Should I use webhook callbacks to update notification status in my system?

Yes—webhook callbacks are a good choice for updating notification status if you need near real-time status changes and your notification provider supports them.

Use webhooks if:

• You want to know when a notification was sent, delivered, opened, clicked, failed, or bounced
• You need event-driven updates without polling
• Your system should react automatically to status changes
• You’re handling a high volume of notifications and want to avoid frequent API checks

Be careful about:

• Duplicate events: webhooks are often delivered more than once, so make them idempotent
• Out-of-order delivery: a later status may arrive before an earlier one
• Security: verify signatures / secrets to ensure the callback is legitimate
• Reliability: your endpoint must be highly available and respond quickly
• State mapping: decide which statuses are authoritative and how to handle conflicts

Common best practice

Use webhooks as the primary source of status updates, but store a fallback reconciliation job that periodically polls the provider for missed events.

Recommended approach

1. Receive webhook
2. Verify authenticity
3. Deduplicate event ID
4. Persist raw event
5. Update notification state using a clear state machine
6. Reconcile periodically with polling if needed

If you want, I can help you design a robust webhook architecture or a notification status state machine.