Moxo vs Relay.app in 2026: Where Relay's Approval Workflows Can Go Next

Overview

Relay.app is gone. Its homepage, read 28 September 2026, says "Relay.app shut down in September 2026. All accounts, workflows, and run history have been permanently deleted", and that "The July 2026 version of our homepage is preserved on the Internet Archive". Relay announced the closure on 16 July 2026; free accounts were deleted after 15 August and paid accounts after 14 September (Automation Atlas shutdown guide). This page is for teams that used it for human-in-the-loop work and are deciding where that work goes next, with Moxo as one destination among several.

It is a migration comparison, so the rounds score what each product did for the person in the middle of a workflow, not which one to buy today. Relay.app takes two rounds, Moxo takes one, and vendor risk is a draw. Relay's side rests on its homepage as captured on 14 July 2026 and its pricing page as captured on 29 June 2026, both on the Internet Archive. Moxo's side rests on its pricing page as last published (read 28 September 2026, before it redirected to Moxo's homepage), its Description of Services, Terms and Conditions and API reference, read 28 September 2026, and on synthetic AutomationAtlas builder tests on 14 and 15 September 2026.

Company Snapshot

The Core Trade-Off: The Price of Staying Small Goes to Relay.app, by Knockout

Relay.app wins the entry round by knockout, and it is the loss a migrating team feels first. Its pricing page, captured on 29 June 2026, offered Free at $0 for 1 user and 200 steps a month, Professional at "$19 per month, billed annually" for 750 steps, and Team at "$59 per month, billed annually" with "10 users included", and it promised "All features included in every plan". Human-in-the-loop sat in that list on every plan: "AI output reviews", "Custom approval steps" and "Custom data input steps". A one-person approval workflow cost nothing, and a ten-person team paid $708 a year (AutomationAtlas arithmetic).

Moxo stopped publishing prices. The last list it published, read 28 September 2026, put Team at "$5,000/yr", annual only, with no free plan. That is about 7 times Relay's Team plan and 22 times its Professional plan, before a single flow is built (AutomationAtlas arithmetic). The unit changes too. Moxo sold "100 flows/yr", where Relay metered steps and did not charge "for triggers, data transformation steps, path and loop evaluations". A Relay user who ran a few hundred small approvals a month will not fit 100 flows a year, the allowance Moxo last published.

AI changes shape as well. Relay included 500 AI credits a month on Free and 2,000 on its paid plans, and let any plan bring its own API keys. Moxo gave Team "$100 of AI/yr" in dollars on that last list, with no published conversion to the credits its product logs, and "Bring your own model / agent" sat on Enterprise. An AI-heavy Relay workflow is expensive to move.

Approving Where the Team Already Works Goes to Relay.app

Relay.app takes the second round because its human steps met people where they already were. The homepage promised to "Pull in a teammate anywhere you need an approval, data entry, or AI output review", its pricing page listed a Slack integration under Human-in-the-Loop on every plan, and Automation Atlas's shutdown guide found its distinguishing capability was a run that pauses so a named person can approve, reject or edit an AI-drafted output, usually from Gmail or Slack (checked 28 July 2026).

Moxo sends the work to its own surface. Its Description of Services offers Slack and Microsoft Teams "flow-event notifications to channels and direct messages to participants", Team listed SMS notifications on the last published plan list, and the task itself is completed in Moxo's Assignee Portal. For a team that approved AI drafts in Slack twenty times a day, that is one more place to go. Moxo's AI steps do carry a "Human review" switch ("Pause for a user to review and edit the AI output before it's used downstream"), seen off by default in a synthetic test on 15 September 2026, and the Review Agent that automates the check started on Scale on that list.

Getting the Record Out Goes to Moxo, by Knockout

Moxo wins the exit round by knockout, because Relay's shutdown deleted every run history along with the accounts it belonged to. The lesson for your next vendor is to hold your own copy of each case, and Moxo's API is built to hand one over. GET /v1/flows/{id}/export "Downloads the flow's data and attachments as a ZIP archive", one case at a time, and GET /v1/templates/{id}/export downloads the template definition behind it (developers.moxo.com, read 28 September 2026). You can pull a case out the day it closes, not the week a vendor announces its end.

