Flow Builder: Delay Block

What does the Delay block do?

It creates a pause in your Flow. Keaz describes it as a pause until a specified date or time, and that is the whole job: the contact stops at the Delay block, waits, and then moves on to whatever comes next. Every other block in a Flow either sends something or decides something — this one only waits. That makes it the block that turns a single message into a sequence with timing.

The Delay sits between two actions, so it needs something before and after it to be useful. The block that decides who enters the Flow in the first place is the Starting point, and what a Flow is made of covers how the blocks fit together.

How do you add a Delay block?

In the Flow Builder, use Add block and choose Delay. The block appears on the canvas and its settings open in the panel on the right.

How do you set the wait time?

There are two fields, and together they are the whole configuration.

• Wait time — a number, for example 120.
• Unit — a dropdown with Minutes, Hours and Days.

Three units cover a wide range, from a few minutes between two messages to a wait measured in months. Pick the unit that matches the intent rather than the one with the smallest number — “2 days” reads more clearly on the canvas later than “2880 minutes”.

What does the block show on the canvas?

The Delay block has a purple header with a timer icon, and it reports two things without you opening it:

• Clients currently waiting — how many contacts are sitting in this Delay at this moment.
• Wait time is X days — the wait you configured, in the unit you chose.

The waiting count is the useful one. A long Delay is otherwise invisible — nothing sends, so there is nothing to look at — and this number tells you the Flow is working rather than stalled. The same two figures also appear in the read-only canvas of a Flow's detail view, so you can check on a live Flow without opening the editor.

Does every contact wait the same length of time?

Each contact waits the same duration, but their own clock starts when they reach the block. There is no batch logic and no shared send window: a contact who enters the Flow on Tuesday and a contact who enters on Friday both wait, say, three days, and they move on three days after their own arrival. Nobody is held back waiting for the group.

This is why the number in Clients currently waiting moves continuously rather than emptying all at once. It also means several contacts can be at different points in the same Flow at the same time.

Can you use more than one Delay in a Flow?

Yes — you can combine as many Delay blocks as you need. That is what makes a multi-step, time-controlled Flow possible without anyone scheduling anything by hand: message, wait, message, wait longer, message. Once the Flow is active, the timing runs itself.

Because Days is available as a unit, the same block also covers long horizons — a 120-day winback is one Delay block, not a reminder in someone's calendar. Two things are worth thinking about before you set a long wait: what the contact will remember by then, and whether the offer still applies. Our guide to turning one order into three works through how far apart to space follow-ups, and the Abandoned checkout trigger shows short delays doing the same job on a scale of hours.