What is frequency capping?
Frequency capping is the practice of limiting how often a user sees in-app messages — per message (shown once, every visit, or until completed) and globally (at most N messages per session or day, with cooldowns between them). It is the load-bearing courtesy of in-app communication: the mechanism that keeps guidance from becoming noise.
The two layers
Per-message frequency matches cadence to job: a welcome shows once; an unfinished tour persists *until completed*; a maintenance banner runs every visit while true. Global caps defend the user across all messages at once — essential the moment multiple teams publish into one product, because each team's reasonable message sums to an unreasonable session. A typical starting policy: two guides per session, four per day, five minutes between any two.
The exemptions that make sense
Caps throttle what the product pushes, never what users pull: help opened from a "show me how" button and a persistent checklist launcher rightly bypass caps — the user asked. The other absolute: don't-show-again is forever. A dismissal that resets per browser isn't an opt-out, it's a delay, and users can tell.
Why caps are strategy, not politeness
Every in-app message draws on a shared attention account, and overdrawing it doesn't fail loudly — it fails as quietly rising dismissal rates and reflexive closing of everything, including the messages that mattered. Caps are how the channel stays credible for years instead of quarters. The mechanics ship as project-level settings in tools like Wakeline, enforced across every guide automatically.
See the concepts running live.
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