Real-Time Notification System Using Laravel Reverb

Why real-time mattered

WeGetAnyStock connects buyers and sellers in a fast-moving inventory marketplace. When a listing status changes — from available to reserved to sold — both parties need to know immediately. Email notifications alone were too slow for time-sensitive deals.

Technical implementation

We deployed Laravel Reverb as the WebSocket server, integrated with the existing Laravel application:

Backend event broadcasting

• Domain events (listing updated, enquiry received, status changed) implement ShouldBroadcast
• Events are dispatched to private channels scoped by user ID and role
• Queue workers process broadcast jobs so HTTP requests stay fast

Frontend with Laravel Echo

• Vue.js dashboard subscribes to private channels on login
• Toast notifications appear instantly when relevant events fire
• Connection state is managed with automatic reconnection on network drops

Channel security

• Private channels require authentication via Laravel's broadcasting auth endpoint
• Sellers only receive events for their own listings
• Admin users subscribe to a separate oversight channel

Infrastructure considerations

Reverb runs alongside the Laravel application with Redis as the broadcast driver. We configured:

• Supervisor for Reverb and queue worker processes
• Health checks to restart Reverb if the WebSocket process crashes
• Graceful degradation — if WebSockets are unavailable, the UI falls back to periodic refresh rather than breaking

Performance results

Before Reverb, the dashboard polled an API endpoint every 10 seconds — roughly 8,600 requests per day per active user. After implementation, WebSocket connections handle all updates with a single persistent connection. Server CPU usage dropped measurably, and users reported faster awareness of time-sensitive listing changes.