automation
• /sales-enrich — Contact/company enrichment for Insightly records
• /sales-cadence — Outbound sequence/cadence design across platforms (Insightly has no native sequencing)
• /sales-integration — Connecting Insightly to other tools via webhooks/Zapier/Make beyond AppConnect
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill. Install: npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-do -a claude-code

Examples

Example 1: My API key keeps returning 401 (developer/automation)

User says: "I'm calling https://api.insightly.com/v3.1/Contacts with my API key and getting 401 Unauthorized."
Skill does: Diagnoses two issues — (1) the key must be Base64-encoded and sent as the Basic-auth username with a blank password (Authorization: Basic base64(apikey:)), not passed raw; (2) the base URL must use your pod (https://api.{pod}.insightly.com/v3.1), found under the key in User Settings. Shows the working cURL + Python snippet from the API reference.
Result: Authenticated requests succeed against the correct regional endpoint.

Example 2: Sync new opportunities into BigQuery nightly (developer/automation)

User says: "I want to pull opportunities that changed each night into our warehouse without blowing the rate limit."
Skill does: Recommends an incremental pull filtered on DATE_UPDATED_UTC, paginated with top/skip, using count_total=true only on the first page to size the job from X-Total-Count; watch X-RateLimit-Remaining and back off on 429. Notes the daily quota scales by plan (Professional ~60k/day). Points to Recipe 2 in the platform guide.
Result: A bounded nightly export that stays under the daily quota.

Example 3: Is Insightly the right CRM for us?

User says: "We're a 25-person agency outgrowing spreadsheets — is Insightly a good fit or should we look at HubSpot?"
Skill does: Recognizes a cross-tool selection question and routes: "run: /sales-crm-selection 25-person agency, project-delivery work, Insightly vs HubSpot." Briefly notes Insightly's edge for project-linked work (opportunity→project) and its weak spots (reporting, no sequencing) but defers the comparison to the strategy skill.
Result: User is handed to the right strategy skill with a ready prompt.

Troubleshooting

401 Unauthorized on every call

Symptom: All requests fail with 401 even though the API key is correct.
Cause: The key wasn't Base64-encoded before being placed in the Authorization: Basic header, or it's being sent as a password instead of the username, or the request hit the wrong pod.
Solution: Encode the key as base64("APIKEY:") (key as username, empty password) and send Authorization: Basic <encoded>. Confirm the base URL uses your pod from User Settings (https://api.{pod}.insightly.com/v3.1). The browser sandbox auto-encodes, so a call that works there but not in your code is almost always the missing encoding.

My webhook stopped firing

Symptom: A webhook delivered for a while, then events stopped arriving.
Cause: Insightly webhooks are workflow-automation actions (Professional+) and retry only two more times after a failed delivery, then give up for that event — a brief downstream outage silently drops events. They also only fire when the workflow rule's add/update conditions match.
Solution: Make the receiver return 2xx immediately and process async; verify the workflow rule's trigger conditions still match the records you expect; for guaranteed catch-up, run a periodic reconciliation pull on DATE_UPDATED_UTC. Confirm you're on a plan that includes workflow automation.

Hitting the daily rate limit (429)

Symptom: 429 Too Many Requests, often later in the day or during a backfill.
Cause: The per-day request quota for your plan is exhausted (~1,000 free/legacy → 40,000 Plus → 60,000 Professional → 100,000 Enterprise), or you exceeded the 10 req/sec ceiling.
Solution: Switch full scans to incremental pulls on DATE_UPDATED_UTC, request larger pages (top=500), avoid count_total on every page, cache reference data (pipelines, custom-field metadata), throttle to under 10 req/sec, and watch X-RateLimit-Remaining. If still constrained, move to a higher plan with a larger daily quota.

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