Hey everyone, and welcome to the chaos of being an API supplier. I’m gonna cut to the chase: if you’re here because your APIs are growing faster than a coffee shop’s weekend line and you’re tripping over changes that break old integrations, you’re in the right spot. We’ve all been there—last month a client hit us panicking because we tweaked a field in our /user endpoint and their whole checkout flow died. That’s when I realized API versioning isn’t just a “nice-to-have” for us; it’s the difference between keeping a client and getting a very stern (but polite) email threatening to switch to a competitor. API
Today, I’m gonna walk you through how we implemented API versioning here at our shop, no stuffy jargon, no overcomplicated diagrams, just the stuff that actually works when you’re not working from a whiteboard at 2 a.m. (though let’s be real, we did do that for this). Let’s start with the basics: what API versioning even is, for anyone who’s new here. It’s basically putting a label on different versions of your API so old code doesn’t break when you launch new features. Like how your phone has iOS 15, 16, 17—you don’t force everyone to upgrade at once, right? Same energy.
First off, pick a versioning strategy that doesn’t make your devs cry
I’ve seen so many teams overcomplicate this. Some guys were using dates, like v2024-05-01, which works but makes it hard to tell what’s new at a glance. Others were stuffing versions in the query string, like /api/users?v=2, which looks sloppy and some caching systems hate that. We tested a bunch, and landed on URL path versioning… but wait, don’t roll your eyes till I explain why this makes sense for a small to mid-sized API supplier like us.
URL path versioning looks like this: https://our-api.com/v2/users instead of the messy query string. Why’d we go with this? Let’s be real—our clients are mostly small dev teams that don’t have a lot of time to mess with headers. They can just swap /v1 in their code to /v2 when they’re ready, and it’s super obvious in logs what version is being hit. We tried header versioning for a second—passing X-API-Version: v2 in the request headers—but half our clients were scraping APIs or using tools that don’t easily let you tweak headers. That’s a no-go if you want onboarding to be less painful.
Wait, but hold on—we didn’t jump straight into full URL paths for every endpoint. The v1 of our API was already live for 18 months, so we had to make a smooth transition, not a hard cut that would’ve killed our biggest client (who shall remain nameless, but they sell pet toys, so shoutout to the pet accessory devs). So step one for us: freeze v1 for non-breaking changes, only add critical bug fixes, and let it live alongside v2 while we worked out the kinks. That way, no one had to rush an upgrade—we gave them like 6 months to migrate, which was more than enough for most teams.
Now, the boring but important part: documentation
Here’s the thing—even if you have a perfect versioning system, if your docs suck, no one’s gonna use it. We used to throw together docs in Google Docs and call it a day, which was a disaster. A dev would text me at 10 p.m. asking “where’s the v2 /orders endpoint?” and I’d have to dig through my own inbox.
We switched to a tool that lets us version our docs alongside the API, and that game changed. Each version has its own docs: v1 docs are locked (we note “no new features here, only bug fixes”), v2 docs list every change—like “we swapped ‘first_name’ to ‘given_name’ because some international clients were having issues with space characters” or “added a ‘discount_applied’ field that’s optional.” We also added a migration guide, which was just a simple side-by-side of v1 vs v2 endpoints. No one wants to play detective to upgrade, so make that guide as straightforward as possible.
Pro tip: We added a “version deprecation timeline” to every doc page. When v1 is gonna get shut down? We told them 9 months in advance, then 6, then 2. Devs love that—they can plan their sprints around it instead of panicking the week before.
Handling breaking vs non-breaking changes: don’t be a jerk
Here’s another lesson we learned the hard way: not all changes need a new version. If you’re adding a new optional field? That’s totally fine for the same version. No need to bump v1 to v2 for that. But if you’re deleting a field, renaming a required parameter, or changing how an endpoint works so old code breaks? That’s a breaking change, so that needs a new version.
