Frequency caps
Help, don't nag. Decide whether a guide shows once, on every visit, or until the user finishes it — and Wakeline always respects a user's “don't show again.”
Once, every visit, or until done
Pick the cadence that fits the message.
Respects dismissals
“Don't show again” is always honored.
No accidental spam
Users see what's helpful, not the same thing over and over.
Live in three steps.
Pick a frequency
Once, every visit, or until done.
Publish
Wakeline tracks who has seen what.
Relax
No one gets nagged.
Caps that keep a busy project polite.
Six teams shipping guides into one product is how users end up with four popups before coffee. Caps are the system that makes enthusiasm survivable.
Cap each guide
The launch modal: once. The changelog banner: every visit while current. The activation tour: until completed. Per-guide frequency is the first dial, chosen per job.
Cap the project
In Rate Limiting, set the global caps: at most 2 guides per session, 4 per rolling day, with a 5-minute cooldown between any two. A plain-English summary sentence confirms what you set.
Know the exemptions
Manual triggers and the checklist launcher ignore caps — the user explicitly asked for those. Caps throttle what you push, never what users pull.
Honor the opt-out
Any button can carry don't-show-again, and Wakeline enforces it everywhere, forever. A dismissal is an answer; caps make sure you cannot ask louder.
What to expect: Even with six teams publishing, no user sees more than your caps allow — and dismissal rates in Reports stay flat instead of climbing, which is the early-warning metric for guide fatigue.
When not to use frequency caps.
No pattern fits every job. Here’s where we’d point you at something else — sometimes ours, sometimes not.
Genuinely critical notices
A security incident should not queue behind a cooldown. Reserve an every-visit banner for the rare must-see message — and accept that if everything is critical, nothing is.
Papering over volume
If caps are constantly suppressing guides, the problem is how many you run, not the throttle. Retire the weakest performers — Insights shows you exactly which ones they are.
User-invoked help
Do not try to cap what users open themselves — checklist launchers and manual flows are exempt by design. Throttling requested help would punish exactly the wrong behavior.
What frequency options does a single guide have?
Once, every visit, or until completed — plus don't-show-again on any button, which wins over everything. "Until completed" is the workhorse for tours: persistent with unfinished users, silent with everyone else.
How do the global rate limits work?
Three project-wide dials: max guides per session, max per rolling day, and a cooldown gap in minutes between consecutive guides. They apply across all flows, so five teams' enthusiasm still lands within one user's tolerance.
Which guides bypass the caps?
Manually-triggered flows and the persistent checklist launcher — both are the user pulling, not you pushing. Everything you push respects the caps, no exceptions per guide.
Is "don't show again" really forever?
Yes — it is a per-user, per-guide fact that survives sessions and, for identified users, devices. Re-publishing a guide does not resurrect it for people who opted out; a genuinely new announcement should be a new guide.
What caps should I start with?
2 per session, 4 per day, 5-minute cooldown fits most products. Tighten if your dismissal rates trend up; loosen only when a real moment (onboarding day one) legitimately needs two guides in sequence.
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