Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Webhook Relay VS Parse-Server

Compare Webhook Relay VS Parse-Server and see what are their differences

Webhook Relay logo Webhook Relay

Webhook Relay receives, transforms and delivers webhooks to any destination โ€” a public URL, a private server, or your localhost. With durable retries your events survive outages, deploys and flaky endpoints, so nothing slips through.

Parse-Server logo Parse-Server

parse-server. Parse-compatible API server module for Node/Express. JS, 14271, 3819. parse-server-conformance-tests. Conformance tests for parse-server adapters.
  • Webhook Relay Enterprise webhook delivery platform
    Enterprise webhook delivery platform //
    2026-07-12
  • Webhook Relay Eagle view for your all your webhooks and their statuses
    Eagle view for your all your webhooks and their statuses //
    2026-07-12
  • Webhook Relay View request timeline, details, status
    View request timeline, details, status //
    2026-07-12

What is Webhook Relay?

Webhook Relay is an enterprise-ready webhook delivery platform โ€” SOC 2 Type II certified, encrypted at rest and in transit, with SSO, audit logs, role-based access and an optional self-hosted deployment (see Enterprise-ready below).

It is a secure tunneling solution that provides:

  • Webhook forwarding - secure, unidirectional by default with optional request/response transformation.
  • Bidirectional tunnels - fast tunnels for direct access to any HTTP service. This is ideal for accessing internal APIs and demoing websites.

Use Cases

Popular use cases:

  • Receive Stripe, Shopify, GitHub and other webhooks on your local machine while developing your application.
  • Allow remote clients to connect to your backend, for example AWS EC2 instances communicating with your MacBook Pro.
  • Forward a single webhook to multiple destinations, for example Slack and GCP PubSub.
  • Transform webhooks, for example Docker push webhook into a Slack message.
  • Demo your website to clients or customers.
  • Access IoT devices and sensors remotely.

Enterprise-ready

Webhook Relay is built for teams that can't afford to miss an event:

  • SOC 2 Type II certified โ€” read the security & tech overview.
  • Encryption everywhere โ€” AES-256 at rest, TLS in transit, plus optional ephemeral buckets that store nothing.
  • SSO & SAML with Okta, Azure AD and more, role-based access and audit logs.
  • 99.99% uptime SLA on high-availability infrastructure, with durable retries for up to 30 days.
  • Durable Delivery - never miss a webhook, retries over hours, days and weeks.
  • Parse-Server Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14

Webhook Relay

$ Details
freemium $9.99 / Monthly
Release Date
2017 September
Startup details
Country
United Kingdom
City
London
Founder(s)
Karolis Rusenas
Employees
1 - 9

Webhook Relay features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Webhook Relay provides an intuitive user interface and straightforward setup process, making it accessible for developers to manage webhooks without extensive configuration or coding.
  • Wide Protocol Support
    It supports a variety of protocols including HTTP/S, MQTT, and WebSockets, enabling flexibility in integration with different types of applications and platforms.
  • Security Features
    The platform includes features like IP whitelisting, bearer token authentication, and end-to-end encryption to ensure secure transfer of data and restricted access.
  • Real-time Data Forwarding
    Webhook Relay offers real-time data forwarding capabilities, ensuring timely delivery of webhook events to the intended destination.
  • Scalability
    It is designed to handle a large number of webhooks efficiently, making it suitable for businesses with heavy data flow requirements.
  • Durable Delivery
    Automated retries over minutes, hours and weeks.
  • Webhook Throttling
    Don't let your servers get overloaded, you can choose a stable rate that the webhooks will be delivered to your server

Parse-Server features and specs

  • Open Source
    Parse-Server is open-source, which means it's free to use and you can modify the source code to fit your specific needs. It also benefits from community contributions and improvements.
  • Backend as a Service
    It provides a backend as a service (BaaS), offering out-of-the-box features like data storage, user authentication, and push notifications, which allows developers to focus more on the frontend.
  • Cloud Independence
    You can deploy Parse-Server on any cloud service of your choice, giving you flexibility and control over your server environment, unlike other closed BaaS options.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Parse-Server includes a rich set of features such as live queries, GraphQL support, and file storage, which helps in developing complex applications efficiently.
  • Community Support
    An active community supports Parse-Server, providing regular updates, plugins, and extensions that can help solve common issues and expand the server's capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Parse-Server

  • Self-Hosting Requirements
    Unlike fully managed BaaS platforms, you need to set up and maintain your own server infrastructure to use Parse-Server, which can be time-consuming and require technical expertise.
  • Limited Native SDKs
    Although Parse-Server provides SDKs for various platforms, it may not offer the same level of support or regular updates as commercial platforms, leading to potential compatibility issues with newer technologies.
  • Scaling Challenges
    Managing and scaling a self-hosted service can be challenging, especially for applications with growing and fluctuating user bases, requiring additional resources and infrastructure management.
  • Potential Feature Lag
    As an open-source project, Parse-Server might lag behind the latest innovations or features that commercial BaaS providers can rapidly implement due to their resources and funding.
  • Community Reliance
    Since Parse-Server is community-driven, critical bug fixes and improvements depend on community input, which can result in slower resolution times compared to proprietary solutions with dedicated support teams.

