Customer.io

Change the state of an automation

Automation states determine whether your customers can enter your automations.

Automations can have one of four statuses:

  • running - active
  • draft - inactive; all automations start in a draft state.
  • stopped - inactive
  • archived - inactive

Running is the only active status. This means customers can enter your automation and move through your workflow, which could include messages, update actions, and more. You can edit these automations while they’re live, but make sure you understand how live edits impact your customers.

Draft, stopped, and archived are inactive statuses. Customers cannot enter your automation. You can make changes to draft and stopped automations, but not archived ones. You can unarchive an automation to change the state to stopped and continue editing. You can restart any automation in a stopped state.

Scheduled automations

Scheduled automationsdisplay a scheduled label alongside the automation status. The scheduled label shows that a start and/or stop time is set, while the status (like running, draft, or stopped) shows the automation’s current state. For instance, an automation with the status running and the label scheduled means the automation has started and people may be moving through your workflow.

Stop an automation

To stop an automation:

  1. Open the automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Stop now or Schedule stop.

You can also find these options in the menu next to the automation’s name on the automations page.

The More actions menu on a running automation, with Goal, Message settings, Exit conditions, Stop now, Schedule stop, Archive, Duplicate, and Delete.

Stopping an automation prevents people from entering the automation. While the automation’s stopped, you can edit it. And messages that were already sent from the automation will continue to generate metrics normally.

What happens if people are in the automation?

If the automation has active journeys in progress, you can either:

  1. Force people to exit immediately. In this case, we stop sending messages to anybody who has an active journey and recall the in-app messages that the automation sent. See What happens to messages when people exit immediately? for more information.
  2. Allow people to finish their journey and exit the automation naturally. Your automation will sit in a Stopping state until all people have exited the automation, and then it’ll switch to Stopped.
    The Stop automation modal with 48 people in progress and two options: Exit immediately and Finish their journey.

What happens to messages when people exit immediately?

When you stop an automation using the Exit immediately option, we’ll stop sending messages immediately. But all emails, SMS messages, push notifications, webhooks, and Slack messages that are already Sent are likely to be delivered to your audience. We don’t control the delivery providers for these message types, so we can’t recall these messages after they’re sent.

In-app messages native to Customer.io are an exception to this rule. When a person exits immediately, Customer.io recalls the in-app messages that the automation sent. (We can do this because Customer.io controls the delivery mechanism for in-app messages.) This removes messages that people haven’t opened yet and persistent messages that people opened but haven’t dismissed. See Can I stop an in-app message after it’s sent? for details.

flowchart LR a(Stop automation)-->b{Set to exit<br>immediately?} b-.->|no|c(People with an active journey<br> keep receiving messages) b-->|yes|d{Will sent messages<br>be delivered?} d-->|email, push, SMS,<br>Slack, and webhooks|e(Normal delivery) d-.->|In-app messages|f(Cancelled)

What happens to queued messages?

If your automation has a rate limit, messages can wait in a queue until the rate limit lets Customer.io send them. Stopping the automation doesn’t empty this queue. Unless you choose otherwise, the queued messages continue sending at the rate limit after the automation stops.

A message expires 24 hours after it’s triggered. If your automation has a large queue and a low rate limit, queued messages might expire before Customer.io can send them.

When you select Stop now and the automation has queued messages, you can choose what happens to these messages. If no one is in the automation, Customer.io asks right away. If people are in the automation, Customer.io asks only after you choose Exit immediately. If you choose Finish their journey, the queued messages keep sending at the rate limit.

Customer.io shows how many messages the automation queued in the last 30 days, and you choose one of these options:

  • Keep sending: The queued messages keep sending at the automation’s rate limit. This is the default option.
  • Send now: Customer.io sends the queued messages without waiting for the rate limit. Customer.io sends only the messages that are still inside their 24-hour send window, because older messages have already expired.
  • Do not send: Customer.io drops the queued messages without sending them and marks each one as undeliverable.
The Stop automation modal with Exit immediately selected. Below that is the question about messages already queued to send, a count of 1240 messages queued in the last 30 days, and the options Keep sending (selected), Send now, and Do not send.

You can’t undo Send now or Do not send. If you choose Do not send and then restart the automation before Customer.io finishes clearing the queue, messages that are still queued can send.

If you scheduled the stop, chose Finish their journey, or chose Keep sending when you stopped the automation, you can still decide what happens to the queue after the automation stops:

  1. Open the stopped automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Manage queued messages.
  4. Choose Send now or Do not send and then click Apply.
The Manage queued messages modal on a stopped automation, with a count of 1240 messages queued in the last 30 days, the options Send now and Do not send, and Cancel and Apply buttons.

Restart an automation

To restart an automation:

  1. Open the automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Restart now or Schedule restart.

You can also find these options in the menu next to the automation’s name on the automations page.

The More actions menu on a stopped automation, with Goal, Message settings, Exit conditions, Restart now, Schedule restart, Manage queued messages, Archive, Duplicate, and Delete.

