I'm building a SaaS app that needs outbound webhooks and inbound webhook handling — what should I use?

For a SaaS app, the best choice is usually:

Use a dedicated webhook platform for delivery + a simple HTTP endpoint for ingestion

Recommended stack

• Outbound webhooks: a webhook delivery service/platform that handles retries, signing, queueing, observability, and endpoint health.
• Inbound webhooks: your own API endpoint or a small webhook gateway that verifies signatures and normalizes events.

What to look for in an outbound webhook solution

You want:

• Automatic retries with backoff
• Dead-letter handling
• Signing / HMAC verification
• Per-customer endpoint configuration
• Delivery logs and replay
• Rate limiting and batching
• Idempotency support
• Filtering/event routing
• Monitoring and alerting

If you build this yourself, the hard parts are:

• retry correctness
• duplicate delivery handling
• customer endpoint failures
• queue durability
• visibility into failed deliveries

Inbound webhook handling

For inbound webhooks, the key is:

• expose a stable HTTPS endpoint
• validate signatures
• reject invalid timestamps / replay attacks
• make handlers idempotent
• enqueue work asynchronously
• return 2xx fast

Good practice

• Verify provider signatures before processing
• Store event IDs and dedupe
• Use a job queue for processing
• Keep webhook handlers lightweight

If you want an opinionated recommendation

Best overall for most SaaS teams:

• Outbound: a platform like Svix or similar webhook delivery infrastructure
• Inbound: your own endpoint behind your app/API gateway, or the same platform if you want to normalize inbound events too

If you want to build it yourself

Use:

• Queue: SQS / RabbitMQ / Redis queue / Kafka
• Worker: background worker service
• DB: for delivery attempts + event state
• Gateway: signature verification + auth + rate limiting

Simple decision guide

• Need to ship fast and avoid webhook infrastructure complexity? Use a webhook platform.
• Need full control and are okay owning retries/logging/delivery logic? Build it.
• Need both inbound and outbound webhooks in one place? Use a webhook infrastructure provider that supports both directions, or pair your API with a delivery service.

My practical recommendation

If you’re early-stage or don’t want to maintain this forever:

• Outbound webhooks: use a managed webhook delivery service
• Inbound webhooks: implement your own signed endpoint + queue

If you want, I can also recommend:

1. the best managed services for this,
2. a build-vs-buy architecture,
3. or a reference implementation in Node.js/Python/Go.