A presentation at API Days NYC in in New York, NY, USA by Phil Leggetter
Beyond Webhooks: The Future of Scalable API Event Delivery ? Phil @leggetter Hookdeck API Days / New York / 14 May, 2025
What are Event Destinations and Why It’s Time to Move Beyond Webhooks Phil @leggetter Hookdeck API Days / New York / 14 May, 2025
Brief History of Webhooks ● ● ● 2007 Jeff Lindsay creates “web hooks” Simple HTTP callbacks for real-time notifications Examples: GitHub, Stripe, Shopify, Twilio
Webhook Producer Challenges ● ● ● ● ● Scalability of Delivery Reliability & Retry Complexity Monitoring & Observability Customer Support Load Risk to Customer Infrastructure
Examples of Reliable Outbound Webhook Infrastructure https://hkdk.link/edc
Webhook Consumer Challenges ● ● ● ● ● Reliable Inbound Infrastructure Opt-In and varied Webhook Endpoint Security Inbound Processing Logic: Handling Retries & Idempotency Debugging & Observability Testing & Development Workflow
Event-Driven Architectures - Internal & External ● ● ● ● EDA = microservices = AWS, Azure, or GCP. Critical events also come from external services (e.g. Stripe, Shopify, Twilio) via inbound webhooks. Your architecture must account for both internal and external events. Why havenʼt we applied the same rigor, tools, and patterns to external event delivery?
How Leading Platforms Are Rethinking Event Delivery
Twilio Sink
Shopify “Webhooks”
Stripe Event Destinations
Introducing Event Destinations ● ● ● ● A modern event delivery model, inspired by Stripe, Shopify, and Twilio Supports delivery to many destination types — HTTP, queues, streams, and event buses Focused on reliability, scalability, and developer experience We’ve created a set of open-source guidelines have a conversation and assist adoption eventdestinations.org
Event Destinations: For API Platforms (producers) ● ● ● Improved reliability: Delivery to durable, fault-tolerant services (e.g., EventBridge, Hookdeck, Pub/Sub, Kinesis) Increased efficiency: Offloading retries, buffering, and failure handling to destination infrastructure Required security: Event destination types that require auth are an improvement on webhooks
Event Destinations: For Developers (consumers) ● ● ● Integration flexibility: Choose how and where to consume events — webhooks, queues, or event buses Simplified infrastructure: Remove the HTTP ingestion layer Improved DX Better observability, fewer ingestion issues, and improved integration with existing tools
Event Destinations: A Model Inspired by Practice ● ● ● ● Real-world patterns from Stripe, Shopify, and Twilio Delivery to Amazon EventBridge, GCP Pub/Sub, AWS Kinesis, and more Community-led effort to formalize and share modern event delivery guidance eventdestinations.org / github.com/hookdeck/event-destinations
Event Destinations Guidelines: Required ● ● ● ● At least two event destination types, including webhooks Automatic delivery retries with exponential backoff APIs to create, update, and delete destinations Alerts for destination failures eventdestinations.org
Event Destinations Guidelines: Recommended ● ● ● ● ● ● At-least-once event delivery guarantee Event topics and topics-based subscriptions Auto-disabling of failing destinations after too many failures Developer UI to configure destinations & inspect events Manual retries via UI or API Filtering based on payload content eventdestinations.org
When to Consider Event Destinations ● ● ● ● Handling increasing scale and subscriber volume Experiencing frequent webhook failures or retries Reducing operational burden from delivery management Supporting customer integration needs
Outpost: Event Destinations Reference Implementation - outpost.hookdeck.com
The Future of API Event Delivery ● ● ● ● ● Event Destinations are shaping the future of API event delivery Move beyond webhooks to scalable, resilient infrastructure Supports modern architectures and developer expectations Join the Event Destinations Initiative and help define what comes next Outpost: open-source Event Destinations implementation eventdestinations.org outpost.hookdeck.com
Thanks & Questions Phil @leggetter Hookdeck API Days / New York 14 May, 2025
Since Jeff Lindsay introduced webhooks in 2007, they’ve become the default mechanism for delivering API platform events to consuming applications. But as adoption has surged and event-driven systems have evolved, the cracks in the webhook model have started to show—scalability challenges, reliability concerns, and operational overhead are just the tip of the iceberg.
In this talk, I’ll challenge the status quo and explore why webhooks may no longer be the best fit for modern API platform event delivery. More importantly, I’ll introduce Event Destinations—a Stripe-inspired next-generation approach designed to handle event distribution at scale, offering greater flexibility, resilience, and control. If you’re building APIs or event-driven platforms, this session will equip you with the insights to rethink your event delivery strategy.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
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