When restarting an automation triggered by an attribute, segment, object, or relationship, you must also decide who will enter the automation:

  1. Current people and future additions: choose this option if everybody who currently matches your trigger conditions should enter your automation. This includes anyone currently in any trigger segments but will also take your automation frequency settings into account.
  2. Future additions only: choose this option if only people who match your automation trigger conditions after the automation is restarted should enter.
The restart options: start the automation for current people and future additions, or for future additions only.

Archive an automation

You can archive an automation to preserve historical data and copy the structure or content of the automation for future use. Archiving moves automations from your list of Active automations to Archived on the automations page.

You can archive stopped and running automations, but not draft automations. To archive an automation:

  1. Open the automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Archive.
The More actions menu on a running automation, with Goal, Message settings, Exit conditions, Stop now, Schedule stop, Archive, Duplicate, and Delete.

After you archive an automation:

  • People can no longer enter the automation.
  • We end active journeys.
  • We delete unsent drafts.
  • We pause A/B tests.
  • You can no longer edit the automation’s workflow, trigger, goal, and exit criteria.

You can still search for and copy workflow items from an archived automation as well as start new emails from those in archived automations (under “Start from existing email”).

To remove archived content and prevent archived workflows from being reused in the future, delete the automation instead.

Unarchive an automation

To unarchive an automation:

  1. Open the archived automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Unarchive.
The More actions menu on an archived automation, with Goal, Message settings, Exit conditions, Unarchive, and Delete.

After you unarchive an automation:

  • The automation moves back to the Active tab, and its status updates to stopped.
  • Any archived segment used in the automation’s trigger, filters, goal, or exit criteria becomes active. (You can filter for active vs archived segments on the segments page.)

Duplicate an automation

Duplicate an automation to create your next automation faster or to run automations in parallel for experimentation. You can duplicate entire automations to preserve settings like trigger conditions, goals, and exit criteria in addition to their workflows. However, if you duplicate a webhook-triggered automation, we will generate a new webhook URL for the copied automation.

You can only duplicate automations within a workspace

While you can’t duplicate an automation across workspaces, you can copy your workflow to another workspace.

You can duplicate an automation that is in a state of running, draft or stopped. To duplicate an archived automation, you must first unarchive it. No matter the state of the automation you’re copying, you must activate the duplicate automation before anyone can enter it.

You can duplicate an automation from the automations page or from the automation itself.

From the automations page:

  1. Click automation settings  inline with the automation you want to copy.
  2. Click Duplicate.

From the automation itself:

  1. Open the automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Duplicate.

The duplicate automation uses the original automation’s name prefixed with [Copy] and appears at the bottom of the automation list in a draft state. You need to activate it before people can enter the duplicated automation.

Duplicate legacy segment-triggered automations

In April 2025, we introduced the attribute or segment trigger as a more flexible version of our legacy segment trigger. If you duplicate an automation that uses the legacy segment trigger, the copy continues to use the legacy trigger, which is processed differently than the latest trigger type. Learn more about the differences to determine if you want to keep the old behavior or switch to the new one.

You can change a legacy segment trigger to the latest trigger by selecting the trigger on the canvas, clicking Change trigger type, and selecting Attribute or segment.

If you keep the legacy segment trigger, here are the options for editing it.

Segments are based on audience criteria—attributes your audience has, events they’ve performed, messages they’ve received, etc.

You can choose one or more segments that your audience is in or not in. If you haven’t created a segment yet, you can click Create a new data-driven segment to set conditions for a new segment.

An image of the right hand panel that appears after you click Choose Segment on step 1 of creating a segment-triggered automation. The panel is titled Segment conditions and shows a dropdown selection of 'in' followed by an empty field with dropdown options including Create a new data-driven segment and a list of existing segments like Signed up.

You cannot create automations with only a not in condition

A segment-triggered automation must have at least one in condition for you to save it. We do not trigger automations solely off of people not belonging to a segment.

You can set multiple segments using and or or conditions. Use and to trigger automations only when people meet all of your conditions. Click + Add segment condition to create an and condition.

Use an or condition to trigger an automation based on a person belonging to any of the segments. Add segments to the same field to create an or condition:

Filter

With segment-triggered automations, you can also add a segment filter. You should weave your segment filter criteria into your segment trigger conditions as much as possible, but if you find you cannot accomplish what you need without a segment trigger AND segment filter, please let us know! We want to account for this use case as we develop the next generation of automations.

Delete an automation

To delete an automation:

  1. Open the automation.
  2. Click More actions ( ) at the top of the page.
  3. Select Delete.
The More actions menu on a running automation, with Goal, Message settings, Exit conditions, Stop now, Schedule stop, Archive, Duplicate, and Delete.

Deleting an automation is a permanent action

When you delete an automation, we delete all message content, settings, and metrics. Consider archiving instead of deleting if you want to save any part of the automation.
Updated November 4, 2026