Webhooks

ShipBob webhooks automatically notify your app when key events occur, allowing you to keep your data in sync.

Getting Started

1. Subscribe to webhooks

   Create a webhook to subscribe to an event and define a subscription URL.

2. Receive Webhook Events

   When the event occurs, ShipBob sends a POST request to your subscription URL with relevant data.

3. Acknowledge Receipt

   Your system should return a 2XX response to confirm successful receipt.

4. Handle Retries

   If no 2XX response is received, ShipBob retries delivery using an exponential backoff strategy.

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Key Concepts

• Subscription: A request to receive webhook notifications at a specified URL.
• Subscription URL: The endpoint where webhook data is sent.
• Event: A trigger that generates webhook data (e.g., an order being shipped).
• Topic: The category of event data being sent.
• Payload: The actual event data sent in the webhook.
• Response: A 2XX HTTP response is required to confirm webhook receipt.

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Common Use Cases

• ✅ Real-time Order Tracking - Receive order.shipped and order.shipment.delivered events to provide live tracking updates to customers.
• ✅ Inventory Management - Monitor order.shipment.exception events to detect and respond to stock shortages.
• ✅ Return completed notifications - Use return.completed events to update your system when a return has successfully been processed and completed by ShipBob.

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Webhook Topics & Events

Topic (2025-07)	Description	Scopes Required
order.shipped	Fires when a shipping label is purchased, printed, and scanned. If the order is split into multiple shipments, this fires per shipment.	orders_read
order.shipment.delivered	Fires when a shipment is delivered to the customer.	orders_read or fulfillments_read
order.shipment.exception	Fires when a shipment is moved to exception status (e.g., out-of-stock items).	orders_read or fulfillments_read
order.shipment.on_hold	Fires when a shipment moves to On-Hold status due to missing information (e.g., address issues).	orders_read or fulfillments_read
order.shipment.cancelled	Fires when a shipment is canceled. Does not fire for manually canceled or imported orders.	orders_read or fulfillments_read
return.created	Fires when a return is created.	returns_read
return.updated	Fires when a return is updated.	returns_read
return.completed	Fires when a return is completed.	returns_read

Webhook topics for 1.0 and 2.0 versions

Topic (1.0, 2.0)	Description	Scopes Required
order_shipped	Fires when a shipping label is purchased, printed, and scanned. If the order is split into multiple shipments, this fires per shipment.	orders_read
shipment_delivered	Fires when a shipment is delivered to the customer.	orders_read or fulfillments_read
shipment_exception	Fires when a shipment is moved to exception status (e.g., out-of-stock items).	orders_read or fulfillments_read
shipment_onhold	Fires when a shipment moves to On-Hold status due to missing information (e.g., address issues).	orders_read or fulfillments_read
shipment_cancelled	Fires when a shipment is canceled. Does not fire for manually canceled or imported orders.	orders_read or fulfillments_read

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Webhook Headers

ShipBob sends webhook notifications with the following headers:

{
  "x-webhook-topic": "order.shipment.on_hold",
  "webhook-timestamp": "1755884852",
  "webhook-signature": "v1,5BO0uMAu1XYGkAJOpZb0Piel11YaChVEZCpXY6mwUMA",
  "webhook-id": "msg_31eW7bWRi16lL0Ajjik68kfyeUh",
  "content-type": "application/json"
}

Webhook headers for 1.0 and 2.0 versions

{
  "shipbob-subscription-id": "1582",
  "shipbob-topic": "order_shipped",
  "content-type": "application/json"
}

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Webhook Payloads

✨ The best way to see examples of webhook payloads is to create a webhook in the ShipBob Dashboard by going to:
Integrations → Webhooks → Create new subscription.

1. Add your subscription URL — this is the endpoint on your server where ShipBob will send the webhook data.
2. Select a topic — choose an event type such as order.shipped or return.completed.
3. Click “Send example” — ShipBob will immediately send a sample JSON payload to your URL so you can preview the structure.

This approach makes it easy to test your integration, validate your endpoint, and understand the exact payload format without waiting for a real event to occur.

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Retry Schedule

Each message is attempted based on the following schedule, where each period is started following the failure of the preceding attempt: 

• Immediately 
• 5 seconds 
• 5 minutes 
• 30 minutes 
• 2 hours 
• 5 hours 
• 10 hours 
• 10 hours (in addition to the previous) 

If an endpoint is removed or disabled delivery attempts to the endpoint will be disabled as well. 

For example, an attempt that fails three times before eventually succeeding will be delivered roughly 35 minutes and 5 seconds following the first attempt. 

Indicating successful delivery 

The way to indicate that a webhook has been processed is by returning a 2xx (status code 200-299) response to the webhook message within a reasonable time-frame (15s). Any other status code, including 3xx redirects are treated as failures. 

Failed delivery handling 

After the conclusion of the above attempts the message will be marked as Failed for this endpoint, and the webhook sender’s account will get email notification for notifying them of this error. 

Manual retries 

You can also use the application portal to manually retry each message at any time, or automatically retry (“Recover”) all failed messages starting from a given date.

Disabling failing endpoints

If all attempts to a specific endpoint fail for a period of 5 days, the endpoint will be disabled and an email will be sent to the account owner. The clock only starts after multiple deliveries fail within a 24-hour span, with at least 12 hours difference between the first and the last failure.

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Static Source IP Addresses

In case your webhook receiving endpoint is behind a firewall or NAT, you may need to allow traffic from static IP addresses.

This is the full list of IP addresses that webhooks may originate from.

44.228.126.217
50.112.21.217
52.24.126.164
54.148.139.208
2600:1f24:64:8000::/56

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Best Practices

✅ Use HTTPS - Subscription URLs must support SSL. Use RequestBin for testing if needed.

✅ Implement Redundancy - Webhooks may be delayed or lost. Use GET endpoints to periodically reconcile data.

✅ Retry Handling - Events may arrive out of order due to retries—handle them as independent updates.

✅ Use Idempotency - Store webhook event ids and discard duplicates to prevent redundant processing.

✅ Logging & Monitoring - Log webhook requests and responses to diagnose issues.

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Troubleshooting Guide

Webhook Not Triggering?

• Ensure your subscription URL is correct and publicly accessible.
• Confirm your app returns a 2XX response to ShipBob’s POST request.
• Verify that your app has the correct webhooks_read or webhooks_write permissions.

Webhook Retries Are Overloading My Server

• Ensure your system processes events efficiently and responds within 5 seconds.
• Return a 2XX response before doing heavy processing.

Webhook Data is Out of Order

• Use timestamps from the payload to sort events properly.
• Handle events individually, rather than relying on strict order.

Receiving Duplicate Events?

• Webhooks are not guaranteed to be sent only once.
• Implement idempotency checks: Store received event IDs and ignore duplicates.