MailChimp returned the following error: Service Unavailable.

Same issue here

Hi Jim & others,

This seems to be an issue with MailChimp & their firewall service (Akamai). The best thing would be to reach out to MailChimp support and ask them to check your website to see if it is firewalled.

The plugin is definitely passing along a User-Agent with the request, but as the firewall is handled on MailChimp’s side there’s not much your host can tell you about this. The fact that the CURL command returns the same error message tells us that it is not a plugin issue.

Another workaround would be for your webhost to change you to another server (with a different IP address). It could be that you’re on a server that houses some other “grey area” websites.

I’ll ping MailChimp myself to see if they changed anything on their side and/or if we can do anything about it from in the plugin.

Thanks, Danny – it appears I’m failing the mission. MailChimp won’t give me support because I have the free plan with them and my webhost just keeps telling me that they need to know the IP that it’s connecting on so they can do whatever on there end.

So that sucks. Hopefully you hear something useful back from MailChimp. In the meantime, I might need to switch to a different (not as good!) plugin just to get things operational temporarily.

Let me know what you find out or if you have any other thoughts. Appreciate your help!

Thanks,

— Jim

I’m not exactly sure what you mean with “the IP it is connection on”, you want to know the IP of your MailChimp API server? Please post the last 3 or 4 letters of the API key here and I will tell you the IP.

NB: Do NOT post the whole API key!!!

If the issue is that your IP is blocked by Akamai switching to another plugin might not help, but the reason might be something else, especially:
– very old version or cURL
– hosting provider firewall blocked MailChimp
– MailChimp firewall blocked you

If you have SSH access you can run the curl -v, don’t forget to make sure you test on your own API server (instead of us1) and with your own API key instead of “test”.
If you don’t have SSH access you can ask your hosting provider to do this for you and send us the output of this command. With that information we can tell you exactly what goes wrong.

More information on the bottom of this page: https://mc4wp.com/kb/solving-connectivity-issues/

So funny enough, it now says “Connected” for the status within the plugin. It sounds like maybe there was a temporary ban on the IP where my server resides that might have been lifted.

So I think we’re good-to-go on this. Thank you guys for your help!

— Jim

I am having the same problem, same error: MailChimp returned the following error:
Service Unavailable.
Status NOT CONNECTED

I followed all the instructions at https://mc4wp.com/kb/solving-connectivity-issues/

GoDaddy says they are up to date with their PHP CURL & requests to https://*.api.mailchimp.com/ are not blocked (I spent some time on the phone with them last night.)

• I am using MailChimp for WordPress Version 4.1.1
• Free version of MailChimp, so no support ??
• my site plug-ins, themes, and WP are all up to date
• WP 4.7.4

This was working a few weeks ago, because I received notification from MC of new subscribers. Now nothing.

I tried a new MailChimp API key with the same results.

The only change to my site since it was last working was that I added an SSL certificate. The article says that there was a known bug with WP 4.4, but my error message does not specify SSL, and it was supposed to be fixed in 4.4.1.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

I used the advanced steps to test the API key via SSH using the correct API Key parameters. I got lots of output that I’m not sure is secure to paste here, but it looks like the connection was successful. Can I post the output of the test here without compromising my security?

Interesting data point regarding my problem. I installed Easy MailChimp Forms 6.3.17 by Yikes, Inc., which information said it was updated one day ago, and it connected to MailChimp (at least it says so).

The MailChimp for WP by Ibericode was last updated a few weeks ago and still does not.

The recent update may be circumstantial, but the former works. The latter does not.

I hate having to recreate all my forms, but I need working CTA.

I’ll report back if there is any change. BTW, I don’t consider this resolved, since my preferred plug-in won’t work.

I am having the same problem as @laraesque.
Service Unavailable

I had spoken to both godaddy executive ( who assures me their php curl is upto date) and mail chimp customer service who swear everything is fine with them too.
Now I am basically clueless as to what to do. Can you developers from mc4wp suggest something?

Hi all,

We’re a bit clueless here as to what’s really happening as we can’t seem to recreate the issue ourselves. It looks like MailChimp’s firewall (Akamai) is blocking requests, but only for a short period of time.

Question: does your connected MailChimp account have a huge number of lists by any chance?

@dvankooten

What if i gave made you an account on my install, would you want to look into the problem?

UPDATE & WORKAROUND:

More info:

A. I do have a control site: I am running the same plug-in (Mailchimp for WP by Ibericode) on two web sites. Same version of WP, all up to date. They populate the same form on MailChimp.

The connection and forms work fine on Site A. They fail on Site B ever since I added my SSL cert. GoDaddy says it can’t be the SSL, but I’ve found enough obscure reports of how it was exactly the SSL with lots of arcane fixes deep in the code. I don’t want to go there due to problems with updates, etc.

B. Switching to another plug-in did NOT work. It just LOOKED like it was working. The plug-in’s interface claimed that it’s connected to Mailchimp, but it can’t see my MC lists, no matter how many times I create a new API key. So a new plug-in and creating new forms is NOT the answer.

I worked for hours with my web host (godaddy), and I can’t do anything with MailChimp because it is a free account.

THE WORKAROUND:

I got rid of all embedded MailChimp forms on my B site. I eliminated the plug-ins. Instead, I’m generating the subscription form on the MailChimp site and linking to it from my site. Bother.

It’s an extra step for my visitors that might cost me subscriptions, but I’m at a dead-end with the technical resolution. I look forward to genius resolution here.

With sparkle,
Diana

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Diana Diehl.

Hi @laraesque,

Have you tried setting the ssl very parameter in the API request to false?

You can do so by using the mc4wp_use_sslverify filter built into this plugin.

Adding the following to your functions.php file may do the trick, since it sounds to be ssl related.

add_filter( 'mc4wp_use_sslverify', '__return_false' );

Code reference:
https://hookr.io/filters/mc4wp_use_sslverify/

Hi @dvankooten
Nope. I have only two lists. And when I contacted mail chimp, they said they are not blocking anything.