---
date: "2023-10-18T21:16:01.000Z"
title: "2023-10-18"
tags: ["inngest"]
draft: false
---

I spent some time experiementing with [Inngest](https://www.inngest.com/), cloud software for running async jobs, workflows, crons and more.
It's quite similar to [Temporal](https://temporal.io/), which I am big advocate for for running durable workflows and gracefully handling failures.
There are some drawbacks, but it feels simpler to get started than Temporal and has a most of the same topline capabilities.
The main feature deficiencies I noticed in about an hour of research were lack of as granular retry configurations and timeouts and no support for query handlers to inspect the status of a running function/workflow.
The list of supported features is impressive, notably

- [crons](https://www.inngest.com/docs/guides/scheduled-functions)
- [timeouts](https://www.inngest.com/docs/functions/cancellation#with-timeout)
- [some error handling](https://www.inngest.com/docs/functions/retries)
- [step (activity) paralleism](https://www.inngest.com/docs/guides/step-parallelism)
- [delayed jobs](https://www.inngest.com/docs/guides/enqueueing-future-jobs)
- [wait for event (signals)](https://www.inngest.com/docs/reference/functions/step-wait-for-event)

They also have a free usage tier!
I wasn't able to get access to Temporal Cloud without paying their monthy support fee, so this is attractive for experimentation and hobby projects.