Analysis of Parse-Server

Overall verdict

  • Parse-Server is considered a good choice, particularly for developers looking for a flexible, open-source backend solution that avoids vendor lock-in. It offers a robust set of features out of the box, which can significantly accelerate the development process.

Why this product is good

  • Parse-Server is an open-source backend platform that allows developers to build applications faster by leveraging features like user authentication, push notifications, cloud functions, and real-time database capabilities. It is highly customizable, scalable, and can be deployed on any infrastructure. Moreover, it's backed by a strong community and extensive documentation, making troubleshooting and development easier.

Recommended for

    Parse-Server is recommended for startups, small to medium enterprises, and individual developers seeking a cost-effective backend solution with full control over their infrastructure. It's also ideal for projects that require rapid prototyping and deployment, app developers who need pre-built SDKs, and teams looking to migrate away from Parse's legacy hosted services.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Webhook Relay and Parse-Server)
Webhooks
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
49 49%
51% 51
Design Prototyping
0 0%
100% 100
Localhost Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Webhook Relay and Parse-Server

Webhook Relay Reviews

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Parse-Server Reviews

Firebase Alternative: 3 Open-Source ways toย follow
Parse Server comes with a gazillion out-of-the-box features that allows you to get your MVP out quick and effortlessly. Currently, Parse server is the most popular and robust BaaS framework available that helps developers build mobile apps faster without any technical locks. It is an open source version of the Parse backend that can be easily downloaded for free on GitHub....
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Webhook Relay might be a bit more popular than Parse-Server. We know about 7 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to Parse-Server. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Webhook Relay mentions (7)

  • RudderStack: How Pachyderm Pipelines Help Parse Customer Event Data
    Apart from customer events, Pachyderm collects data from Pachyderm Hub, its SaaS platform. This data mainly includes the customers' workspace usage details and other metrics related to the platform usage and performance. Pachyderm clusters (which host both their open-source and enterprise offerings) also generate a large chunk of the workspace usage data. This data is processed by Webhook Relay and streamed... - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • Self-hosted business intelligence with Metabase
    Webhook Relay account - will be used to expose the Metabase to the internet, so we can access it. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • Manage your meetings like a boss with self-hosted calender
    If you don't have a static IP or your network is behind a CGNAT, you can use https://webhookrelay.com instead. We will be providing a tutorial on that setup as well. - Source: dev.to / almost 5 years ago
  • Best self hosted micro blog?
    What's good about Hugo is really fast build times, previously I used both hexo.io and https://vuepress.vuejs.org/ but while vuepress is nice to start with it's nearly impossible to finish the website due to lack of features. Hexo is also nice but their templating language is not always intuitive (my hexo based website: https://webhookrelay.com/). Source: almost 5 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Webhookrelay.com โ€” Manage, debug, fan-out and proxy all your webhooks to public or internal (ie: localhost) destinations. Also, expose servers running in a private network over a tunnel by getting a public HTTP endpoint (https://yoursubdomain.webrelay.io <----> http://localhost:8080). - Source: dev.to / about 5 years ago
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Parse-Server mentions (6)

  • AI Coding: Building a 1-Hour App Clone Is Easy. Shipping It Is the Work
    If youโ€™re coming from the Parse ecosystem, it may help to know that Parse itself is a long-running open source backend framework. You can start from the official Parse Platform site, or go deeper with the communityโ€™s Parse Server repository. Our own developer docs are organized around that reality. If you want implementation-level guides, start with our SashiDo Documentation. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • What to choose for backend
    If you like headless CMS / Backend As A Service you should consider https://directus.io/ or https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server. Both nodejs and open source. Source: about 4 years ago
  • Any general purpose visualisation "just add the data" framework
    There's numerous standard backends which frontenders could use in simplistic cases to start, say https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest or https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Show HN: Caffeine, minimum viable back end for prototyping
    Parse is still around and supported: https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server. - Source: Hacker News / over 4 years ago
  • Ask HN: What Back End Framework with User Management Is Your Favorite?
    I am curious what backend framework you would choose to run with for prototyping an application with run of the mill user management requirements. That is functionality along the lines of: session management, password policies, password reset, user verifications, etc. Sadly it seems there really aren't any frameworks that have user management natively supported. The only one I am aware of is [Parse... - Source: Hacker News / about 5 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Webhook Relay and Parse-Server, you can also consider the following products

ngrok - ngrok enables secure introspectable tunnels to localhost webhook development tool and debugging tool.

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

Webhook.site - Instantly generate a free, unique URL and email address to test, inspect, and automate (with a visual workflow editor and scripts) incoming HTTP requests and emails.

Marvel - Turn sketches, mockups and designs into web, iPhone, iOS, Android and Apple Watch app prototypes.

Pagekite - Bring your localhost servers on-line.

Moovweb Platform - Other Mobile Development