When to use webhooks vs APIs

You should use webhooks rather than APIs if the data is updated on the server frequently as you can eliminate unnecessary API calls by the client to the server. In fact, 98.5% of API polls are wasted. With Webhooks, you only make a call when you receive a notification of status change, which may only happen a few times on an order in a day, reducing the number of calls to a few thousand a day. For instance, if your organization has 1000 pending orders, but you are only concerned with status updates on specific orders and you used APIs, it will call at according to the interval set (e.g., every 10 minutes per order) for a total of 144,000 calls per day.

Webhooks also allow better solutions for systems that require near-real-time data updates. API’s polls are usually run at pre-specified intervals which might prevent real-time data updates. With webhooks, updates are pushed by the server to the client as soon as the webhook is triggered.

How are Webhooks used: a CertCentral/Slack example

Webhooks can be an efficient way to integrate the system of your choice into a preexisting messaging platform. For example, your organization may want to receive Slack notifications when a certificate comes up for renewal or if a server vulnerability is detected. Instead of Slack continuously asking CertCentral for data meeting these criteria, it makes much more sense for CertCentral to send a notification to Slack only when one of these events takes place. This is the purpose of a webhook––instead of having to repeatedly request the data, the receiving application can sit back and get what it needs without having to send repeated requests to another system.

Use Webhooks in CertCentral today

Learn more at https://dev.digicert.com/webhooks/ and contact your DigiCert representative to see how you can get webhooks working for you today.