What is happening to Relay.app
Relay.app announced in July 2026 that it was winding down. New signups closed. Free accounts kept access for 30 days, through Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 23:59 PT. Paying customers kept access for 60 days, through Monday, September 14, 2026 at 23:59 PT, with prorated refunds for annual plans and extra usage credits during the transition. After those dates, workspaces, credentials, and data were permanently deleted.
That matters because Relay was not just another automation tool. It was the human-in-the-loop product: the approval step was a first-class part of every workflow. The three alternatives Relay recommends are strong tools, but approval is not what they are built around. If the approval step is why you chose Relay, that is the thing to protect in whatever you move to. We wrote a full explainer on the shutdown and your options and a migration guide for moving to flo.space.
Relay.app alternatives, compared honestly
| Relay.app | flo.space | Zapier | Make | n8n | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approval before actions execute A person reviews and approves as the default model, not an optional step | Yes, built in | Yes, every action | Optional step, off by default | Workarounds only | Optional wait step, off by default |
| How automations are created | Visual workflow builder | AI prepares actions from your tools; no flows to build | Visual workflow builder | Visual scenario builder | Node-based editor, code-friendly |
| App coverage | ~100+ apps | A small set of business tools, done deeply | Thousands of apps | Thousands of apps | Hundreds of nodes, plus code |
| AI drafting of emails, invoices, and orders | AI steps inside workflows | Core of the product, with reasoning and sources shown | AI steps and agents | AI modules | AI nodes, bring your own model |
| Best for | Was: teams wanting approval-gated workflows | B2B teams who want AI to draft the work and a human to approve it | Connecting many apps with maximum coverage | Complex multi-step scenarios at low cost | Technical teams who want control or self-hosting |
| Entry pricing | Shut down | See pricing | Free plan; paid from about $20/mo | Free plan; paid from about $9/mo | Self-host free; cloud from about $24/mo |
| Status | Closed Aug 15 / Sep 14, 2026 | Early access, onboarding now | Established | Established | Established |
Where flo.space genuinely fits
flo.space is built on the same conviction Relay was: AI should prepare the work, and a person should approve it before it goes anywhere. It connects to the tools a small business already runs on, reads the context, and prepares the next action: the invoice from QuickBooks, the reply in Gmail, the order update priced from your sheets. Every prepared action shows its reasoning, its data source, and a risk level, and it sits in one approval queue until you say send.
The difference from Relay is how automations come to exist. In Relay you built each workflow by hand. In flo.space there is nothing to build: the AI watches the tools you connect and proposes the actions, and the approval gate is not a step you add, it is the way the product works.
What Relay did that flo.space does not
Being straight about this matters more than a clean sweep. Do not choose flo.space if what you actually need is one of these:
- A visual builder for arbitrary multi-step workflows, with branches, loops, and custom paths. That is what Zapier, Make, and n8n do, and they do it well.
- Long-tail app coverage. Relay connected to well over a hundred apps and Zapier to thousands. flo.space connects to a small set of business tools and goes deep on them instead.
- Fully autonomous automation. Some Relay users ran workflows with no approval step at all. flo.space deliberately does not offer that; every outbound action waits for a person.
- Custom triggers, webhooks, and developer-style extensibility. n8n in particular is the stronger choice there.
What happens to your exported workflows
Relay's export gives you, per workflow, a prompt.md file describing the workflow in plain language, a workflow.json with its exact structure, and CSVs of run history. Relay's own docs note the JSON does not import directly into any other tool. During early access onboarding we ask Relay users to share those files, and we use them to configure flo.space to prepare the same outcomes with the approval step intact. The migration guide walks through it step by step, including what maps cleanly and what does not.
Questions Relay users are asking
Relay.app is no longer available to new users. Free accounts kept access through Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 23:59 PT. Paying customers kept access through Monday, September 14, 2026 at 23:59 PT. After each date, the accounts and all associated data were permanently deleted.
There is no one-click importer, and any tool claiming otherwise is overpromising: Relay itself notes its JSON export does not transfer directly into other tools. What works well is sharing the prompt.md and workflow.json files from your Relay export with us during early access onboarding. We use them to configure the same outcomes as prepared, approval-gated actions.
No. Relay let you build multi-step workflows by hand. flo.space connects to the tools you already use, and AI prepares the next action, like an invoice, a reply, or an order update, with its reasoning and data source attached. You review and approve before anything sends. If your Relay workflows existed to draft and send business communications with an approval step, that outcome maps well. If they were long custom pipelines, a workflow builder is the better fit.
Gmail, QuickBooks, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Dropbox shared links, Outlook, Slack, Stripe, ShipStation, and the rest of a focused catalog you can read in full at /integrations. Connections start read only, and nothing writes back until a human approves the action.
Export your workspace data first. The full export can take up to 24 hours to generate and the download link is only valid for 48 hours, so do not leave it to the last day. Free users needed to finish before August 15, 2026; paid users before September 14, 2026.
Keep the approval step you chose Relay for
Join early access, connect your tools read only, and see the first prepared actions in your approval queue. Nothing sends until you approve it.