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Cura’s workflows are built so your customers never get spammed. Before any automated message leaves a workflow, Cura runs a series of safety checks. If a check decides the message would be too much, too soon, or unwelcome, the run is quietly stopped — and you can see exactly why in the workflow logs. In short: your customers get the right message at the right time, and never a flood of them.
These guardrails apply to workflows — Cura’s automated follow-ups (reminders, check-ins, re-engagement). They run automatically; most businesses never need to touch them. This page explains what they do, and the few things you can adjust.

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The safety checks, in plain language

Every time a workflow is about to message a customer, Cura runs these checks first. Any one of them can stop the message before it’s sent.

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A limit on how many automated messages a customer gets

Cura caps how many automated messages one customer can receive across all your workflows. By default, that’s 2 messages within a rolling 7-day window. Once a customer has received that many, further workflow messages to them are held back until the window clears — so overlapping workflows can’t pile up on the same person.
This is the main backstop against spam: no matter how many workflows you have running, a single customer won’t be over-messaged.

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Quiet hours — nothing fires in the middle of the night

Cura won’t send automated messages during quiet hours. By default, that’s 9:00 PM to 8:00 AM in your workspace’s timezone. A message that would land inside quiet hours is either held until quiet hours end (and then sent, with a small random delay so a batch doesn’t all arrive at once) or skipped, depending on how the workflow is set up.
Set your workspace timezone so quiet hours line up with your customers’ local night. If a timezone isn’t set, Cura falls back to UTC, which may not match Thailand — see What you can adjust below.

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A cooldown between back-to-back workflows

If one workflow has already messaged a customer in the last 5 minutes, Cura holds back any other workflow that’s about to message the same person. This stops two workflows with overlapping timing from hitting the same customer within minutes of each other.

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It backs off when a human just replied

If someone on your team has personally messaged a customer recently — within the last 4 hours by default — Cura pauses automated messages to that customer. The reasoning is simple: a real person is already handling the conversation, so an automated follow-up would only get in the way.

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It stops the moment a customer replies

If a customer replies while a workflow is mid-sequence, Cura cancels the rest of that workflow for them automatically. Your automation never talks over a live conversation, and a customer who’s already responding won’t keep getting scheduled follow-ups.
A reply from the customer is always the strongest signal — Cura treats it as “the human conversation has started” and steps aside.

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It honours opt-outs across every channel

If a customer is marked as opted out, Cura stops all automated outbound to them — on every channel they’re on, not just one. The workflow that tried to reach them is logged as skipped with the reason Contact opted out, so there’s a clear record.

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Each guardrail in one view

Internal-only steps — actions like adding a tag or creating a task that don’t message the customer — aren’t subject to these limits, because there’s nothing for the customer to receive.

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Seeing the guardrails at work

When a guardrail stops a message, it isn’t lost silently — the run is recorded so you always know what happened and why.
  • Open a workflow’s Logs tab to see its runs.
  • A run that a guardrail stopped shows as Skipped, with a plain-language reason (for example, Contact opted out, or that a recent message or cooldown held it back).
See Monitoring workflow runs and analytics for how to read the logs.

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What you can adjust

The defaults are tuned to protect your customers, and most businesses leave them as they are. A few things are worth knowing:
1

Set your workspace timezone

Quiet hours are measured in your workspace timezone. Setting it correctly is the single most important thing you can do, so “overnight” means overnight for your customers. Without it, quiet hours are measured in UTC.
2

Adjust quiet hours and frequency for your business

Your workspace’s frequency and quiet-hours settings (the per-customer cap, the quiet-hours window, and whether quiet-hours messages are held or skipped) can be tuned to fit how your business communicates. If you’d like these changed from the defaults above, talk to your Cura contact.
3

Make an urgent workflow exempt from quiet hours

Some messages genuinely shouldn’t wait — an appointment reminder for an early-morning visit, for instance. A workflow can be set to ignore quiet hours so it sends whenever its trigger fires. Use this sparingly, and only for time-critical messages.
Turning a guardrail down or off increases how often a customer can be messaged. Loosen these only when you have a clear reason, and watch your workflow logs afterwards to make sure customers aren’t being over-messaged.