Synchronous processing kills Shopify scalability. Every blocked operation is a timeout waiting to happen.

This guide covers the async event processing patterns that production Shopify systems actually use. We'll go from webhook receiver basics all the way to saga orchestration and event sourcing.

Why Async Matters for Shopify

Shopify fires webhooks for orders, fulfillments, inventory changes, customer updates, and more. If you process these synchronously inside your endpoint, you will hit timeouts, lose data, and bring down your system during traffic spikes.

The fix is simple in concept: accept fast, process later.