Overview
Event Streams and Webhooks are both mechanisms for handling data and events, but they serve different purposes and operate in distinct ways. Learn more about their distinct functionalities and use cases, in addition to how to use them.
What You Need To Know
Functionalities and Use Cases
It's important to understand their distinct functionalities and use cases.
| Event Streams | Webhooks | |
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Purpose |
Event Streams is an API designed to provide centralized streams of event data directly into your infrastructure. It is designed to handle large volumes of data and provide a unified data format with consistent metadata. | Webhooks are event-driven and automatically send data to a specified URL when specific events occur. They are often used for real-time notifications and immediate reactions to events. |
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Data Delivery |
It supports at-least-once delivery with retries for 24 hours, ensuring reliable data transmission. | Webhooks operate in real-time, sending data as soon as an event triggers them. |
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Integration |
Provides a single integration point for all Twilio data, allowing you to stream data to multiple sinks like Amazon Kinesis, Segment, or Webhooks. | Requires setting up a URL to receive data and specifying triggers for when data should be sent. |
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Use Cases |
Ideal for scenarios where you need to consolidate data from multiple Twilio touchpoints into a centralized system for analysis and decision-making. | Suitable for real-time updates, such as receiving notifications when a message is sent or a call is received. |
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Complexity |
Allows you to create one or multiple subscriptions to stream data to one or multiple sinks, providing flexibility in data delivery. | Generally simpler to set up than Event Streams, but requires security measures to protect exposed endpoints. |
While both Event Streams and webhooks facilitate data delivery, Event Streams is more suited for centralized data streaming and processing, whereas webhooks are ideal for real-time event-driven notifications. Depending on your specific needs, you might choose one over the other or even use both to complement each other.
How to use Event Streams and Webhooks in Twilio
- Event Streams: You can set up Event Streams to stream data from various Twilio services like Messaging, Voice, and TaskRouter. You can create subscriptions to specific event types and deliver data to sinks like Amazon Kinesis or Webhooks.
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Webhooks: To use a webhook, you need to register a URL with the service provider and specify the events that should trigger data sending. Twilio's webhooks can send data about text messages and voice calls to your application in real-time.
Additional Information
For more detailed information, you can explore the resources provided by Twilio on these topics.