Taking a flow live is the moment your cancellation flow starts intercepting real customers. Before churn.io will let a flow go live, a handful of conditions have to be met so that offers and cancellations actually work at runtime instead of silently failing. This article walks you through the full checklist, what each requirement means, and the messages you might see if something is missing.
Before you start
Open Flows from the sidebar. Each flow shows a status badge: Draft (still being built), Paused (built but not shown), or Live (active and visible to your customers). A flow always starts as a Draft. Going live is what turns it on.
You can take a flow live in two places: from the three-dot menu on a flow card using Go live, or from inside the flow builder using the Go live button in the bottom bar. Both run the same checks.
The checklist
Work through these in order. The first three are things you control while building; the last three are account- and plan-level requirements.
Step 1: Your flow has all of its required steps
A flow that's missing a core step can't go live. Make sure your flow includes its survey, offer, and cancellation screens. If any are missing you'll see a message telling you the flow is missing required steps.
Step 2: You've chosen an audience
Every live flow needs an audience. Open the audience section and pick one of Everyone, Specific users, or Everyone else. If you choose Specific users, your conditions must be complete and free of conflicts — churn.io will ask you to fix conflicting or incomplete conditions before you can publish.
Step 3: Your offers and labels are valid
Each retention offer (discount, pause, free month, trial extension, book a call, or custom page) needs its details filled in correctly. churn.io also checks that:
Your cancellation screen has a button label, and its button link (if you added one) is a valid URL.
For hosted cancel pages, none of the on-page button labels are left empty.
If your flow redirects to a custom link on completion, that redirect URL is valid.
If anything is off, the builder shows a short hint such as "Fix offer errors to go live" and keeps the Go live button disabled until it's resolved.
Step 4: A payment gateway is connected
A live flow needs a connected payment gateway so it can apply offers and process cancellations. Without one, the Go live button is disabled and a banner appears at the top of the builder reading "Live flows require a connected payment gateway." Click Connect gateway to open Integrations and connect Stripe.
⚠️ This is a hard requirement
If you try to publish without a connected gateway, you'll see "Payment gateway required." Offers and cancellations would silently do nothing at runtime without it, so churn.io blocks going live until Stripe is connected.
Step 5: You're within your plan's live-flow limit
Your plan allows a certain number of flows to be live at once. If you're already at the limit, the Go live button is disabled and you'll see a "Plan limit reached" message. To make room, either Pause an existing live flow or upgrade your plan.
Step 6: No other live flow targets the same audience
Only one live flow can target a given audience at a time. If another flow is already live with the same audience type, churn.io returns a conflict message naming the flow that's in the way — for example, telling you that another flow "is already live with the same audience type. Pause it first." Pause the conflicting flow, then publish this one.
After going live
Once all checks pass, the flow's badge switches to a pulsing green Live and you'll get a confirmation that it's now visible to your customers.
To turn a flow off again, use Pause — from the same three-dot menu or the builder's bottom bar. Pausing always succeeds immediately and the flow stops being shown. It returns to a Paused state and can be taken live again later once you're ready.
💡 Tip
Keep flows you're still experimenting with in Draft. They won't count against your plan's live-flow limit and won't conflict with anything until you publish them.