The Complete Guide to BullMQ with Arctickey

Job queues are the unsung heroes of modern web applications. They handle everything from sending emails to processing payments to generating reports—all without making your users wait.

BullMQ is the most popular job queue for Node.js, and for good reason. It's battle-tested, feature-rich, and powered by Redis. In this guide, we'll go from zero to production-ready.

Why BullMQ?

I've tried many queue systems over the years. BullMQ stands out because:

• It just works — No message loss, proper error handling out of the box
• It scales — Run as many workers as you need across multiple servers
• It's observable — Built-in support for monitoring and metrics

Setting Up

First, install BullMQ:

npm install bullmq

Create a queue and add your first job:

import { Queue } from 'bullmq'

const emailQueue = new Queue('emails', {
  connection: { 
    host: 'eu.arctickey.com',
    password: process.env.REDIS_PASSWORD 
  }
})

await emailQueue.add('welcome', { 
  to: 'user@example.com' 
})

Processing Jobs

Create a worker to process the jobs:

import { Worker } from 'bullmq'

const worker = new Worker('emails', async (job) => {
  await sendEmail(job.data)
  console.log(`Sent email to ${job.data.to}`)
}, { connection })

worker.on('failed', (job, err) => {
  console.error(`Job failed: ${err.message}`)
})

Job Options That Matter

The real power of BullMQ comes from its job options:

await queue.add('important-job', data, {
  priority: 1,        // Process first
  attempts: 3,        // Retry on failure
  delay: 5000,        // Wait 5s before processing
  backoff: {
    type: 'exponential',
    delay: 1000
  }
})

Production Best Practices

After running BullMQ in production for years, here's what I've learned:

• Always set maxStalledCount — Prevents zombie jobs from blocking your queue
• Use removeOnComplete — Keep your Redis memory under control
• Monitor with Bull Board — Visual dashboard for your queues
• Separate queues by priority — Critical jobs shouldn't wait behind bulk operations

BullMQ is one of those tools that becomes invisible when it's working well—which is exactly what you want from your infrastructure.