What is a Webhook?
The short answer
A webhook sends an event notification to a configured endpoint when a defined condition occurs.
Webhook: why it matters
Automated company-data workflows need clear meanings and traceable transformations. An operation that runs successfully can still produce a result that is unsuitable for the intended business question.
How to assess it in practice
Validate event identity and implement safe retry handling without assuming delivery happens exactly once. Start by defining the question the team needs to answer. Identify the relevant record or evidence, check its scope and date, and retain the reasoning behind the result. If evidence conflicts, keep that conflict visible for review.
Worked example
Illustrative workflow: a team reviewing a business adds a separate check for webhook. The reviewer’s task is to validate event identity and implement safe retry handling without assuming delivery happens exactly once. The outcome is recorded together with the supporting evidence; an unresolved question stays open rather than being converted into a positive result.
A company-status event is delivered twice. Deduplicate using an appropriate event key so the team does not create duplicate review cases.
Distinctions that matter
Webhook belongs to the apis & data delivery topic family. Read Company Data API alongside it to understand the adjacent question. Each page has its own intended scope; shared context does not make the concepts equivalent.
Evidence and review output
Review these
- Delivery and population scope
- Identifiers and row outcomes
- Checkpoints and reconciliation
The review should produce
A recoverable ingestion process that preserves source context and makes incomplete results visible to downstream users.
Across this family
Reliable delivery needs identity keys, coverage definitions and explicit outcomes for success, gaps and errors. Design reconciliation and recovery before automating business actions. A transmitted file or successful request can still leave the recipient with an incomplete or incorrectly matched business record.
A note from practice
A webhook consumer should authenticate events and tolerate retries, duplicates and delayed delivery under the provider's documented behaviour. Separate accepting the notification from completing the downstream business action.
Limits and common mistakes
The practical boundary is important: Validate event identity and implement safe retry handling without assuming delivery happens exactly once. Do not substitute a related label for this check or assume that missing information is a negative finding. Source-specific and jurisdiction-specific rules require their own review.
Frequently asked questions
Which evidence should I review?
How is Webhook different from Batch Processing?
What should the result of the review contain?
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Related topics
- APIs & data deliveryCompany Data APIA company data API is an interface through which software can request or receive information about businesses. It may support searches, entity lookups, enrichment or other operations, depending on the provider. An API changes how data is delivered; it does not, by itself, establish where that data came from or what it proves.
- APIs & data deliveryBulk Data FeedA bulk data feed delivers a defined collection of records for file-based or large-scale processing.
- APIs & data deliveryDelta FeedA delta feed delivers changes relative to a defined earlier data state.
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