Guides

Overview

Engage users in real time based on live event data, with instant routing, warehouse-backed personalization, and flexible multi-step journeys.

Real-time journeys let you respond to live events — signups, purchases, page views, and more — within milliseconds. When an event arrives, GrowthLoop routes the user through your journey graph immediately, without waiting for a scheduled batch run.

Use real-time journeys when you need instant engagement: triggered emails, in-session personalization, webhook calls, or multi-step flows that react to user behavior as it happens.

Real-time Nodes

Each node on the canvas shows a lightning bolt icon when it processes in real time. Nodes without a lightning bolt process users within minutes using the warehouse.

NodeReal-time Enabled
Entry⚡
Criteria⚡
Experiment⚡
Composable Destinations⚡
Batch Destinations🐌
Trigger⚡
Wait for Event⚡
Delay node⚡
CRM Action🐌

🐌 Criteria nodes that use the "windowed evaluation" feature

🐌 Any nodes that define a custom attribute of the "Related Field" type

Propagation: Once a user's path hits a node without a lightning bolt, every downstream node loses its lightning bolt too — even if those nodes would normally process in real time. The user continues through the journey, but those steps run as if they were batch journeys - processing in minutes instead of milliseconds.

Prerequisites

Complete these steps in order:

  1. Configure a source connection — Connect Kafka, AWS SQS, or Google Pub/Sub so GrowthLoop can consume your events.
  2. Register a real-time event — Define which messages trigger journeys and validate their schema.
  3. Optional: Sync warehouse fields — Sync profile attributes from your customers table to the Personalization API so you can filter and personalize using warehouse data in real time.
  4. Create the journey — Choose Realtime Journey, select your event, and build the graph.

Related guides

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Need help?

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