BulkOperation customer metafield updates and webhook delivery rate limits

GraphQL Admin API Troubleshooting
1

Hi Shopify Dev Community, :grin:

I’m planning to switch from individual customer metafield mutations to bulkOperationRunMutation to process 10,000 customers at once.This could potentially run 100 times in a loop to process 1,000,000 customers total.

Concern:

I’m worried this might flood other apps with customers/update webhooks if too many are sent simultaneously.

Questions:

  1. Does Shopify control the delivery rate of customers/update webhooks from bulk operations? What are the rate limits?

  2. If there are no built-in rate controls, what’s the recommended batch size to avoid overwhelming the webhook system?

References:

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

1 Like
2

Does customers/update webhook occur when customer metafield is updated?
I am not sure.

3

Hey @ayaMatsu_Rewire

I tested this on my own store and can confirm that customer metafield updates DO trigger customers/update webhooks. When I used the customerUpdate mutation with metafield changes, it successfully triggered webhook deliveries to subscribed apps.

Your concern about bulk operations flooding other apps with webhooks is valid. We have great documentation for developers receiving large webhook volumes (like using EventBridge, Pub/Sub, or queuing systems), but not much around being a “good citizen” when sending updates and considering the downstream effects. Thanks for bringing this up!

I’ll ask around internally to see if we have any specific guidance on minimizing webhook impact during bulk operations, but from what I can tell, there’s currently no way to suppress webhook firing during bulk customer updates.

2 Likes
5

Thank you so much for the quick response!

I’ll start by monitoring my app to understand what kind of webhook delivery rate I can expect. If you find any good solutions internally at Shopify or if there are any updates on this topic, I’d be really grateful if you could let me know.

Thanks again for taking the time to test this and provide such detailed feedback! :blush:

6

I heard back from our webhooks team about this! The perspective here is that other apps likely want to receive these customers/update webhooks when metafields change, so suppressing or delaying webhook delivery during bulk operations isn’t something we’re doing. The webhooks represent legitimate data changes that downstream apps depend on for their functionality.

For large bulk operations like your 1M customer scenario, I’d recommend coordinating with the merchant to understand what other apps are installed and might be listening for these webhooks. If possible, schedule these operations during low-traffic periods when other systems aren’t under strain (definitely not during flash sales or peak hours). Our webhook infrastructure includes retry mechanisms so receiving apps have tools to handle volume spikes, but timing can make a huge difference in avoiding system strain across the ecosystem.

Hope that helps.

7

Thanks a lot, that was really helpful to learn!
I’ll be mindful of how I operate the app moving forward.

If I have any further concerns, I hope it’s okay to reach out again.

Thanks again for your detailed response! :blush:

1 Like
8

Thanks for confirming that helps!

This is why we have the community!