Third-party services choose when to send you 500 webhooks at once. Your server doesn't.
After a campaign send SendGrid pushes all your delivery, bounce and open events at once. Stripe does the same after a payout batch. Your server takes the full wave and stalls — exactly when you need that data most. WebhookFlow sits in between and delivers at the pace your application can handle.
Why webhook bursts knock infrastructure over
Providers send in bursts, not spread out
SendGrid, Mailgun, Stripe, Shopify — they batch events internally and push them in waves. A 50,000-recipient email campaign can mean thousands of webhook calls within minutes. From your server's point of view it's a spike that wasn't announced.
Timeouts trigger repeated deliveries
Respond too slowly and the provider retries. Three times, five times, sometimes up to thirteen. The spike you couldn't handle becomes an actual storm. Your server falls further behind, your metrics show error rates, and real users see your app go down.
Scaling up for the spike costs more than it's worth
Permanently over-provisioning your server for one spike a day is expensive and wasteful. Auto-scaling often boots too slowly (starting a container takes seconds, the spike lasts a few). A buffer in between is structurally cheaper and more reliable.
What you miss you often can't get back
No 200 response within the retry window? Many providers give up and discard the event. That's data you needed for your accounting, billing flow or customer communication. Permanently gone.
How WebhookFlow protects your server from bursts
Accept instantly, forward at a controlled pace
WebhookFlow returns 200 to every incoming webhook within milliseconds. The provider is satisfied, retries don't happen. Then we queue the message and deliver it to your server at the rate you've configured.
Per-destination rate limiting
Set a ceiling — for example, 50 forwarded webhooks per second to your production server. Anything above queues until volume settles. No more sudden surges into your infrastructure.
Retries during downtime
Server briefly unreachable? WebhookFlow holds the events and retries automatically — with exponential backoff so a recovering server doesn't get hit again immediately.
Complete audit log
Every received, forwarded and failed attempt is logged. You see how many are waiting in the buffer, average wait time, and which messages were retried. Real insight into what flows through your system.
Frequently asked questions about webhook bursts
How large is a typical SendGrid burst?
For a 50,000-recipient newsletter send you'll receive 49,000–60,000 events within minutes — delivered, opens, clicks, bounces and spam reports combined. SendGrid pushes them in batches with 100+ events per second at peaks. For servers usually handling a few requests per second that's an order of magnitude too much.
Does this work for Stripe and Shopify too?
Yes, the pattern is the same. Stripe pushes a burst of transaction events after a payout batch or large refund operation. Shopify does this during Black Friday or flash sales — thousands of order events in a short window. WebhookFlow is provider-agnostic and buffers any webhook type.
What if the buffer itself fills up?
The queue is dimensioned for realistic bursts (tens of thousands of events per minute). In practice the buffer fills during a peak and drains within seconds to minutes. We monitor this and alert you if the queue keeps growing past configured thresholds, so you can act in time.
Doesn't this add latency?
For forwarding to your server: no, unless you intentionally rate-limit. We receive a webhook in milliseconds and forward it in milliseconds during normal load. What you add is a buffer for situations where data would otherwise be lost — a good trade.
Can I prioritize between different types of webhooks?
Yes. You can set different rate limits and priorities per webhook source (URL or provider). Payment confirmations can be forwarded with higher priority than delivery statuses for marketing emails, for example.
No more flat-out crashes from webhook bursts
WebhookFlow is in development and looking for beta users. Sign up for early access and help shape what we build next.