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.

Set 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.

Set the 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.

Configure 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

Mutual exclusivity

Mutual exclusivity groups guides and surveys so that each user sees only one item from the group. This is useful for multi-platform announcements where you want users to see a message only once, regardless of which platform they use.

Multi-platform use case

When you release a feature across multiple platforms (web, iOS, and Android), announce it to users on whichever platform they use first—without showing the same announcement again on other platforms. Mutual exclusivity solves this by linking platform-specific guides together.

For example, if you create:

• A web guide announcing a new feature.
• An iOS guide with the same announcement.
• An Android guide with the same announcement.

Add all three to a mutual exclusivity group. When a user sees the web guide, they don't see the iOS or Android versions later—even if they switch platforms.

Prevent popup fatigue

Mutual exclusivity also helps prevent popup fatigue for users who might qualify for multiple similar guides. If you have several guides targeting overlapping audiences, group them so users see only the most relevant one.

Create a mutual exclusivity group

1. Go to Guides and Surveys and then select either Guides or Surveys.
2. Click the Settings icon for the list of artifacts.
3. Expand the Mutual exclusivity section.
4. Click Add group to create a new mutual exclusivity group.
5. Give the group a name (for example, "Feature X Announcement").
6. Select the guides or surveys to include in the group.
7. Click Save Changes.

Mutual exclusivity and throttling

Mutual exclusivity and throttling serve different purposes but work together:

• Throttling limits how many guides or surveys a user sees over time.
• Mutual exclusivity ensures a user sees only one item from a specific group.

You can apply both settings to the same guide. For example, a guide can belong to a mutual exclusivity group and also follow global throttling limits.