Solutions Queue Service
Answer customers at once, let workers do the heavy lifting
When a customer places an order, your site does not have to wait for the email, the receipt or the stock update. Put the job on a queue, reply straight away, and let workers take jobs one by one. It runs on our own queue system, so there is no queue server for you to install or look after.
What it is for
- Emails and notifications: the site queues the job and a worker sends it, so nobody waits for the page.
- Slow work: reports, PDFs, image resizing or video conversion, kept away from the site.
- Rush hours: when orders pour in at once they wait in the queue and workers catch up at their own pace, instead of the site falling over.
- Decoupled systems: one system sends work, another does it; either can go down or be updated without losing jobs.
Nothing lost, nothing stuck
- Each message is written to several machines before the send is answered.
- If a worker dies mid-job, the message comes back for another worker once the visibility timeout ends.
- Messages that keep failing move to a dead-letter queue to look at later instead of looping forever.
- Delay messages by up to 15 minutes and keep unreceived messages for up to 14 days.
Easy to call, pay for what you use
- A JSON REST API and SDKs for Node.js, Python and Go, with a ready-made worker.
- Long polling waits up to 20 seconds per call; send, receive and delete up to 10 messages at a time.
- Access keys scoped per queue to send, receive and delete, or purge. Every request is signed to IETF standards, so the secret never leaves your machine.
- Billed by requests, data received and messages waiting in queues. No monthly minimum.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from using Redis as a queue?
Queue Service writes messages to disk on several machines and has visibility timeouts, receive counts and dead-letter queues built in, so messages are not lost when a worker dies and you write no code for it. Managed Cache suits simple queues alongside caching you already do.
Can a message arrive twice?
Messages are delivered at least once. In rare cases the same message may arrive again, so make jobs safe to repeat, for example by checking the order number before taking stock. Order is best effort, oldest first, not strictly guaranteed.
How is Queue Service billed?
By requests (every 64 KB of a message counts as one request), data received and messages stored in queues, taken from the Project wallet. No monthly minimum. See the pricing page for current rates.
Can I use it from containers or servers elsewhere?
Yes. The API is plain HTTPS, so anything with internet access can call it: our containers, your own servers or another cloud.
Get started today, free
Sign up with email, no credit card needed. Websites are free with no expiry; other services are paid as used from the project’s wallet.