Why an automation paused itself
Four reasons a flow stops on its own, and what each one needs.
A flow that switches itself off has almost always hit one of four things. In each case people already inside are held where they are rather than dropped — nothing is lost, and resuming picks them up.
1 · You edited one of its emails
The most common reason, and it’s deliberate.
An automation is checked once and then sends for months. If an approved flow could have its content swapped afterwards, that check would be worth nothing — so we re-check on every cycle, and a substantial edit takes the flow offline until it’s checked again.
Why it pauses instead of skipping quietly
You need to see that your edit stopped the sending. The alternative is discovering weeks later that new subscribers went silent, with nothing to connect it to the change you made.
What to do: re-activate it. Queued email is held, not discarded, so it goes out once you do.
2 · The account ran out of credit
Automation emails are charged like any other. With no balance there is nothing to send with, so the flow holds rather than dropping people.
What to do: top up on Billing. Anything queued while you were empty is sent when the flow resumes — unless it has been waiting more than about ten days, in which case it’s dropped as no longer relevant.
3 · Something changed about your sending address
A flow needs a verified sending address and a postal address for the footer, exactly as a campaign does. If a domain stops verifying — DNS records edited, a domain removed — there is no longer an address to send as.
What to do: re-check the domain in Settings, or claim a free sending address on ours.
4 · Sending was paused across the account
If bounces or spam complaints climb past safe thresholds, sending stops across the whole account — campaigns and automations alike. It’s a protection: mailbox providers judge you on those rates, and continuing to send into a bad one is how an account stops being able to reach anyone at all.
What to do: this one isn’t a switch to flip. Look at what was sent recently — a list that hadn’t been mailed in years, or one that wasn’t collected with consent, is the usual cause.
When it isn't paused at all
Two things look like a pause and aren’t:
- It’s still a draft. A finished-looking flow that was never activated enrols nobody. Check the status badge.
- Nobody is triggering it. Bulk actions — a CSV import, a bulk add to a list — deliberately start no flows. See Triggers.
Common issues
It paused and I didn't change anything
Check credit first, then the sending domain. Both can change without anyone touching the flow.
I re-activated it but it paused again
Whatever caused it is still true. If you edited an email, the flow needs to pass its check — and if the content is the problem, re-activating won’t clear it.
Did people get lost while it was paused?
No. Pausing freezes runs where they stand; it doesn’t cancel them. The only thing you lose is email that waited so long it’s no longer worth sending.
I want to stop it myself, safely
Use Pause. Deleting is refused once a flow has sent anything, because the record of who received what hangs off it.
FAQs
Do people keep moving through a paused flow?+
No. Everyone is held where they are and queued email is held with them, which is what makes Pause the right tool when you spot a mistake mid-flight.
Will I be told when it pauses?+
The flow shows its status and the reason on its own page. There’s no notification system yet, so if a flow matters to you it’s worth a glance at Analytics → Automations occasionally — a flow that has stopped sending shows up there as a run of zeros.
Can I edit an email without pausing the flow?+
Small changes generally pass. It’s a substantive rewrite that sends it back for a check — which is the point: that’s exactly the change that would matter if someone were trying to swap approved content for something else.