Eric Tran
How Easy Software saved 160+ engineering hours with Hookdeck
Easy Software is a leader in the open-source business software industry, helping companies worldwide manage projects with a single, organization-wide project management solution. Since 2007, they've grown from a series of internal project management plugins to become a trusted provider of flexible, open-source solutions for complex project management needs.
Their platforms—Easy Project and Easy Redmine—are available in the cloud, private cloud, and on-premise, serving organizations that need powerful yet accessible project management tools. Today, Easy Software relies on Hookdeck to ensure reliable webhook delivery between their marketing automation platform and CRM, processing over 200,000 events without the overhead of building and maintaining custom infrastructure.
The challenge
Easy Software's Head of Backend Development faced a critical integration challenge: connecting Mautic (their marketing automation platform) with their CRM (Easy Project) to automatically sync event data from web interactions directly into their customer management system.
The primary concern wasn't just making the connection work—it was ensuring bulletproof reliability.
“We need to be able to receive the webhooks even if there is a network problem or when the system is down for maintenance.”
Without a reliable solution, the team was prepared to build their own custom webhook infrastructure. Their engineering team had already mapped out what this would entail, and the complexity was significant.
The proposed custom solution
The team designed a two-component architecture:
Serverless component (AWS):
- Receive requests through AWS API Gateway
- Use AWS Lambda functions to store payloads (storage method undecided)
- Deploy additional Lambdas for retry logic and delay processing
- Implement custom error handling to retrieve and retry failed payloads
Microservice component (Ruby on Rails):
- Build a custom Rails application as the controller
- Store payloads in Redis
- Use ActionCable to re-send payloads to destinations
- Implement Sidekiq for retry mechanisms
This custom solution would have required at least 20 engineering days just for the basic queueing functionality—without any of the additional tooling needed for monitoring, debugging, or maintenance.
The solution
After discovering Hookdeck through a web search, the Head of Backend Development quickly realized it met all their requirements while being dramatically simpler to implement than other solutions they'd evaluated.
“The biggest benefit is that we don't have to worry about running the service. It's simple to set up and it works.”
Implementation in minutes, not months
What would have taken weeks to build took just minutes to set up with Hookdeck. The platform provided everything Easy Software needed out of the box:
- Reliable webhook reception: Hookdeck receives webhooks from Mautic and stores the payloads
- Guaranteed delivery: Automatic delivery to their CRM system with built-in retry logic
- Error handling: Alerts and automatic retries when something goes wrong
- Full observability: Complete visibility into webhook status and history
The UI proved to be more than just a nice-to-have—it became an essential tool for their operations.
“The dashboard is very useful because I can see the history and reports for the webhooks. In one click, we have access to all the source data (JSON payload).”
Empowering non-technical team members
One unexpected benefit was how Hookdeck enabled their integration manager—who doesn't have a technical background—to troubleshoot issues independently.
“He does not have a technical background so a dashboard that clearly indicates the errors has been really helpful for him.”
Hookdeck's dashboard provides clear visibility into:
- Status codes for each webhook event
- Complete metadata and payload data
- Error messages and retry attempts
- Historical data for debugging
This self-service capability has dramatically reduced the support burden on the engineering team.
The result
By choosing Hookdeck over building a custom solution, Easy Software achieved immediate and lasting benefits:
160+ engineering hours saved
The initial estimate for building just the basic queueing functionality was 20 engineering days (160 hours)—and that didn't include any monitoring, debugging tools, or ongoing maintenance. With Hookdeck, the entire integration was live in under an hour.
“Instead of having to go through a custom implementation and maintain custom services, we can focus on our primary business.”
200,000+ webhooks processed reliably
Hookdeck has successfully handled over 200,000 webhooks processed reliably for Easy Software, maintaining reliability even during:
- Network outages
- System maintenance windows
- Traffic spikes
- Integration partner issues
Zero maintenance overhead
Perhaps most importantly, the engineering team no longer needs to worry about webhook infrastructure at all.
“I'm happy! Instead of having to go through a custom implementation and maintain custom services, we can focus on our primary business.”
Faster issue resolution
The combination of Hookdeck's monitoring dashboard and alerting system has transformed how quickly the team can identify and resolve issues. What previously required engineering investigation can now often be handled by non-technical team members using the intuitive UI.
The future
With Hookdeck handling their webhook infrastructure, Easy Software can focus on what matters most: building and improving their project management solutions. The reliability and simplicity of Hookdeck means they can confidently add new integrations without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
As their Head of Backend Development summarized:
“Hookdeck is a simple and stable service which provides a very useful queue for your webhook services. Easy to set up and clear reports for non-technicals. A must have if you need to build integrations based on webhooks.”
Hookdeck Event Gateway
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