Phil Leggetter
Fewer Webhook Failures: How EasyPost's ShipBlink Stabilized Webhooks with Hookdeck
Over the years, shipping processes have become more complex for e-commerce businesses. Players like EasyPost's ShipBlink have stepped up to simplify and automate every part of the process. As an app within the EasyPost ecosystem, it helps brands connect with carriers, manage labels, and keep delivery promises without a heavy technical setup.
“I started ShipBlink more on the technical project side to build something cool; it wasn't to get something in front of customers. But eventually, people found it on the app stores and started using it.”
The app streamlines fulfillment by taking care of labels, carrier rate checks, and package tracking, freeing sellers to focus on faster order delivery. Originally built for merchants to improve EasyPost's usability, EasyPost's ShipBlink has evolved into a full-featured solution for merchants seeking dependable, low-maintenance shipping.
The company was founded by a small team with deep logistics and software experience, who saw how much time developers spent fixing carrier connections and tracking errors. They saw how fragile logistics can be. A missed webhook or delayed update can break sync between stores, carriers, and customers.
ShipBlink's solution was to build a platform that automates key workflows, including label creation, rate comparison, and order updates, all using EasyPost carrier integrations. The goal was to provide every merchant with dependable shipping, whatever their tech stack. As more orders came in, ShipBlink's system had to manage thousands of webhook events each day.
Every label created or order updated triggered dozens of events, and when those events failed or arrived late, merchants faced delays and confusion. That's where Hookdeck came in.
The challenge
ShipBlink's shipping infrastructure was built to handle live data from multiple carriers and platforms. But its webhook setup couldn't keep up with the chaos of real-world traffic. Events arrived from different sources (Shopify, EasyPost, and internal systems), and each behaved differently under load.
Sameer Kumar, Founder, ShipBlink (acquired by EasyPost), shared that the pain points grew over time.
Some webhooks failed silently; others retried endlessly. EasyPost, in particular, would keep resending events long after the issue was fixed, and there was no consistent log of what succeeded or failed.
“I knew the exact problem: Shopify would send Webhooks, and if I exposed my Heroku server, it could sometimes go down. I needed a solution that wouldn't lose any events.”
Debugging was manual and slow, with no central place to track what failed or why, while developers spent hours combing through partial logs, trying to match timestamps or payloads across services.
The issue was operational as much as it was technical. Each incident stole time from product development and slowed new deployments. As webhook traffic scaled with more merchants, so did the risk of silent data loss and delayed shipments.
What broke the system?
- Endless webhook retries
- Lost and duplicate events
- No unified logging or trace visibility
- Debugging consumed developer bandwidth
- Scaling risk from unreliable infrastructure
The solution
Sameer found Hookdeck while searching for a way to manage third-party systems' unpredictable retries. While retries were flooding endpoints, logs were patchy, and debugging was dragging down engineering time. He needed a tool that could add order without rewriting the system.
Hookdeck became that control layer. By inserting it between ShipBlink and every webhook source, they created a safety buffer that caught, queued, and traced every event.
“Hookdeck runs by itself. Even though my role is shifting away from day-to-day IC work, I still check it once in a while to ensure we aren't losing webhooks; it just keeps running.”
Bringing order to webhook traffic
By routing all EasyPost and Shopify events through Hookdeck, ShipBlink added structure to a process that used to be unpredictable.
Now, every event is caught and stored. If ShipBlink's endpoint goes down or slows, Hookdeck holds the payload until it's ready. Developers can replay any event instantly. Nothing gets lost, and every retry happens under their control.
Throttle and control webhook spikes
The biggest improvement came from Hookdeck's control over retries and burst traffic. Instead of EasyPost hitting ShipBlink's servers with uncontrolled loops, Hookdeck queued and released events at a steady pace. This approach allowed the team the ability to handle temporary slowdowns safely, without risking data loss.
Greater visibility of the entire workflow
The Hookdeck dashboard gave ShipBlink's developers what they never had before: full visibility. They can see when an event was received, processed, failed, or replayed. It turned debugging from trial and error into a single-click confirmation.
With that stability in place, ShipBlink's team could shift its attention back to improving merchant workflows instead of firefighting webhook failures.
Building a self-reliant system that scales with growth
ShipBlink built a pipeline that is ready for both growth and traffic surges.
Hookdeck became a critical step toward stability. It acted as a guardrail between incoming carrier events and ShipBlink's backend, catching every webhook, managing retries, and showing the exact state of each delivery attempt.
The result
After rebuilding the webhook system with Hookdeck, ShipBlink saw a sharp drop in webhook errors and retries. The system could now process carrier events at scale without slowing order updates or interrupting releases.
Developer time saved
Before Hookdeck, developers spent nearly 15–20 hours a week debugging failed webhooks or tracing missing delivery events. Developers often had to comb through logs and trace missing orders manually. After integration, those hours disappeared, failed webhook incidents dropped, and the average resolution time improved from hours to under 10 minutes.
Sameer highlighted that the impact of using Hookdeck became clear in both reliability and developer experience.
“Hookdeck is one of the tools the engineers who worked on ShipBlink would take to any other project. The tooling piece is something they value.”
Reliable releases
With fewer missing events, ShipBlink's engineering team could finally release updates faster. Deployments that once required long weekend windows were now completed during regular sprints without rollback risk.
Webhook-ready for any platform
Hookdeck gave the team confidence to take on new e-commerce integrations without hesitation. As Sameer shared, most developers tend to avoid webhooks because they add cognitive load, but with Hookdeck in place, that fear was gone.
Confidence through transparency
With Hookdeck's dashboard, the team gained full control over every inbound and outbound event. Traffic surges (even 300–400% spikes) no longer caused data loss or event delays. The team could release new updates, knowing the system could absorb whatever load came next.
What this means for ShipBlink
A simpler, reliable setup helped the team focus on improving the shipping experience, not maintaining infrastructure.
- Reduction in webhook failures
- Faster feature rollout
- Near-zero message loss during bursts
- Debugging time cut from days to minutes
- Event visibility across every carrier integration
Building reliability where it matters most
As ShipBlink continues to evolve, Hookdeck remains a quiet but constant part of its foundation. The team uses it to keep event traffic predictable and integrations clean, no matter how shipping volumes shift. It's the kind of reliability that lets engineers focus on product improvements instead of firefighting.
Sameer summed it up best when asked to rate Hookdeck.
“I would say easily 8 to 8.5. Like, this is something I would definitely use again in my next one, if I build another product.”
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