Boost FAQ and troubleshooting
Short answers, grouped by where you hit them, with the exact wording the product uses. If you arrived from an error message, search this page for its sentence.
Getting in
I signed in but every Boost page sends me to a link screen. That is the onboarding gate. Every signed-in Boost address requires both a linked Telegram bot and a real, verified email address on the account. Complete the link step at /telegram/link and every Boost page opens.
Do I need a paid plan to buy a boost? No. Free accounts can order. A paid plan buys a standing discount, higher caps, drip-feed, priority delivery, CSV export and the developer API — not the ability to buy at all.
Do I need to add a channel? No. You can boost any post or channel link by pasting it. What a registered channel adds is the reporting: the four metric tiles and their 14-day history, the growth projection in the composer, and that channel's own dashboard, where its Boost orders, units ordered, units delivered, posts auto-boosted and total Boost spend are added up for it alone.
Ordering
How fast is delivery? Most services start within minutes and finish inside the average time shown on the service's own row. Watch progress on Orders, or choose drip-feed to spread delivery out.
Do I need to share a password?
Never. Services need a public link or @username. Onflow Ads has no password field for any external platform anywhere.
Where do I find the catalogue when I am signed in?
On Start a boost — /telegram/dashboard/boost/new. The Overview page shows your channels, metrics and activity, but not the service grid.
Why is a service covered by a "Members only" overlay? It is reserved for paid plans, or it carries its own minimum plan. The overlay never says which — press See plans, or read the server's refusal if you try to order it, which does name the plan.
"Please verify your email before placing an order." Verify the address on your account, then try again.
"You're $X short for this order. Top up and your order will still be here." Boost credit plus wallet cash does not cover the total. Top up from the Top up button on the Boost Overview page — that is the only Boost page that carries one. Nothing was charged.
"You just placed this exact boost — check your Orders." The duplicate guard: the same service, link and quantity within 60 seconds. The first one almost certainly went through. Check Orders; if the repeat is genuine, wait out the minute.
"Quantity must be between X and Y for this service." Every service has its own range, and the message gives it. The hint under the Quantity field says the same thing before you submit.
"That service is temporarily unavailable." It cannot be priced or accepted right now — usually its provider or the exchange rate for its currency. Pick a comparable service.
"You already have N orders in progress…" / "That order is $X, above the $Y per-order limit…" Your plan's live-order cap and per-order cap. Wait for orders to settle, lower the quantity, or upgrade — each message names the next plan's number. All the figures are on Limits and caps.
My link keeps getting rejected.
Match the shape the hint asks for: a channel-level service wants t.me/yourchannel or @yourchannel; a post-level service wants a post link like t.me/yourchannel/123. Links are validated server-side and lookalike domains are refused.
A coupon will not apply. The message names the exact reason — expired, not yet active, fully redeemed, already used by you, first-order-only, wrong platform, or below its minimum. A coupon is consumed only if the order actually goes through.
Why did my order not name its ID on the confirmation?
A single boost lands on Orders with a generic banner. Only a cart checkout names the ids it placed. Your new order's OFB- is on the top row of the list.
Cart and mass orders
One line of my cart failed. What happened to the others? Lines are independent orders. The ones that succeeded are placed and paid for; the ones that failed are not.
The per-line reasons are not shown anywhere, and the cart is cleared the moment the request returns. Always compare the number of new rows on Orders against the number of lines you submitted, and re-place the missing ones from the composer.
Do drip-feed settings travel with a cart line? Yes. Priority delivery, the refill guarantee and drip-feed all travel with the line, and the cart row shows the cadence back to you before you commit.
Is there a discount for checking out several at once? Yes, on Lite and above: a cart holding two or more lines takes the 10% bundle discount, applied for you at checkout with nothing to tick. On Free the lines are priced individually. Either way the cart also saves you the presses.
What if my balance runs out half way through a batch? The earlier lines are already placed and paid for; the rest fail individually. There is no pre-flight check and nothing is rolled back.
Delivery and tracking
My order has been "Pending" for a while. Pending means a provider accepted it but delivery has not started. Check the service's published average time. The page re-reads status about every 45 seconds while the tab is in front.
What is the start count? A snapshot of the metric when delivery began. Delivered is measured from that baseline, so organic growth during delivery does not confuse the numbers. It appears on the order's public proof page as the Count row.
Where is the full delivery timeline? On the order's public proof page, once the order settles.
Why can I only see 40 orders? The Orders page loads your 40 most recent, filtered by its four tabs. Use Export CSV for your whole history.
"Partially delivered" — what happens to my money? You keep and pay for what arrived; the undelivered share is refunded automatically, pro-rata, into the same pockets you paid from.
Can I get a record of my orders? Export CSV on the Orders page — Lite and above. On Free the control is greyed out and carries no link at all: clicking it, or pressing it from the keyboard, prints the upsell in place instead of downloading anything.
How much have I spent boosting one particular channel?
If the channel is registered on your account, its own dashboard totals it for you. Open My channels, click the channel, and read Spent in the Boost Metrics panel — net of refunds and of any boost credit refunded — or the Boost delivery −$X line on its lifetime money card. Two caveats: an order is attached to a channel by the t.me link you pasted, so a boost placed against a private invite link or a t.me/c/… link does not appear there; and the page reads at most your 500 most recent orders, so a very busy account sees a floor rather than a lifetime total. For anything unregistered, or for the complete history, use Export CSV and add it up. See A channel's own dashboard.
