Brevo Delays Transactional Email Events, Webhooks and Automations
Brevo is clearing a backlog of transactional email events after an incident on 2 November 2026 delayed opens, clicks, outbound webhooks and automation workflows. Here is what is affected and what to check.
Brevo is working through a backlog of transactional email events after an incident that delayed opens, clicks and the processes that depend on them. The first notice went up on the Brevo status page on 2 November 2026 at 12:35 UTC. By the latest update, at 17:51 UTC, the root cause had been fixed but Brevo was still "clearing the backlog and reducing processing delays", and the incident remained in monitoring.
The status page lists two affected components: Workflows, under Automations, and Outbound Webhooks, under Integrations, both marked as degraded performance. Email sending is not listed among the affected components. For most senders, the practical effect is not lost mail but late data: reports that look wrong for a few hours, webhooks that arrive late, and automations that trigger behind schedule.
Key facts
- Platform: Brevo, transactional email events
- First notice: 2 November 2026, 12:35 UTC
- Symptoms: opens and clicks delayed in statistics and reports; webhooks and automations that depend on these events also delayed
- Affected components: Workflows (Automations) and Outbound Webhooks (Integrations), degraded performance
- Status at last update (17:51 UTC): root cause fixed, backlog still being processed, incident in monitoring
What happened
In its first update, Brevo said it was "experiencing an issue with transactional email events", with opens and clicks possibly delayed in statistics and reports, and webhooks and automations that rely on those events affected as well. The same update said the root cause had already been identified and fixed, and that the team was clearing the backlog.
At 14:17 UTC Brevo reported that events were "now being processed normally" and that it was working through the remaining backlog. A third update at 17:51 UTC said the work on the backlog was still under way. Brevo has not published a root cause or the share of accounts affected, and it has said it will post another update once the backlog is fully cleared.
Why a delay in events matters
An event pipeline is what turns a delivered message into data your systems act on. When it falls behind, the email itself may be fine, but everything downstream runs late. Three consequences are worth checking.
Reports look worse than reality
Open and click rates for messages sent during the incident window will be understated until the backlog is processed. Comparing those numbers with a normal day, or calling an A/B test on them, will give the wrong answer.
Webhook consumers receive a burst
Once the backlog clears, outbound webhooks are likely to arrive in larger volumes than usual, and later than their event timestamps. Endpoints that are rate limited, or that assume events arrive in order and close to real time, can drop or misread them.
Automations fire late
Workflows that branch on an open or a click, such as a follow-up to people who clicked a link, may trigger hours after the original action, or put a contact on the "did not open" path because the open had not been recorded yet when the workflow checked.
What it means for senders
What changes
Engagement data, webhooks and engagement-based automations run behind real time until Brevo confirms the backlog is cleared. Sending is not listed as affected.
Who is affected
Brevo customers who send transactional email and rely on open and click events: reporting dashboards, webhook integrations with a CRM or data warehouse, and automation workflows that branch on engagement.
When
From 2 November 2026 (first notice 12:35 UTC). The incident was still in monitoring at 17:51 UTC; watch the status page for the resolution notice.
Action checklist
- Subscribe to the incident on the Brevo status page so you know when the backlog is declared cleared.
- Hold off on decisions based on 2 November open and click data, including A/B test winners, until the incident is resolved.
- Check your webhook endpoint can absorb a burst: watch for timeouts, rate limits and error responses in your logs.
- Make processing idempotent and rely on the event timestamp rather than arrival time, so late or repeated events do not create duplicates or wrong sequences.
- Review automations that branch on opens or clicks and look for contacts that took the wrong path during the incident window.
- Do not resend messages just because engagement looks low: the status page does not report a sending problem, and duplicate sends cost more trust than a delayed report.
A reminder about event-driven email
Engagement events are a convenient signal, but they are never guaranteed to be real time on any platform. If a business process, such as a sales alert or a fraud check, depends on a click arriving within minutes, it should have a fallback or a timeout that does not assume the event will always show up on schedule. Our explainer on what transactional email is covers how these messages differ from marketing sends, and why their reliability expectations are higher.
We will update this article when Brevo marks the incident as resolved or publishes more detail on the cause.
Sources
- Brevo Status: Delay in transactional events (primary source), updates of 2 November 2026