> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://developer.esw.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://developer.esw.com/getting-started/get-started-with-esw/best-practices.md).

# Best Practices

This section describes the best practices and ESW recommendations that you can follow to ensure the smooth flow of data between your servers and ESW servers.

### Transport security

* Expose your receiving endpoint over HTTPS.
* Use a valid, publicly trusted certificate.
* Ensure your server presents the full certificate chain.

{% hint style="info" %}
ESW verifies SSL certificates when delivering payloads.
{% endhint %}

### Delivery semantics (distributed systems reality)

* Expect retries on network or endpoint failures.
* Do not assume strict ordering of events.
* Expect duplicate deliveries in some failure modes.
* Make your handlers **idempotent**.
* Treat each delivery as independent and safe to process more than once.

{% hint style="warning" %}
ESW uses a queuing model and delivers events on a best-effort basis. Ordering is not guaranteed.
{% endhint %}

### Support and troubleshooting

When you contact ESW about delivery or integration issues, include:

* Your environment (Sandbox or Production).
* Your endpoint URL and the approximate time window.
* The HTTP status codes you returned.
* The response body you returned (if any).
* Any request identifiers or correlation IDs (if provided).

### Rate limiting and traffic spikes

Rate limits can turn a short spike into a long replay backlog. Plan for bursts.

* Align provider-level throttles with your expected peak traffic.
* Avoid blanket throttles that convert bursts into sustained failures (for example `429` / `5xx`).
* Ensure your endpoint can absorb replay traffic after an outage.
* Use internal buffering (queue/worker pattern) so you can accept deliveries quickly.

<details>

<summary>Example failure loop (what to avoid)</summary>

You launch a new product. Traffic spikes. Your provider starts throttling requests.

ESW continues generating events. Deliveries fail (`429`/`5xx`). ESW queues and retries later.

Retries add more traffic. Throttling continues. The queue grows for hours.

</details>


---

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