Understanding API vs Webhook Differences AI Automation Agency

If you have ever created a chatbot or aworkflow automation, or any other kind ofautomation within the web space orwithin your AI automation agency, youhave certainly heard of the terms APIand webhooks, which are surprisingly very unknownin terms of where the difference lies. I think itmostly has to do with the fact that alot of people don’t even know howexactly those things should bestructured in the first place. So, intoday’s video, we’re going to make asmall dive into what thedifference is between webhooks andAPIs. I will give you my explanation of what

I learned over the past seven years withinthe automation industry so that you getan understanding of what the differenceis, where you should use what, and whereyou should call what. A little bit aboutmyself: I’m Yianis, and I’ve been in thetech industry since 2015. I have foundedmultiple software products including WPWebhooks, which is basically a workflowautomation service that runs onWordPress, with over 100 integrations,so that you can automateworkflows directly on the website, andyou literally don’t need to code.

Anything for that, it's all visual,similar to things like, you know, withmach.com, but fully privacy-oriented. Intotal, we have helped over 100,000businesses to become better, to make morewith less, so that they can thrive more.They can focus on the tasks that aremost important to them, and right now, myjourney is to help people like you toleverage automation to get a super goodunderstanding about it, so that you canimplement it into your business for yourclients, that you can make an actualagency or other type of business out ofit and just thrive the same way.

To give you a basic understanding of thedifference between a webhook and an API,I have to disappoint you, but it's mostlythe same. The difference actually is notfrom a technological perspective, butit's more from something that you giveit as a purpose. As you can see on thescreen here, the foundation is literallyidentical. So you use the same request,use the same kind of logic, you even usethe same kind of formats, and thefunniest of all is they can literallyinteract with each other. So webhookscan interact with APIs, and APIs can interactwith webhooks, more or less.

Basically, from the fundamentals possible, since it's nearly the same, where's the difference? Like I mentioned, it’s in the purpose.This is something that I discovered over creating hundreds and hundreds of integrations for clients and for our own products.It is very simple to understand with the two pictures I just have on screen here.You can see a webhook as you are literally screaming at someone; you’re just shouting out something.You don’t care what the person thinks or what it responds; you literally just want to get your message out.While an API is more like a conversation with a different person.

As you can see here on the screen, there are two other possible differences.What I mean by that is that a webhook just sends information out; you’re shouting at someone.It sends the information out; it doesn’t care what the other person does with it.The person who shouts cares only about the information.

That’s literally it for a webhook. For an API, it’s more complex; you’re asking the person something, or you want the person to do something, and the person gives you a response.

The response can do something else withit or re-ask another question based onwhatever the response was. So, those arethe two main differences. Just keep themin mind for now. We will get into them alittle bit more in detail in the futureslides. As you can see on the screen, aswell, there are two other possibledifferences that I would like to point out,which in the end can be used on both ofthem, but they only make sense for APIs.

One is authentication because it’s usuallysomething that is used with APIs, asthey're dealing with more sensitive data.So, you would usually not use awebhook for creating users or forupdating users, but you would use an APIfor that because you don’t want everyonewith a URL to be actually able to createa specific user. Right? So, you want themto authenticate and make sure the one whomakes the request is actually who itis supposed to be. You know, sothat it’s your server that it’s comingfrom a service that you allowed or yougave it access to.

The other difference is headers. There can bedifferent kinds of headers. Usually, webhooks, like I mentioned, don’t expect theIn response to the API, there's somethingcalled an acceptor, which means basicallythat you have already defined to the other person, "Hey,I'm asking you to please tell it to mein that specific format or tell it tome in that way. I just want to know whatexactly that means. Just say that to me.

Like you have seen from my previousvideo with a request, you're justdefining some specific scope that youwould like the recipient of therequest to respond back to you. Now, let'sget into the actual webhooks. So, I madea cute little slide that explains alittle bit more about where webhooks are used.

The most simple explanation iswherever you don’t need a response.Wherever you really don’t care about aresponse. When you see things like Stripe,it’s very obvious: whenever a new ordercomes in, you just send a webhook.Whenever a subscription gets updated, youcan send a webhook. When somesubscription gets canceled, you send awebhook. It's information that Stripesends out, but it doesn’t necessarilyneed a request, even thoughStripe is advanced enough that it will ensurethat the request actually arrived at the end.

With most services, I can already tell you and promise you it's not the case.So, I would also like you to keep in mind that even though webhooks don't need a response, they still get a response if they want it or not.Most services still deliver a response if they are properly coded, which should be the case.If not, I would suggest you look for a different service that actually sends you a response, just because it tells a lot about the person behind who actually wrote that code.

