I would prefer to implement the sending of webhooks in bulk - if the consumer falls behind, they receive up to 100-1000 webhooks per request (depending on the size and complexity of each individual webhook - ids only is 1000, complex documents 100). This drastically cuts down on the number of concurrent requests to a single client when load is high, or the consumer broke down for a period of time.
Unfortunately, developers writing code to receive batch requests are often... inadequate, to say the least. They'll write basic looping code without any error/exception handling; so if the 3rd item in a bulk request of 100 items causes a server-side error for them, they throw a 500 Internal Server Error or similar and fail to continue processing items 4 through 100. You simply cannot batch webhooks as a producer, unless you detect a single failure from the client to process a batch as a cue to drop to performing "batches" of size 1 until you receive an error for a single request, at which point you return to bulk. Rinse and repeat.
Honestly, being the producer sending webhooks to consumers which are written by random developers is a nightmare. You have to understand that your customers will not write proper code to accept your webhook requests, even if each request is for a single webhook. You also must understand that your customers will not look to blame themselves for shitty code. You can retry 1,000 times over a 48 hour period, and if their code still fails to process the webhook, it will be YOUR fault, not theirs.
Truthfully, it is horrible to be on the sending end of webhooks to random developers/customers.
I don't understand, if it's such a nightmare why don't you (the producer) create the code/libraries to use those webhooks? At least in the 2 most common platforms (e.g. PHP, Java)
Unfortunately, developers writing code to receive batch requests are often... inadequate, to say the least. They'll write basic looping code without any error/exception handling; so if the 3rd item in a bulk request of 100 items causes a server-side error for them, they throw a 500 Internal Server Error or similar and fail to continue processing items 4 through 100. You simply cannot batch webhooks as a producer, unless you detect a single failure from the client to process a batch as a cue to drop to performing "batches" of size 1 until you receive an error for a single request, at which point you return to bulk. Rinse and repeat.
Honestly, being the producer sending webhooks to consumers which are written by random developers is a nightmare. You have to understand that your customers will not write proper code to accept your webhook requests, even if each request is for a single webhook. You also must understand that your customers will not look to blame themselves for shitty code. You can retry 1,000 times over a 48 hour period, and if their code still fails to process the webhook, it will be YOUR fault, not theirs. Truthfully, it is horrible to be on the sending end of webhooks to random developers/customers.