Idea checked

a webhook delivery service

There is clear existing demand and many competitors, but the webhook delivery space is already crowded with open-source, SaaS, and enterprise offerings.

Confidence: high — The signals contain many direct examples from GitHub, Hacker News, and web pages, including named products, launch posts, and discussions about reliability and security.

59 signals collected
13.0s to run
2026-08-01

hackernews 30
github 20
tavily 9

Who is already building this From data

Svix is a major player: it launched on HN as "Webhooks as a Service" with 117 points and 63 comments, and it says it makes it easy for developers to send webhooks with a simple API.
- hackernews Launch HN: Svix (YC W21) – Webhooks as a Service 2021-06-16
Convoy is another YC-backed/open-source player: its HN launch got 88 points and 53 comments, and it describes itself as an open-source webhooks service for publishing webhooks like Stripe and Twilio.
- hackernews Launch HN: Convoy (YC W22) – Open-source cloud-native webhooks service 2022-02-25
Webhook Relay sells enterprise webhook delivery, with SOC 2 Type II, SSO/SAML, audit logs, RBAC, encryption, and an option to run on your own infrastructure.
- tavily WebhookRelay: Forward Webhooks to Any Destination
smee.io is a long-running webhook payload delivery service repository with 478 stars and 114 forks.
- github probot/smee.io 2019-03-31
There are smaller open-source and library projects too, like gosmee, postmand, activehook, Deliverable, zio-webhooks, and flowshield, which all point at repeated attempts to solve the same delivery problem.

What people actually say From data

HN commenters repeatedly describe webhook delivery as hard because of retries, non-2xx handling, monitoring, back-pressure, and signing/validation.
A 2018 Ask HN explicitly asks whether an ultra-low-cost SaaS for URL registration, delivery, logs, and retries would be useful.
- hackernews Ask HN: Would a SaaS tool to handle webhook delivery be useful? 2018-02-06
A 2025 HN thread says building webhook infrastructure from scratch takes weeks and highlights queues, retries, and production readiness as the pain.
- hackernews Show HN: Deploy a Production Webhook Delivery System in 5 Minutes 2025-11-24
People also talk about reliability problems in real systems, including missed events, webhook endpoint downtime, and debugging edge cases for payment verification.
- hackernews Ask HN: How do you verify crypto payments in your app? 2026-03-03
Security is a live concern: GitHub warned in 2026 that webhook secrets were inadvertently included in an HTTP header on webhook deliveries, which could have exposed secrets to receivers.
- hackernews Tell HN: GitHub might have been leaking your webhook secrets. Check your emails. 2026-04-14
- hackernews GitHub gave webhook secrets away in webhook call 2026-04-14

Where the opening is Model estimate

The model's read of the signals below — not something anyone measured.

The market looks split into three lanes already: low-level open source tools, managed SaaS, and enterprise platforms. A new entrant needs a sharp reason to exist beyond "we also do retries and logs."
There is still room in narrower niches, such as self-hosted deployments, regulated customers, or teams that want webhook delivery close to their own infra, because several players emphasize self-hosting or enterprise controls.
The most obvious product gap is not basic delivery itself but visibility, auditability, and failure handling that fits production operations better than current defaults.
Another possible gap is an opinionated product for teams that already have events but do not want to build the operational layer: queues, retries, dashboards, and secret handling.

How big the market might be Model estimate

The model's read of the signals below — not something anyone measured.

The signals do not give a clean market size number, but webhook delivery is clearly a common infrastructure need across SaaS, payments, chat, CRM, IoT, and integration products.
The presence of multiple well-known products and repeated HN discussions suggests a real B2B infrastructure market rather than a toy niche.
GitHub and related platforms alone generate enough webhook traffic and security concern to make the category meaningful for developer tooling buyers.
Still, the signals do not prove how large the standalone spend is, only that the problem is widespread.

What could go wrong Model estimate

The model's read of the signals below — not something anyone measured.

Competition risk is high because there are already recognizable products and open-source alternatives with traction.
Security risk is not theoretical: webhook secrets can be exposed in delivery paths, so a delivery service needs strong handling of headers, logs, retention, and redaction.
- hackernews Tell HN: GitHub might have been leaking your webhook secrets. Check your emails. 2026-04-14
- hackernews GitHub gave webhook secrets away in webhook call 2026-04-14
Reliability expectations are unforgiving; users explicitly care about retries, queues, monitoring, and edge cases.
If the product only copies basic webhook forwarding, it may be easy for teams to replace with code, open-source, or cloud primitives like Pub/Sub.

What to do this week Model estimate

The model's read of the signals below — not something anyone measured.

Pick a narrower wedge than generic webhook delivery, such as self-hosted delivery for teams that need compliance, or visibility-first delivery for teams debugging production failures.
Build around the features people keep asking for: retries, queues, delivery logs, alerting, and signing/validation.
Differentiate with security and operational controls from day one: redaction, secret rotation support, audit logs, and clear retention rules.
Validate with teams already suffering webhook pain, especially payment, integration, and SaaS platforms that need reliable outbound events.
If you want a fast MVP, the signals suggest the basic architecture is well understood and can be assembled quickly, but the hard part is making it trustworthy enough for production use.

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