Inngest

Inngest is a developer-first platform for building reliable, event-driven workflows in modern applications. Designed to integrate seamlessly into your development stack, Inngest enables teams to orchestrate backend tasks and workflows using events—without worrying about queues, schedulers, or infrastructure management.

From onboarding emails to webhooks and asynchronous jobs, Inngest provides powerful tools to build fault-tolerant, observable, and repeatable workflows with minimal setup. It’s ideal for backend developers who want to scale logic without scaling complexity.

Features

Serverless Functions and Workflows

Create workflows from simple JavaScript or TypeScript functions. Each function can be triggered by custom events, time-based schedules, or retries.

Durable Execution

All workflows are stateful, resumable, and automatically persisted—enabling long-running jobs, retries, and pause/resume capabilities.

Event-Based Triggers

Functions are triggered by custom app events (user.created, order.completed) or cron jobs (every.hour).

Built-in Retries and Error Handling

Inngest manages retries and errors with exponential backoff, logging, and deterministic re-execution.

Real-Time Debugging and Logs

See every function invocation, execution path, and result in real-time with a built-in developer console.

Local Development Support

Run workflows locally with the Inngest Dev Server, integrated directly with your codebase and framework.

Framework Agnostic

Supports any JavaScript framework (Next.js, Express, Vite, Remix) and works with any frontend/backend tech stack.

How It Works

1. Define a Function
   Write a TypeScript or JavaScript function and register it with inngest.register(). Specify which event it should respond to.

2. Trigger Events
   Emit events from anywhere in your code—client-side, backend, or third-party systems.

3. Run Workflows
   Inngest receives events, matches them with registered functions, and invokes them reliably.

4. Observe and Debug
   Use the Inngest dashboard to monitor executions, view input/output, and replay failed runs for testing.

5. Deploy
   Run functions in your preferred environment using the Inngest Cloud runtime or self-managed infrastructure.

Use Cases

User Onboarding

Trigger welcome emails, CRM updates, and product walkthroughs after user.signup.

Payment and Subscription Events

Handle billing events, retries, and webhook verifications from Stripe or other providers.

Email and Notification Scheduling

Queue, delay, or schedule emails and alerts at specific times or after other actions.

Data Syncing

Sync external data (e.g., from Salesforce, HubSpot) based on time or event triggers.

E-Commerce Workflows

Manage cart abandonment flows, order confirmations, or delivery status updates asynchronously.

Pricing

As of June 2025, Inngest offers a flexible pricing model based on usage, with a generous free tier:

Free Tier

• 100,000 function invocations/month

• Unlimited events

• Up to 1 environment

• 3-day execution history

• Community support

Pro Plan – Starting at $20/month

• 500,000+ function invocations

• Multiple environments (dev, staging, prod)

• 15-day history

• Slack alerts and metrics

• Priority support

Enterprise – Custom Pricing

• Unlimited invocations

• Dedicated infrastructure

• SOC 2, SSO, and audit logs

• 30–90 day retention

• Custom SLAs

Strengths

• Truly Developer-First: Seamless integration with JavaScript/TypeScript workflows.

• Resilient by Design: Built-in retries, timeouts, and state ensure consistent execution.

• Observability Included: Real-time logs and replays help troubleshoot and optimize fast.

• No Infrastructure Hassles: Serverless architecture reduces the need for DevOps maintenance.

• Framework Flexibility: Works across popular JS frameworks and cloud environments.

Drawbacks

• JavaScript/TypeScript Focus: No support for Python, Go, or other backend languages (yet).

• Relatively New: Smaller ecosystem compared to long-established workflow engines.

• Vendor Dependency: Hosted nature means reliance on Inngest unless self-hosted options are explored.

• Limited Built-in Integrations: More manual setup for third-party tools unless custom events are used.

Comparison with Other Tools

Inngest vs. Temporal

Temporal offers advanced orchestration but has a steeper learning curve. Inngest is easier to integrate and better suited for product developers.

Inngest vs. AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions are cloud-native but tightly coupled with AWS. Inngest offers a simpler, cloud-agnostic experience.

Inngest vs. n8n or Zapier

n8n and Zapier target low-code automation. Inngest is code-first, focused on developer-centric backend orchestration.

Customer Reviews and Testimonials

“Inngest has changed how we think about workflows. We ship faster with fewer bugs.”
– CTO, SaaS Platform

“We replaced custom queues, cron jobs, and retries with clean functions powered by Inngest.”
– Backend Engineer, HealthTech Startup

“It’s like having Temporal’s reliability with the simplicity of writing plain JavaScript.”
– Lead Developer, E-commerce Marketplace

Conclusion

Inngest offers a modern, intuitive way to build reliable, event-driven serverless workflows without the complexity of traditional orchestration systems. Its JavaScript-first approach, observability tools, and automatic resilience features make it an ideal solution for engineering teams that want to focus on product development, not infrastructure management.

Whether you’re handling user events, scheduled jobs, or complex backend logic, Inngest helps you move faster, debug easier, and build with confidence.