Relay.app is shutting down
Your workflows stop on September 14. Here's an honest guide to what happens next.
Relay announced its shutdown on July 16 and — unusually — recommended no alternative, so where each workflow should go is yours to work out. Most belong on another self-serve tool, and we'll say which. A few — the ones that touch money, customers, or commitments — deserve better than a rushed rebuild squeezed into evenings before a deadline.
The dates that matter
- July 16, 2026Shutdown announced; new signups and upgrades closed
- August 15, 2026Free accounts close
- September 14, 2026Paying customers lose access; workflows stop running
Do this today, wherever you're migrating: export your workflows, sequences, and MCP servers (JSON + AI prompts), your run history, and your tables as CSVs. The rebuild can happen after the deadline — the export can't.
Honest routing
Most Relay workflows should not come to us
We'd rather you land in the right place than in our inbox. Three honest routes:
Simple app-to-app automations → Zapier or Make
If a workflow moves data between two tools and a missed run is an inconvenience, a self-serve tool is the right price and the right amount of machinery. Genuinely.
You're technical and want to own it → n8n, self-hosted
Full control, wide node library, and no vendor can shut it off — in exchange for running the server, the database, and the upgrades yourself. A fair trade if you have the hands.
Approval-heavy workflows that touch money, customers, or commitments → that's us
The Relay workflows with human sign-offs in the middle — quotes, refunds, intake, outreach a person approves before it sends. If one of those failing quietly costs you real money, it deserves an operator, not another tool. We rebuild it, run it, monitor it, and answer for it.
The part to plan for
Your Relay export is a rebuild spec, not a migration
Relay's export gives you workflow JSON and AI prompts to rebuild from — a genuinely useful parting gift, and more than many shutdowns leave behind. But no automation platform ingests that JSON, because every tool models workflows its own way. Whatever destination you pick, someone is rebuilding each workflow by hand from a spec. The migration listicles don't dwell on this, because the tools they recommend all share the same constraint.
We're not a tool you import into. We're the people who do the rebuild.
Through the shutdown window
Send us your Relay JSON export. We'll return a migration blueprint — free.
- A diagram and a readable spec of each critical workflow — what it does, where the approvals sit, what it connects to
- The failure points your current setup has (where a duplicate or a silent drop can happen), because we look for those by habit
- A fixed quote to rebuild and run it — no estimate ranges, no meter
- Yours to keep either way. Rebuild with us, rebuild elsewhere with it, or hand it to your own developer
Normally this is our $5,000 blueprint engagement. For Relay customers it's free until September 14 — the blueprint has to be built while your account is still alive, even if the rebuild happens after.
What carries over
The approval-first model survives the move
Relay's best idea — a human signing off where it matters — is a first-class step here too, not a workaround. The mapping, concept by concept:
| In Relay | In Appngen | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Human-in-the-loop approval | Approval step (first-class) | Pauses durably, records who decided what, resumes on the same timeline |
| Paths / conditions | Condition branches | Explicit yes/no targets, validated at compile time |
| AI actions | AI step + human approval | The agent drafts; a person signs off where it matters |
| Waits & schedules | Durable waits, schedule triggers | Days-long waits survive restarts; scheduled runs can't double-fire |
| Webhook triggers | Keyed webhook triggers | A retried delivery returns the original run instead of starting a second one |
| Tables | Sheets / MySQL connections | Your CSV export loads into a system you own outright |
And the part that changes: after the rebuild, you're not the one operating it. We host it, monitor it, catch the failures before you do, and send a monthly report of what ran, what got caught, and what to automate next.
The question you should now ask everyone
“And what happens if you shut down?”
Worth saying plainly: Relay is handling its wind-down better than most companies manage — sixty days' notice, automatic prorated refunds, workflows running to the end, exports ready on day one. And it still leaves every customer facing weeks of rebuild. That's the lesson: even the good version of a vendor shutdown is expensive. So ask this question of everyone now, including us.
Our answer: we can't promise immortality — nobody honestly can. What we promise is that the answer never traps you. Every workflow we run comes with its full blueprint — a diagram and a readable YAML spec of the logic — plus structured export of your data, any time you ask, not just on the way out. If we vanished tomorrow, anyone you hire could rebuild from what you already hold. We planned for our own absence because, as this month proves, that's the only plan a customer can actually rely on.
Relay.app migration questions
Is Appngen a Relay.app alternative?
For a specific slice of Relay customers, yes: teams running business-critical, approval-heavy workflows — the ones that touch money, customers, or commitments — who would rather have the replacement built and operated for them than rebuild it themselves. If your Relay workflows are simple app-to-app automations, a self-serve tool like Zapier or Make is honestly the better destination, and this page says so.
Can Appngen import my Relay.app JSON export?
Nobody can import it — the export is designed as material to rebuild from, and no automation platform ingests another tool's workflow JSON. Every Relay customer faces a manual rebuild wherever they go. That is exactly what we do: send us the export and we produce a migration blueprint — a diagram and a readable spec of each critical workflow, with a fixed rebuild quote. Through the shutdown window the blueprint is free, and it is yours to keep even if you rebuild somewhere else.
What do I need to do before Relay.app shuts down?
Export everything now, regardless of where you are migrating: your workflows, sequences, and MCP servers (JSON plus AI prompts), your run history, and your tables as CSVs. Free accounts close August 15, 2026; paying customers keep access until September 14, 2026. The export is the urgent part — the rebuild can happen after the deadline, but only if the spec and data were captured while your account was still alive.
How much does migrating to Appngen cost?
Through the Relay shutdown window, the migration blueprint is free (normally $5,000). If you go ahead, the rebuild is a fixed one-time quote — most land between $12,000 and $25,000 — and running it is $1,500–$3,500 per month per workflow depending on criticality, with founding-client terms available. If those numbers are out of proportion to what the workflow is worth, Appngen is the wrong destination for it, and the blueprint will say that plainly rather than talk you into it.
How do I know Appngen won't shut down like Relay.app did?
You don't, and anyone who promises immortality is selling something. Worth noting that Relay is winding down more gracefully than most — notice, refunds, working exports — and even that still leaves customers rebuilding. So the honest answer is about what you'd be left holding: every workflow we run for you comes with its full blueprint — a diagram and a readable YAML spec of the logic — plus structured export of your data, any time you ask, not just at the end. If we ever disappeared, anyone you hire could rebuild from what you already hold.
Will my Relay.app approval steps survive the move?
Yes — approvals are the part that maps most directly. A human approval is a first-class step in Appngen: the run pauses durably, the reviewer gets notified, the decision and who made it are recorded on the run's timeline, and the workflow resumes. Waits, branches, AI steps, and scheduled triggers all have direct equivalents; the blueprint shows the mapping workflow by workflow.
Seven weeks is plenty — if the export happens today
Export your data today no matter what. Then, if one of your workflows is too important to rebuild in a rush — send us the export and take the free blueprint.