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Platform

Webhook

An HTTP callback sent when something happens, so your systems learn about a billing event without polling for it.

A webhook is a POST to a URL you own, fired when an event occurs: an invoice was paid, a payment failed, a subscription changed plan.

Webhooks are what let entitlements, provisioning and internal alerting react to billing without polling. They are also a distributed system, with all that implies: delivery is at-least-once, order is not guaranteed across endpoints, and your consumer must be idempotent.

The properties worth demanding from any provider are signed payloads, automatic retry with backoff, a visible delivery log, and the ability to replay a delivery after you have fixed the bug that made you drop it.

Related terms

  • Idempotency The property that repeating a request produces the same result as making it once. Essential wherever money moves.
  • Dunning The automated sequence of retries and reminders that recovers a failed recurring payment before the subscription is lost.
  • Entitlement What a customer is allowed to use because of the plan they are on: which features, and up to what limits.