Refills and cancellations
"This service doesn't include a refill." Refills exist only on services that carry the capability. Check a service's quality tags before ordering if that matters to you.
"The 30-day refill window for this order has closed." Protection is counted from completion. Elite, Master and Ultimate carry longer included windows — 30, 60 and 90 days.
The count dropped after the order finished. What happens automatically? If the order carries a guarantee or auto-refill, a sweep runs roughly hourly through the whole window and looks at any one order at most once every six hours. When it can still measure a drop it asks the provider to top the order back up on that six-hour cadence; when it cannot — the ordinary case for a completed order, whose provider reports nothing outstanding — it asks once a week, so the 30 refills an order gets over its life last the whole window instead of running out in the first fortnight. It works without being asked, and the Guaranteed tab on the Orders page is where you see it has acted.
What if the provider will not refill? On an order carrying a real guarantee, you get a one-off boost-credit make-good worth the dropped share of what you paid, capped at the charge. It is paid once per order, ever.
Your plan already gives every order a guarantee free — 30 days on Elite, 60 on Master, 90 on Ultimate. The composer's toggle only sells a 30-day window, so on those three plans it is not shown at all; the row states what your plan includes instead. The charge follows the same rule wherever the order is placed: +8% is added only when the window you ask for is longer than the one your plan already carries, and priced at zero when it is not.
"This order can no longer be cancelled." / "This service doesn't support cancellation." Cancelling only works while the order is live and only where the provider allows it. A settled order has nothing to stop — and a partial delivery is refunded automatically anyway.
Boost credit and referrals
Where did this boost credit come from? The Boost credit figure in the wallet strip is your balance. For a breakdown of where a particular amount came from, contact support with the date and the amount.
Why can I not withdraw boost credit? It is non-withdrawable by design. It is always spent before wallet cash, and refunds return it as credit rather than as cash.
How does the referral programme work?
One programme, one code. Your permanent OFRF- code and its /i/ link live at https://onflowads.com/account/referrals. Anyone who signs up through your link is bound to you for life, and you earn 5% of every top-up they pay, as non-withdrawable boost credit.
Can I enter a friend's code after signing up? No. Attribution happens once, at signup, from the link. If you signed up without using someone's link, you cannot be attributed to them later.
Commission is 5% of what a referred member pays Onflow Ads in a settled top-up. Nothing they buy earns you anything — a referral who spends $10,000 of an existing balance on boosts pays you nothing. Promotional bonuses and admin adjustments do not earn either.
Repeating an order
What is the quickest way to run the same boost again? A channel metric tile on Overview opens the composer with the right service already selected; your CSV export carries the exact link and quantity of anything you ran before; and a pasted mass order re-places many lines at once. Every repeat is composed fresh and priced at today's rate.
My repeat cost a different amount. A repeat is a new order priced at today's rate with today's discounts. Nothing about a past order fixes a future price.
Auto-Boost
What can I do to a rule from the Auto-Boost page? Pause, Resume and Cancel. Pausing keeps the pool intact; cancelling is permanent and refunds the whole unspent pool to your wallet immediately.
My rule stopped boosting posts.
Its pool is empty, or it is paused. Cancel it to get the unspent remainder back, or contact support with the rule's OFBS- reference.
Who actually runs a rule — the bot or the website? Both, in a fixed split. The bot watches the channel and records each new post it sees, because that needs its Telegram session. The website does everything else: it claims the pool, places the order, warns, pauses, renews and refunds. The bot never spends a cent of a pool. See Auto-Boost.
Auto-renew stopped working after a month when my wallet was low.
A renewal your wallet cannot cover switches auto-renew off permanently. It never retries, even once you top up. Contact support with the rule's OFBS- reference.
The API
"Invalid API key." (HTTP 401)
Missing, mistyped or revoked. A key is shown once at creation — a lost one can only be revoked and replaced. Check you are sending the full bk_… secret, not its prefix or its OFBK- reference.
"Your plan no longer includes the developer API." (HTTP 403) The key is fine; the account has dropped below Elite. Entitlement is re-read on every call. Renew or upgrade and the same keys work again immediately.
"Rate limit exceeded." (HTTP 429)
Over your plan's per-key rate — 60, 120 or 300 requests per minute on Elite, Master and Ultimate. Slow your polling, batch up to 100 ids into one status call, or use webhooks on Master and above.
"The developer API is an Elite plan feature." Key minting starts at Elite; webhooks at Master.
"Unknown action. Use services / add / status / refill / refill_status / cancel / balance."
Often this is the Developer page's own Quick start snippet, which sends an invalid "action":"order". Use add.
My add returned HTTP 200 but no order was created.
Order-level failures come back as an error field with an HTTP status of 200, not 402. Check for error on every add.
I cannot verify the webhook signature.
The signing secret is returned once when a webhook is created, and the dashboard's Add webhook form discards it. Until that is fixed, treat a delivery as a nudge and call status yourself. Contact support if you need the secret.
Is there a Rotate button for keys? No — only Revoke. Revoke the old key and create a new one.
Still stuck
Use Report a problem on the affected order — it opens a high-priority ticket already carrying the order's reference, service, status, quantity, amount paid, target link and date. The ticket reference arrives by email; the dialog itself closes without showing it.
For anything not tied to one order, contact support at https://onflowads.com/contact.
Related
- Limits and caps — every ceiling and rate limit, stated exactly
- The Boost dashboard — where each control actually lives
- Tracking your orders — statuses, refunds and reporting a problem