How Cursive Media saved thousands migrating from Zapier to Hookdeck

Company
Cursive Media
Location
USA
Industry
Development Agency
Size
1-10
"I recommend Hookdeck to every dev thinking of making the jump from no-code to writing integrations. Trusting that Hookdeck is reliably managing webhooks has allowed me to focus on my code and deliver fast."
John Mahlow
Founder

Cursive Media is a digital media company based in Houston, Texas that is focused on helping businesses modernize and grow. The company is small, consisting of 13 employees, but their reach is big. They have worked on a major array of projects, from helping ASAP Credit Repair build their online and physical presence across the US, to integrating Johnny Dang & Co.’s social media pages with Shopify, to building Everlast Energy’s hiring campaign during a pandemic. Cursive has proven that they can help any digital project.

Confident staying on top of any situation and recover from any webhook errors.
Deliver more projects to help clients modernize and grow.
Reduce codebase complexity by refactoring hundred of steps integrations using Transformation and Filters.
THE PROBLEM

From Zapier's bill to webhook's reliability concerns

"Zapier's no-code approach to integrations is excellent until you scale, at which point it becomes unviable to the success of our business. "

Operating at a profit

Cursive's owner John “Holliday” Mahlow builds automation for the company’s clients on Zapier. However, after spending close to $70k on Zapier last year, he decided that as impressive as the software is, Cursive needed to bite the bullet and build their own internal solution that could solve their client's integration and automation challenges while actually making a profit.

Concerns on managing webhooks in production

Despite using millions of tasks per month, integrating and automating applications wasn't Holliday’s problem. The issue was that if one of those applications suffered an outage or Cursive's server went down, there would be no way to know which webhooks failed. Even if they could track unsuccessful ones, it would be almost impossible to retry thousands of tasks promptly without risking repeating previously completed events.

THE SOLUTION

Developer first. Hookdeck manage the webhook reliability and ease the transition from Zapier

"I'm so happy I found Hookdeck. Not only does Hookdeck offer a solution we desperately need to manage webhooks reliably, but they've built it with developers in mind. "

Monitor and recover from errors in a blink

The first part of the puzzle for Holliday is making sure that Hookdeck can tick off all the boxes it takes to alleviate his concerns regarding webhooks in production. With Hookdeck, Holliday can easily monitor webhooks across his four projects and know for certain that everything will go well.

He relies on Hookdeck to send him alerts when there is an issue so that he can make sure he fixes any problems as soon as they arise. Once he is done fixing the issues, he bulk retries all the events that fall within the specified filters of the error. Just like that, his errors are fixed before his clients can even notice.

Painless migration from Zapier to Hookdeck

The second puzzle piece is making sure that Holliday can successfully transition from a no-code platform to a developer-first approach.

An obvious benefit to moving away from a no-code platform to a developer-first approach is the ease of connecting data. However, Holliday soon realized that Hookdeck came with advantages he couldn't have imagined. By leveraging the power of Filtering and Transformation to manipulate webhooks and their data in any way he desired, he was able to cut out many intermediate steps and create a seamless and comprehensive flow.

Hookdeck's Filtering and Transformation features have allowed us to refactor complex integrations that are comprised of literally hundreds of steps... to the point where we find ourselves double and triple-checking the code in disbelief!

THE RESULT

Cursive focuses on code and delivering value to their clients while saving money

"The solution is robust: the interface is easy to use, the documentation is easy to understand, and the cost is easy on my wallet. What more can I ask for?"

Cursive saves thousands per year

By pivoting from Zapier and building their automation from scratch, Cursive's team achieves the perfect level of abstraction: Hookdeck is simple yet flexible, and intuitive like no-code with a price tag closer to a cloud product. What’s important to Holliday is the flexibility of custom code, the intuitive developer experience, and most notably, the price.

Holliday can confidently move forward

Now all of Cursive's projects are being powered by Hookdeck. He feels confident he can stay on top of any situation and recover from any webhook errors.

Holliday is set up for success, and now his valuable time is fully dedicated to delivering more projects to help his clients modernize and grow.

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