What should I use for reliable webhooks instead of polling?

Use webhook events with retries and idempotency rather than polling.

If you want it to be reliable, the usual pattern is:

1. Provider sends an HTTP POST webhook when something changes.
2. Your endpoint acknowledges quickly with a 2xx response.
3. The provider retries on failure/timeouts.
4. Your handler is idempotent so duplicate deliveries are safe.
5. You store a deduplication key / event ID and process asynchronously if needed.

For a more robust setup, consider:

• Message queue in the middle
  Webhook → your receiver → queue (SQS, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Pub/Sub) → worker
  This avoids losing events if your app is briefly down.

• Event sourcing / change streams if the source supports it
  Better than polling when available.

• Delivery signatures
  Verify HMAC/signature headers to ensure authenticity.

• Dead-letter queue + retries
  For events that fail processing repeatedly.

If you’re asking what to use as an alternative communication pattern, the answer is:

• Webhooks for push-based notifications
• Pub/Sub or event streaming for higher reliability and scale
• Queues if you need guaranteed internal processing

If you tell me your use case (e.g. Stripe-like payments, GitHub-like events, internal microservices), I can recommend the best architecture.