Throttling

Throttling is a way to slow down the rate at which a guide or a survey appears for your user. Depending on how many guides, surveys, or nudges you have created, it's important to set limits on how many appear for each user or how often users experience them. You don't want users to feel overwhelmed or annoyed during their experience on your site.

Throttling works identically for both Guides and Surveys. However, the throttling settings for guides and for surveys are separate. This gives you more overall flexibility in how your guides or surveys appear.

Built-in display limits

Amplitude has built-in limits that control how many guides and surveys can display simultaneously. These limits prevent overwhelming users with too many messages at once:

Example scenarios

Multiple pins triggered: If checklist B is triggered while checklist A is already displayed, checklist A continues to show and checklist B doesn't display.

Checklist and modal together: If a modal is showing and a checklist is triggered, both display at the same time, regardless of their priority settings.

Pin and tooltip together: A pin can display while multiple tooltips are also visible, since tooltips have no display limit.

To set the throttling for Guides or Surveys

1. Go to Guides and Surveys and then select either Guides or Surveys.
2. Click the Settings icon for the list of artifacts.
3. Turn throttling On.
4. Set the throttling. You can set:
   • Limit: The number of guides or surveys that appear.
   • Period: The rate of time in which the maximum limit of guides or surveys can appear. Time periods can be:
     • Day
     • Week
     • Month
     • Session
5. Click Save Changes.

Time between guides

Control the delay between when sequential guides can trigger for the same user. This prevents users from being overwhelmed by multiple guides appearing in quick succession.

To set time between sequential guides

1. Go to Guides and Surveys and then select either Guides or Surveys.
2. Click the Settings icon for the list of artifacts.
3. In the Time Between section, enter the delay period.
4. Select the time unit from the dropdown:
   • Minute
   • Hour
   • Day
5. Click Save Changes.

Advanced throttles

Advanced throttles let you set additional rate limits for guides or surveys grouped by tags. This gives you granular control over how different categories of content appear to users.

To set up advanced throttles

1. Go to Guides and Surveys and then select either Guides or Surveys.
2. Click the Settings icon for the list of artifacts.
3. In the Advanced Throttles section, click Add throttle.
4. Configure your advanced throttle:
   • Limit: The maximum number of guides/surveys for this tag group.
   • Tags: Select one or more tags to group guides/surveys.
   • Period: Choose the time period (Day/Week/Month/Session).
5. Click Save Changes.

Advanced throttle examples

Campaign throttling: Limit product-launch tagged guides to three (3) for each day. Feature throttling: Limit onboarding tagged content to five (5) for each session. Team coordination: Limit growth-team guides to two (2) for each week.

Multiple advanced throttles

You can create multiple advanced throttles for different tag combinations. This enables sophisticated throttling strategies:

• Urgent announcements: urgent + announcement tags - 1 each day
• Onboarding flow: onboarding tag - 3 each session
• Feature updates: feature-update tag - 2 each week