Usage & Monitoring

The Lift portal gives you visibility into how your OpenBoxes instance is performing and how much of your plan's resources you are using. You can view usage metrics from the Dashboard and the Instance section of the portal.

Usage Dashboard

The usage dashboard shows three key metrics at a glance, each displayed as a progress bar against your plan's limit.

Storage

Tracks how much database storage your OpenBoxes instance is consuming. This includes all your supply chain data --- products, shipments, orders, inventory records, and transaction history.

Plan Storage Limit
Shared 10 GB
Dedicated 100 GB
Enterprise Custom

Storage usage is updated every hour.

Active Users

Shows how many users currently have access to your Lift account compared to your plan's user limit.

Plan User Limit
Shared 10
Dedicated 50
Enterprise Unlimited

This count includes all active users --- Admins, Managers, and Browsers. Pending invitations also count toward your limit.

API Calls

Tracks the number of authenticated API requests (calls that carry your X-API-Key) made against your instance in the current hour, versus your plan's hourly limit. Normal browser usage of the OpenBoxes web application is not counted and is never rate-limited.

Plan Hourly API Limit
Shared 1,000
Dedicated 25,000
Enterprise Custom (higher limits)

API limits are hourly, not monthly, and are applied per account -- shared across all of your API keys. The allowance refills continuously as the hour passes rather than resetting at a fixed moment. When you exceed the limit, the API returns HTTP 429 Too Many Requests; see API Rate Limits for the response format, headers, and retry guidance.

Usage Details

For a deeper view, go to Instance > Usage to see:

  • Storage trend --- A chart showing storage growth over the past 30 days
  • API calls trend --- Recent API call volume so you can spot integrations that are approaching the hourly limit
  • Peak usage --- Highest recorded usage for each metric
  • Usage breakdown --- Which areas of OpenBoxes are consuming the most storage

Approaching Your Limits

Lift notifies you as you approach your plan's storage and user limits so you can take action before hitting a cap. (API limits work differently -- they are enforced per hour and return a 429 response in real time rather than triggering these percentage warnings; see the API calls section above.)

Warning Thresholds

Usage Level What Happens
75% An informational email is sent to account Admins
90% A warning email is sent and a banner appears in the portal
100% A critical alert is sent (see below for what happens next)

What Happens at 100%

The behavior when you hit a limit depends on the resource:

Storage at 100%:

  • Your OpenBoxes instance continues to function
  • Write operations that would exceed the limit may fail
  • You receive a notification to upgrade your plan or reduce data
  • Existing data is never deleted

Users at 100%:

  • Existing users continue to have full access
  • You cannot invite new users
  • Remove an existing user or upgrade your plan to add more

API calls (hourly limit reached):

  • Further API requests in that hour receive HTTP 429 Too Many Requests until the rolling hourly allowance refills
  • Your OpenBoxes web application keeps working normally -- only X-API-Key API traffic is limited
  • Consistently hitting the limit usually means your integration needs a higher tier

We do not hard-block your storage or user operations when those limits are reached. The goal is to keep your supply chain running while giving you time to upgrade or adjust. API rate limiting is the one exception, and it applies only to programmatic /api/v1/* traffic.

Alerts and Notifications

Lift sends notifications through two channels:

Email Notifications

Usage alerts are emailed to all account Admins. Notification types include:

Notification When Sent
Usage warning (75%) Once per metric per billing period
Usage critical (90%) Once per metric per billing period
Usage exceeded (100%) Once per metric per billing period
Weekly usage summary Every Monday (optional)
Monthly usage report First of each month

Portal Notifications

Critical alerts also appear as banners in the Lift portal. These banners persist until the usage issue is resolved (by upgrading your plan or reducing usage).

Configuring Notifications

To adjust which notifications you receive:

  1. Go to Settings > Notifications in the portal
  2. Toggle individual notification types on or off
  3. Click Save

Note that critical usage alerts (90% and above) cannot be disabled --- these are essential for keeping your instance running smoothly.

Monitoring for Dedicated and Enterprise

[Dedicated] [Enterprise]

Dedicated and Enterprise tiers include additional monitoring capabilities:

Instance Performance

  • Response time --- Average response time for OpenBoxes requests
  • Uptime --- Instance availability over the past 30 days
  • Memory usage --- How much memory your instance is consuming
  • CPU usage --- Processor utilization

Uptime History

View your instance's uptime history with a timeline showing:

  • Periods of full availability
  • Scheduled maintenance windows
  • Any unplanned downtime events

This is useful for tracking against your plan's uptime target (99.5% for Dedicated; Enterprise targets are agreed per Enterprise agreement).

Best Practices

  • Review usage monthly. Check your usage trends each month to anticipate when you might need to upgrade.
  • Enable the weekly summary. The weekly usage email helps you stay aware of trends without logging into the portal.
  • Plan storage growth. If your storage is growing steadily, project when you will approach your limit and plan an upgrade in advance.
  • Monitor API usage after adding integrations. External integrations (EDI, ERP connectors, etc.) can significantly increase API call volume.