API versions and sunset dates: why an integration isn't forever and what I put on the calendar

This week several providers reminded everyone that an integration with someone else's API lives as long as the provider keeps the old version. Weaviate named a shutdown date for GraphQL, Meta announced through HighLevel that WhatsApp marketing messages over the Cloud API end in October 2027, Twilio released a webhook configuration API, and Shopify turned Hydrogen into a library. This matters to a business owner: website leads and messages to customers travel through connections like these, and when the provider shuts down a version, they stop arriving in your CRM without any warning.

What came out

n8n on October 22 laid out how providers version their APIs: in the URL path, like /v1/products, in an HTTP header, by release date, or in a query parameter. For an integration it matters to know where the version is specified and how to notice its end. The deprecation header says a version is being retired, the sunset header gives the exact date, and after it the provider may answer 410 Gone.

Weaviate on October 26 announced that GraphQL, its first query API, is being retired. Nothing breaks on that day. Weaviate Cloud clusters that haven't used GraphQL in the last 30 days will have it turned off on December 1, 2026, the rest on May 1, 2027. New clusters are already created without it. If an application goes through the current Python, TypeScript, Java or C# clients, it is most likely not affected: they work over gRPC. The migration plan has four steps: find the /v1/graphql calls in code and proxies, choose a replacement, convert the queries, and check the application with GraphQL turned off.

Twilio on October 15 moved the Webhook Configuration API to general availability: through it you set how Twilio signs and delivers outgoing webhooks, separately for each URL, with two resources, Webhook Settings and Webhook Rules. That is all the changelog entry says; I didn't look at the details.

HighLevel on October 19 passed on Meta's decision: from October 13, 2027, WhatsApp marketing messages will stop being delivered over the Cloud API and must be sent through the Marketing Messages API, which HighLevel calls MM Lite. Service and utility messages stay on the Cloud API. Activation takes a few minutes per sub-account, and HighLevel carries templates and numbers over as they are. HighLevel cites a Meta A/B test on more than 12 million messages: up to +9% delivery for messages with high engagement. I can't verify that number; it comes from Meta's text as retold by HighLevel.

Shopify on October 14 released Hydrogen 2026-10. It used to be a framework on React Router, and to use its cart or analytics you had to build the whole storefront on it. Now it is a library for any JavaScript framework: the cart, prices in the buyer's currency, Shop Pay and customer login. Old storefronts keep working. Since June, when the preview started, seven releases have come out.

Why a business should care

Take a service company. Website leads go into the CRM, from there the customer gets a WhatsApp confirmation, and on the telephony side a call creates a lead. Three providers, three API versions. The email about a version's sunset lands in the inbox of a contractor who built the integration two years ago and has long been busy with something else. On the shutdown date the leads stop arriving, and the first to notice is the salesperson whose Tuesday went by without a lead.

The conclusion: every integration has an owner, a version and a date until which it is known to work. If even one of the three is missing, its end date is unknown, and you will learn it after the fact.

How I do it

At the PDR company in the US I have run the server, telephony, parsers and CRM connection since 2021. In 2022 I wrote the integration between the salespeople's AppSheet app and GoHighLevel, and through all of 2023 I kept refining it while the company moved from Google Sheets to MariaDB and connected new services one after another. Over those years I brought the internal API to its third version, so I know version changes from both sides: as a consumer of someone else's API and as the author of my own. That stack includes Twilio and GoHighLevel, so I have somewhere to apply both changelogs from this review, and the sunset calendar is part of my maintenance work.

At a car rental company in South Africa, from October 2024 to February 2025, I set up field synchronization between an app on FlutterFlow with a Firebase backend and AmoCRM, and that connection also lives on a version of someone else's API.

What I would do

Make a list of integrations: provider, version, where it is specified, who receives the provider's emails. It takes an hour, and it pays for itself at the first shutdown.

Log the deprecation and sunset headers in provider responses and raise a notification when they appear. That is one middleware on the server.

Handle 410 separately from ordinary errors. Retries here only clutter the log.

Test the new version in a separate environment before switching. Weaviate suggests turning off GraphQL on a test cluster and seeing what breaks.

Put the dates on the calendar now: December 1, 2026 and May 1, 2027 for Weaviate, October 13, 2027 for Meta. For WhatsApp in HighLevel, turn on MM Lite on the busiest sub-account and check delivery while there is still a year of slack.

Related materials

I wrote about not losing data between documents, CRM and tasks in the article How to reliably connect documents, CRM and tasks. Directions: API integrations with clear rules for passing data and a CRM connected to the team's work. Related pages: a custom API for several applications and a funnel and communications plan in GoHighLevel. From other reviews: what in the October GoHighLevel changes touches the integration and the blast radius of an update. Earlier I wrote about how to check an API contract before upgrading an integration and about the Shopify catalog shutdown. If you have an integration whose version nobody remembers, tell me which services are connected and who maintains them. Discuss your task.