Webhooks come up in almost every automation conversation. You do not need to write code to understand them, and understanding them makes it much easier to design reliable workflows and talk to whoever builds them.
Polling versus webhooks
There are two basic ways for one system to learn that something happened in another. Polling means checking on a schedule: "every fifteen minutes, ask the form tool for new entries". A webhook means the other system sends a message the moment something happens: "a new entry was submitted; here are the details".
Webhooks are faster and avoid unnecessary checks. Polling is simpler to reason about and easier to recover when something is missed.
What is inside a webhook
A webhook is a small message sent to a web address you provide. It usually contains the event type (for example, "payment received") and the details as structured data. The receiving system reads it and starts the next step.
Questions to ask before relying on one
These are the questions that prevent most integration problems:
- What happens if our system is down when the webhook is sent? Does the sender retry, and for how long?
- Could the same event be sent twice? If so, how do we avoid processing it twice?
- How do we know the message really came from the sender? (Most services sign their webhooks.)
- Where can we see a log of webhooks received and failed?
A practical rule
For important events, combine both approaches: act on the webhook immediately, and run a daily check that compares the two systems to catch anything missed. That pairing gives speed and reliability.
Key takeaways
- Webhooks push events; polling checks on a schedule.
- Ask about retries, duplicates, verification and logs.
- Pair webhooks with a periodic reconciliation for important events.
