Your Webhook Doesn't Always Belong in Your API
Sometimes the best place for a webhook isn't your application—it's your infrastructure.
When most developers think about webhooks, they think about an HTTP endpoint.
A provider sends a request.
Your API receives it.
Business logic runs.
Response sent.
Done.
For small applications, that's usually enough.
As systems grow, though, that architecture starts to show its limits.
Imagine receiving thousands of webhook events every minute.
Some need to update your database.
Some should trigger background jobs.
Others need to be forwarded to another service.
A few should be streamed into Kafka for analytics.
Some belong in a message queue.
Trying to handle every one of those inside a single HTTP request quickly becomes difficult.
Your webhook endpoint slowly turns into the busiest part of your application.
Webhooks Are Just Events
One idea that changed the way I think about webhook systems is this:
A webhook isn't an API request.
It's an event.
Once you start treating webhooks as events instead of HTTP requests, the architecture becomes much more flexible.
Instead of asking,
"Which controller should process this?"
you start asking,
"Where should this event go?"
Sometimes the answer is your application.
Sometimes it isn't.
Different Events Need Different Destinations
Not every webhook has the same job.
Some events should be pushed into Redis for fast processing.
Others belong in RabbitMQ or Amazon SQS so workers can process them asynchronously.
High-volume analytics events might be streamed into Kafka.
Some integrations simply need to forward the webhook to another HTTP endpoint.
Internal microservices may communicate over gRPC.
Each destination solves a different problem.
The important part is having the flexibility to choose the right one.
That's Why I Built Destinations into Hooktrace
One feature I've been working on is Destinations.
Instead of treating Hooktrace as the final stop for webhook deliveries, it can route events to the infrastructure that's best suited for processing them.
Today Hooktrace supports destinations including:
- HTTP
- Redis
- RabbitMQ
- Amazon SQS
- Kafka
- gRPC
More destinations will follow as the platform evolves.
The goal isn't to replace your existing infrastructure.
It's to make webhook routing configurable instead of hardcoded.
Routing Shouldn't Require New Code
One thing I wanted to avoid was forcing developers to change application code every time a routing decision changed.
Maybe today's events belong in Redis.
Tomorrow they belong in Kafka.
Next month they need to be forwarded to another internal service.
Those shouldn't require redeploying your application.
They should be configuration changes.
That's the direction I'm taking with Hooktrace.
Looking Ahead
Modern applications are increasingly event-driven.
Webhook platforms shouldn't stop at receiving events.
They should help route them to the right place.
That's exactly what I'm trying to build with Hooktrace.
A webhook is only the beginning of the journey.
Where it goes next should be your choice.
Follow Along
I'm documenting the engineering decisions behind Hooktrace as I build it in public.
If you've built event-driven systems or have opinions on webhook routing, I'd love to hear how you're handling it.
🌐 Website: https://hooktrace.xyz
⭐ GitHub: https://github.com/hooktracehq/hooktrace
Thanks for reading.
