What is a webhook, and would I ever use one?

What actually gets sent

systeme.io describes the webhook action as sending trigger related data as an HTTP request in JSON format.

A completed opt-in, for instance, carries the funnel step and the funnel it happened on, plus the contact's id, email address, form fields and IP address, and the time it happened.

Two places to set one up

The account service. Profile picture, then Settings, then Webhooks, then Create. It asks for a name, the URL the data goes to, a secret key, and which events to listen for. An Active toggle turns it on and off.

As an action. Send webhook is one of the actions available inside an automation rule and inside a workflow, so anything those can be triggered by can fire one.

The six events the account service supports

• Contact created
• Contact tag added
• Contact tag removed
• Opt-In
• New sale, covering funnels and creator stores
• Sale canceled, meaning a cancelled subscription or a refunded one-off payment

What has to exist at the other end

A server endpoint that can handle the request, and it has to be HTTPS. systeme.io is explicit that the secure address is required, so a plain HTTP URL is not enough.

Requests arrive from three fixed addresses: 185.236.142.1, 185.236.142.2 and 185.236.142.3. Those are what a firewall needs to let through.

When a delivery fails

Nothing is dropped straight away. Deliveries run in the background, and a server that is down, slow or returning an error gets retried up to 12 times, with the gap growing to around 24 hours between attempts. In practice systeme.io keeps trying for several days.

The three dots beside a webhook offer View logs, split into a Message log showing time, event type and detail, and a Delivery log showing whether the far end accepted it. A Copy log button lifts either one out for a developer.

Would I ever use one?

Only when the tool you want to reach is not already connected. Google Sheets is available as a workflow action, and Zoom, Google Meet and Google Calendar sit in the integrations settings, so none of those need a webhook.

A webhook is one route to everything else, and the price of it is having somewhere to receive the request. Without that, there is nothing to point it at.

One thing to know before sharing

The Send webhook action is not included when a workflow is shared with another account. A workflow that arrives by link comes without it.