KLAVIYO FLOWS

Klaviyo flow not sending: five checks, in order

Short answer: start with the message status, then the trigger event, any sync delay, the flow filters and the flow history. Klaviyo's own troubleshooting guide covers each of these, and you can check all of them from inside your account without touching code. A high skipped count on its own can also be normal, which the last section explains.

Step 1: Look at the message status

Open the flow and click each email or SMS. Klaviyo says a message must be in Live status to send. Two other statuses are easy to miss:

• Draft. The message does not send and does not queue anyone. Profiles that hit it while it was a draft are not waiting for you.
• Manual. The message queues profiles but sends nothing until you do it by hand. Click the message, open View details in the Performance section, then Recipient activity, then Needs Review. You can send or cancel each one, or use Send All and Cancel All. Klaviyo warns that if someone in Needs Review no longer meets the flow filters, they are skipped and get nothing.

When you are ready for it to send by itself, change the message to Live from the status dropdown in the flow builder.

Step 2: Confirm the trigger event is being recorded

Click the trigger at the top of the flow. The sidebar shows whether it is triggered by a metric (an event such as Started Checkout or Placed Order) or by a list or segment. For a metric, click the metric name. That opens its analytics page, where you can hover the activity chart or open the Activity Feed to see when it last fired.

If the metric stopped recording on a date, the flow is not the problem. Your store connection is. Klaviyo points to its separate tracking guides for Placed Order and Viewed Product in that case.

If you changed stores or platforms, check that the flow still uses the right metric. Klaviyo's example: after moving from BigCommerce to Shopify, flows can still be set to BigCommerce's Placed Order metric rather than Shopify's.

Step 3: Check for a sync delay

Some integrations send events in real time. Others sync every 30 minutes to an hour, according to Klaviyo. This matters because Klaviyo says that if the gap between when the event happened and when Klaviyo recorded it is 6 hours or more, the event will not trigger a metric flow. For flows marked transactional, the limit is up to 7 days.

To check: open a profile that should have triggered the flow, open the activity log, click the three dots next to the event, and choose Activity details. Compare the two timestamps (both in UTC). A big gap points to a sync problem on the store side.

For hosted stores such as Shopify, Klaviyo suggests checking the platform's status page (for Shopify, status.shopify.com). For self-hosted setups such as WooCommerce, a firewall or security tool like Cloudflare or Sucuri can block or slow Klaviyo's syncing. Klaviyo says it uses dynamic IPs, so you cannot allow a range of addresses. You allow its user agent instead: Klaviyo/1.0.

Step 4: Check flow filters and trigger filters

Open the trigger and click Flow Filters. Filters that contradict each other can leave a flow sending to nobody. Two traps from Klaviyo's page:

• AND versus OR. If you are excluding people (using "doesn't contain" for example), connect filters with AND. With OR, a profile only has to pass one filter. Klaviyo's example: someone in the United States fails a country filter, but passes a "tags don't contain US" filter, so they get in through the OR.
• Filter type. Orders can hold several items or collections. Klaviyo says to use the List type with "contains" or "doesn't contain" for those. "Doesn't equal" only excludes orders where that collection is the only one.

Use the Preview option on the trigger to see whether a recent profile qualifies and which filter lets them through or stops them.

Also check the name. If you renamed a product or collection, the name inside the filter does not update by itself.

Step 5: Read the flow history

If the flow used to work, open View flow history at the top of the flow builder. It shows what changed, who changed it and when, in your account's time zone. If the change matches the date sending stopped, you have your answer.

Seeing a lot of skipped profiles? That can be normal

In abandonment flows, everyone who fires the trigger enters, then the filters skip those who no longer qualify. Klaviyo says a high skipped count is normal and correct. For the default abandoned cart flow, the trigger is Started Checkout and people who place an order are skipped. To check the reasons, open the message, click View details, then Recipient activity, then Skipped. Mostly "Fails Flow Filters" is expected.

If customers still get abandoned cart emails after buying, Klaviyo suggests checking that Placed Order is recording and whether it arrives late. Shopify draft orders are a known cause: they fire Started Checkout but never Placed Order, so Klaviyo says to add a trigger filter to exclude them.

When to hire help

Get help when the metric records fine, the message is Live, the filters look right and nothing sends, or when the flow touches several systems (store, tracking, a custom integration) and you cannot tell which link is broken. A flow that stops sending quietly can go unnoticed until someone checks the numbers.

We look at your setup first and tell you what we found. If it is one clear defect, a fixed $299 fix applies and the $99 diagnosis is credited toward it. Larger rebuilds get a written quote before we start. We never ask for your password: tell us what is happening. Include the flow name, the trigger and the date it stopped.