How to Scope Your Webhook MVP (Without Over-Engineering)

You've decided your product needs webhooks. The temptation is to over-engineer: message queues, exponential backoff, event sourcing. Before you know it, a "simple feature" becomes a three-month infrastructure project.

This guide covers what belongs in MVP, what to defer, how to prioritize events, and avoid the scope creep traps that derail webhook projects.

Essential MVP Features

Reliable Delivery With Retries

Endpoints fail. Automatic retry logic with exponential backoff is non-negotiable. A reasonable MVP schedule: 5 min, 30 min, 2 hrs, 8 hrs, 24 hrs—giving endpoints 35+ hours to recover.

Payload Signatures

Sign every webhook with HMAC-SHA256 signatures so recipients verify authenticity. Non-negotiable for production.

Delivery Logs

Log every attempt with timestamp, response code, and body. 7 days retention is enough for MVP.

Event Type Filtering

Let customers subscribe to specific events. Nobody wants all user.updated webhooks when they only need payment.succeeded.

HTTPS Enforcement

Never deliver over plain HTTP. This protects customer data and is expected.

Defer These Features

• Payload transformations - Complex; customers can transform on their end for now
• Advanced filtering - (e.g., "order total > $100") adds significant complexity
• Bulk replay - Single replay is essential; thousands at once is advanced
• Multiple secret versions - Important for enterprise, overkill for MVP
• Custom retry schedules - Add complexity; sensible defaults work
• Message broker integrations - Valuable for high-volume but adds infrastructure complexity

MVP enables core functionality. Deferred features add flexibility. Ship core first, learn from customers, build later.

Prioritizing Events

Use a prioritization matrix. Evaluate each event across three dimensions:

Example for a billing SaaS:

High-scoring events are MVP candidates; lower-scoring ones can wait.

Start With 5-10 Events

Resist exposing 50 types immediately:

• Faster time to market
• Room to iterate based on real usage
• Simpler for customers

Adding events is easy; removing them later is hard.

Build vs Buy

Build Estimates

Plus ongoing: customer debugging, edge cases, scaling, UI maintenance, security.

Teams spend 20-30% of one engineer's time maintaining webhook infrastructure.

Managed Service

Live in days, not months. The service handles retries, logging, UI, and scaling automatically. For most startups, engineering time is your scarcest resource.

Scope Creep Traps

Trap 1: Stripe Feature Parity

Stripe invested millions over a decade. You don't need parity for MVP.

Solution: Define MVP features in writing. When a new feature is suggested, ask: "Required for first 10 customers?" If not, defer it.

Trap 2: Build Your Own Queue

Use existing infrastructure (Redis, SQS, RabbitMQ) or a managed service.

Solution: Treat infrastructure as solved. Your advantage isn't in queue design.

Trap 3: Premature Scale

"What if we need 10M webhooks/day?" You're not there yet. Premature optimization slows you down.

Solution: Build for 10x current scale, not 1000x.

Trap 4: Custom Payload Formats

Customers might want custom formats. They can transform on their end for MVP.

Solution: Ship a standard format. Add flexibility when customers ask.

Trap 5: Custom Testing Tool

Testing tools add scope. Use webhook.site for MVP testing.

Solution: Provide sample payloads in docs. Build your own tooling later if demand justifies it.

Your Webhook MVP Checklist

Use this checklist to ensure your webhook MVP is properly scoped:

Core Delivery

• Automatic retries with exponential backoff (at least 5 attempts over 24+ hours)
• HMAC-SHA256 payload signatures
• HTTPS-only delivery
• Configurable timeout (15-30 seconds is reasonable)

Customer Experience

• Event type filtering (subscribe to specific events)
• Delivery logs visible to customers (at least 7 days)
• Manual replay for failed deliveries
• Clear endpoint status indicators

Developer Experience

• REST API for programmatic management
• Well-documented event catalog
• Sample payloads for each event type
• Verification code samples (Node.js, Python at minimum)

Deferred for Later

• Payload transformations
• Advanced filtering rules
• Bulk replay
• Secret rotation with grace periods
• Custom retry schedules
• Message broker integrations

Launch Path

Reliable delivery, retry logic, customer UI, logging, and maintenance equal significant investment. Define your MVP in writing, stick to it, and ship.

Launch timeline with a managed service:

1. Day 1: SDK integration, define events
2. Day 2: Embed portal, write docs
3. Day 3: End-to-end testing
4. Day 4: Ship

Your team should build features that differentiate your product, not reinvent webhook infrastructure.