There are two main things that I found over the years for which our webhook is used.First of all, there are triggers, which basically are nothing else than events, like I mentioned: when an order is created, a user signed up for a newsletter, or a user registered on a new website—something like that.

Secondly, there's a bridge, which becomes a little more complex, but if I give you one specific example, it becomes super easy.You probably have heard about make.com, Zapier, or Integrately, Public Connect, Power Automate; there are tons of services out there.All of those are more like bridge services, so you actually use a webhook to start a specific workflow, whichAgain, this makes the webhook look like anaction, but it's actually just a bridgetrigger that initiates another workflow.

It can become complicated if yougo down to the naming conventions, but we just callit bridging. So, you literally just take awebhook to trigger another webhook tosend the data out. There’s usually alsono authentication used because platformslike Make.com with a webhookintegration don’t require anyauthentication. The sameapplies for Zapier and otherservices. So that’s literally thewhole magic about webhooks. Everythingyou see on the screen here is thedifference that separates webhooks fromAPIs. To give you some more contexton the API space, I made another slidewhich makes it verysimple to understand as well. You canbasically define anything as an API aslong as you perform an action with a requestor you expect a specificrequest. This is usually used forperforming actions like creating users,signing someone up for a newsletter,or processing a payment. Why is theresponse in that case necessary? Very easyto understand.

To create a user, you send out a requestwith the goal of creating a user. On theother side, the receiver takes therequest, does something, creates theuser, and now returns an ID, which isusually what you want to run otheractions afterward. Otherwise, youwould lose the reference that you need tocontinue with your automation workflows.So, the API is basically used to get theuser ID in the response and to dosomething else afterward, which can beupdating the user ID in a differentdatabase, sending specific information tothe user ID, and updating the user again withother information that you werecollecting in the meantime, etc. Youcan do the exact same thing as a bridge.You can use the exact same APIstructure as a bridge for tools likeStackPath, which is kind of similar toMake.com, but with the difference thatStackPath actually gives you a responsewhen you start workflows. WithMake.com, you don’t get any specificresponse; you just get an accepted responsethat tells you it got accepted.

That’s it! However, with StackPath, youactually get a response that ismeaningful in the sense that you sendInformation is expected, and you expect specificinformation back. That is something specificAPIs do, so for that, you can useAPIs. You can also use webhooks, but it'spreferable to use APIs or something similarto get that information because youusually want to have a response. Now, inall of those talks with either APIs orwebhooks, I often talk about triggersand actions, and that is actuallysomething that I call the purposerequest, which is often used by tools orNo-Code tools specifically that areout there, like Make.com and Zapier. You willsee a lot within their documentation, thingscalled actions and things calledtriggers. So triggers are basicallynothing else than what webhooks do; theyfire on a specific event, while actionsare the equivalent to do the exactopposite. That sounds very weird, but it'sactually kind of true. So with an action,you basically do something, while thetrigger fires on an event. As you can seein my presentation, I displayed twopictures. One is the button to ring abell, which can be the trigger. Sowhenever the bell is rung, a triggerascends, and the action is more like thefinger that actually presses the bell.

Because it does something right, so justto give you a little bit of context to what I’m actually tellingyou theoretically, and lastly, I wouldlike to share a little bonus with you.That is, you should always beflexible and focus on one aspectonly, which is whether you need aresponse or you don’t. This is the mostcommon thing you should think about whenyou decide whether to use webhooks or APIs because, as Imentioned, in the end, it’s mostly thesame. So if you are building chatbots andyou want to get specific information,you most likely use an API because youwant to get a response back. However, if you

use a chatbot and want to signsomeone up for the newsletter and youdon’t care about the ID, or itdoesn’t really matter for you, use amake.com scenario to trigger somethingelse, because you don’t expect a response. So,it’s more likely to be considered awebhook. And why I mention being flexibleis that it’s a big war zone out there;literally, it’s a whole mess. Thatwhole API resource structure, etc., a lotof different companies use differentmethods; they use different setups.

Have no proper structure. You always justneed to find a way through by readingthe documentation, and everything Ilearned in today's video basicallygives you a good understanding of howyou can figure out how the things shouldbe set up and what works for you. That'sit. You literally just learned thedifference between webhooks and APIs,and I hope it helps you to build betterworkflows to bring better products toyour customers. If you liked it, I wouldlove it if you liked the video. If yousubscribe to my channel, and if you haveany questions, feel always free to dropthem in the comments. Take care untilnext time.