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Introduction to hookVM

Webhook Infrastructure for Modern SaaS

hookVM is a complete webhook platform that handles the entire webhook lifecycle—from receiving external events to delivering customer-facing webhooks—without requiring you to build and maintain custom infrastructure.

Why hookVM?​

Webhooks are critical to modern applications, but they're deceptively hard to get right. Teams waste engineering time building webhook routers, retry logic, debugging tools, and delivery infrastructure—all undifferentiated work that doesn't move your product forward.

hookVM solves this by providing enterprise-grade webhook infrastructure as a service:

  • No Infrastructure to Maintain: We handle scaling, retries, monitoring, and reliability
  • Faster Time to Market: Ship webhook integrations in hours, not weeks
  • Better Developer Experience: Real-time debugging, replay, and inspection tools
  • Production-Ready: Built for fintech, SaaS platforms, and high-scale APIs

Three Products. One Platform.​

hookVM consists of three integrated products, each solving a specific webhook challenge:

Flow​

Receive, transform, and relay incoming webhooks

Flow handles third-party and internal webhooks by validating, filtering, transforming, and routing events to the right destinations—without brittle glue code or custom pipelines.

Use Cases:

  • Receive webhooks from payment providers, CRMs, and partner APIs
  • Filter and transform payloads before forwarding to internal systems
  • Fan-out events to multiple destinations reliably
  • Replace ad-hoc webhook routers and cron jobs

Key Features:

  • Endpoint creation and management
  • Payload transformation and filtering
  • Multi-destination relay rules
  • Request validation and security

📚 Flow Documentation →

Pulse​

Deliver customer-facing webhooks reliably

Pulse is an event-to-webhook delivery engine that ensures your customers receive webhooks reliably, with retries, backoff, and isolation built in.

Use Cases:

  • Send webhooks to customer endpoints at scale
  • Provide webhook delivery as a product feature
  • Handle retries and failures automatically
  • Give customers visibility into delivery status

Key Features:

  • Event type management and subscriptions
  • Automatic retries with exponential backoff
  • Per-customer isolation and rate limiting
  • Delivery logs and customer-facing dashboards

📚 Pulse Documentation →

Play​

Test, debug, and inspect webhooks in real time

Play gives engineers and support teams full visibility into webhook traffic, making it easy to debug failures, replay events, and resolve customer issues quickly.

Use Cases:

  • Real-time webhook logs and payload inspection
  • Replay failed or historical events safely
  • Debug customer issues without asking for resends
  • Reduce support tickets and mean time to resolution

Key Features:

  • Live webhook request monitoring
  • Payload inspection and search
  • Event replay functionality
  • Request/response history

📚 Play Documentation →

Platform Features​

CLI Tool​

The hookVM CLI enables local development and testing by forwarding webhook events from hookVM endpoints to your localhost.

# Install
npm install -g @hookvm/cli

# Forward webhooks to local development
hookvm listen https://hooks.hookvm.com/your-endpoint --target http://localhost:3000

Benefits:

  • Test webhooks locally without exposing your machine
  • No ngrok or tunnel services required
  • Real-time event streaming
  • Works with any local development environment

📚 CLI Documentation →

Security & Reliability​

hookVM is built for production workloads with enterprise-grade security and reliability:

  • Encryption: TLS 1.3 for all connections, data encrypted at rest
  • Authentication: API keys, OAuth 2.0, and SSO support
  • Isolation: Multi-tenant architecture with per-customer resource isolation
  • Compliance: SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR compliant
  • Uptime: 99.9% SLA with automatic failover and redundancy

📚 Security Documentation →

Observability​

Full visibility into your webhook infrastructure:

  • Real-time Monitoring: Live dashboard with request metrics
  • Detailed Logs: Complete request/response history with search
  • Alerting: Configurable alerts for failures and anomalies
  • Analytics: Delivery rates, latency metrics, and error tracking

📚 Monitoring Guide →

Getting Started​

Quick Start (5 minutes)​

  1. Create an Account

    • Sign up at hookvm
    • No credit card required for free tier

  2. Choose Your Product

    • Flow: Create an endpoint to receive webhooks
    • Pulse: Set up event types to send webhooks
    • Play: Start monitoring webhook traffic

  3. Install CLI (Optional)

    npm install -g @hookvm/cli
    hookvm login

  4. Start Building

    • Follow product-specific guides
    • Integrate with your application
    • Monitor and debug in real-time

📚 Detailed Quick Start Guide →

Common Use Cases​

For SaaS Platforms​

  • Customer Webhook Delivery: Use Pulse to send webhooks to customer endpoints
  • Partner Integrations: Use Flow to receive webhooks from third-party services
  • Support & Debugging: Use Play to troubleshoot customer webhook issues

For Engineering Teams​

  • Local Development: Use CLI to test webhooks on localhost
  • Event Routing: Use Flow to route events to multiple internal systems
  • Monitoring: Use Play for real-time visibility into webhook traffic

For Fintech & Compliance​

  • Audit Logs: Complete request/response history for compliance
  • Secure Delivery: TLS encryption and authentication built-in
  • Reliability: Automatic retries and delivery guarantees

Architecture Overview​

┌─────────────────┐
│  External APIs  │
│  (Stripe, etc)  │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
    ┌────────┐
    │  Flow  │ ◄── Receive & Transform
    └────┬───┘
         │
         ▼
  ┌──────────────┐
  │ Your Backend │
  └──────┬───────┘
         │
         ▼
    ┌────────┐
    │ Pulse  │ ◄── Deliver to Customers
    └────┬───┘
         │
         ▼
┌────────────────┐
│ Customer URLs  │
└────────────────┘

         ┌────────┐
         │  Play  │ ◄── Monitor Everything
         └────────┘

Support & Resources​

Documentation​

Community & Help​

  • Email Support: support@hookvm.com
  • Documentation: hookvm.com/docs
  • Status Page: status.hookvm.com

Examples​

Next Steps​

Choose your path based on what you need:

I want to receive webhooks from external services​

→ Start with Flow

I want to send webhooks to my customers​

→ Start with Pulse

I want to debug and monitor webhooks​

→ Start with Play

I want to test webhooks locally​

→ Install the CLI

Ready to build? Create your free account →