We made a rule here: every change that could make a client’s integration blow up gets a new version. For non-breaking? Stick to the same version, just update the docs. That keeps our version count from spiraling—we don’t have v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, etc. We only use major versions for breaking changes, minor versions for non-breaking updates. Wait, but we don’t put minor versions in the URL—only major. So all the v2 updates are under /v2, and we note in the docs that v2 is at minor version 2 right now, so they know it’s getting better.
Also, when we launch a new version, we make sure it’s backward-compatible for at least a little while. Wait, how? For example, when we launched v2’s /users endpoint, we still let clients send requests to /v1/users for 3 months, so they could test the new version without rushing. We called that a “grace period” and it was way less stressful than forcing everyone to upgrade immediately.
Testing, testing, and more testing (yes, even for APIs)
Before we launched v2, we spent a whole week testing it with our own internal tools, but also we let 3 of our most trusted clients beta-test it. That was a huge win. One client noticed that the pagination limit was different in v2—something we missed in our internal testing—and we fixed it before rolling it out to everyone. If we had skipped that, we would’ve had a bunch of angry devs the first day v2 was live.
We also set up monitoring for each version. Our tools track how many requests are hitting v1 vs v2, when clients start to switch over, if there are any errors for a specific version. For the first month after launching v2, I was checking those logs every morning like a hawk. If I saw a spike in 400 errors for v2 /orders, I’d jump on a call with the client and fix it that day. That kind of support is why our clients stay, not just the API itself.
Deprecation: knowing when to kill old versions (and how to do it nicely)
No one likes killing old versions, but you can’t keep running v1 forever. When we decided to retire v1, we didn’t just turn it off one day. We sent personalized emails to every client using v1, with their specific integration’s upgrade steps, called them on the phone if they were a big client, and even offered a free 30-minute call with our dev team to help them migrate. That cost us a little time, but it saved us from losing any clients to competitors.
We also set up alerts for ourselves when a client is still using a deprecated version—so we don’t just let it run silently till it breaks. One time, a small client forgot to upgrade, and we reached out 2 weeks before v1 was shut down, and they were able to switch over with zero issues. Win-win.
Common mistakes we made (so you don’t repeat them)
Let’s be real—we messed up a bunch of stuff when we first started versioning. First, we tried to put versions in request headers and half our clients had no idea how to add headers to their API calls (shoutout to the dev who was using Postman for the first time and couldn’t find the headers tab). We switched to URL paths after that, and that fixed 90% of our onboarding headaches.
Second, we didn’t communicate early enough. We launched v2 without telling our clients a month in advance, and got 17 support tickets in 24 hours. Now we have a whole communication process: we blog about new versions, send newsletters, ping clients on Slack if they’re in our Slack workspace, and even add a banner to our API dashboard that says “v2 is available, migrate by [date].”
Third, we overcomplicated our versioning strategy at first. We tried semantic versioning everywhere (like v1.2.3) in the URL, which made our endpoints look messy and our logs impossible to read. We simplified it to just major versions in the URL, and it’s way easier to track.
Wrapping this up—what works for us
At the end of the day, the best API versioning strategy is the one that works for your team and your clients. For a small to mid-sized API supplier, URL path versioning with a clear deprecation timeline, simple docs, and a grace period for old versions is total gold. It’s not fancy, it’s not cutting-edge, but it stops your clients from panicking when you launch new features, and it keeps your dev team from spending all their time fixing broken integrations instead of building cool stuff.
API If you’re an API supplier looking to implement versioning, don’t overthink it. Start small: pick a strategy that’s easy for others to understand, document the hell out of it, and communicate every step of the way. And hey, if you’re trying to work through your own versioning roadmap, our team’s got your back. We’ve helped a bunch of other small businesses set this up, so if you wanna chat about your specific use case, we’re here to help make this as painless as possible for you.
References
- API Versioning Best Practices. Postman.
- Richardson, L. (2015). RESTful Web APIs. O’Reilly Media.
- Microsoft Azure API Management Documentation. Versioning APIs.
- Stripe API Versioning Guide.
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