Relay's record was thin at the bottom even before the end. Its pricing page listed run history retention of "30 days" on Free and "Custom" on paid plans (29 June 2026 capture), and its export, per Automation Atlas's shutdown guide, capped run-history CSVs at 100,000 rows while Relay warned that its JSON "won't work through their native importers". Moxo documents more to take with you. Its Description of Services offers "a complete Flow record (summary, per-step detail, audit trail, and attachments) as an archive", exports audit and activity records "to CSV, JSON, or PDF with chain-of-custody headers and a SHA-256 fingerprint", and lets an organisation auto-delete file contents while "retaining metadata and audit records". The flow audit log returns "every action taken, by whom, and when".

The record also outlives the people in it. When you remove a user with DELETE /v1/users/{id}, the API says their "name stays attached to past assignments so the audit trail remains intact". Staff leave and client contacts change over a long case, and the approvals they gave stay attributed to them. Outside participants are held the same way, as users of kind external: a record, never a login.

Two limits keep the knockout honest. An export you never run protects no one, and Moxo is a vendor too, so the vendor-risk draw below applies to it in full: script the flow export into your close-out and keep the archives where Moxo cannot delete them. And on the last published plan list (28 September 2026) the audit log and REST APIs sat on Scale, a custom quote, not on Team, while a template leaves as "a .moxo.json file", a format only Moxo runs. What you carry out is evidence rather than a process another engine can execute.

Rebuilding a Relay Workflow on Moxo

Relay's export was built for this moment. Each workflow folder held a rebuild prompt as a markdown file, and Relay itself treated the markdown, not the JSON, as the migration vehicle (Automation Atlas shutdown guide, 28 July 2026). Moxo's front door takes that shape: its Description of Services documents "Conversion of an existing written process" from pasted text or uploaded documents into a draft template using AI. Expect a draft, not a copy. In a synthetic test on 14 September 2026, Moxo's own Build with AI produced 4 steps and 3 roles from one prompt, then its publish validator refused the design with 2 blocking issues.

The table shows where each Relay building block lands, and on which Moxo plan.

Read down the right-hand column. Moxo replaces Relay's approval and form steps on Team, but almost everything that made a Relay workflow a workflow, from paths and loops to sequences and triggers, started on Scale, a custom quote, on the last published list.

Vendor Risk Is a Draw

Call vendor risk a draw, because a shutdown teaches the same lesson about every vendor. Relay gave its paying customers about 60 days, from 16 July to 14 September 2026, with full access at no charge, and free users about a month (Automation Atlas shutdown guide). No workflow survived the end date.

Moxo is a private company whose funding totals conflict across third-party databases (14 September 2026), and it moves its terms quickly: Internet Archive captures show Team carrying 250 flows a year on 26 August 2026 and 100 on 10 September, at the same $5,000, and by 13 October 2026 moxo.com/pricing redirected to its homepage. Its Terms and Conditions give some protection. A price change applies only from the next subscription term, "at least sixty (60) days after the notice", and Moxo will use "commercially reasonable efforts" to give 30 days' notice of a change that "materially affects the functionality" of the service. The Terms state no window for exporting your data after termination, and the Description of Services says only that organisation deletion comes "with a compliance audit trail and a grace period", without a length. Put the export window in the order form.

Pricing (as of September 2026)

Moxo (last published list, moxo.com/pricing)

Moxo stopped publishing prices: by 13 October 2026 moxo.com/pricing redirected to its homepage. The last published list, read 28 September 2026, put Team at "$5,000/yr" for "100 flows/yr · $100 of AI/yr · Unlimited seats", annual only; Scale and Enterprise were custom quotes. Every plan's button then read "Book a demo", and the header still links "Request free trial", with no length stated. There was no free plan and no published overage rate; past the allowance the API answers 402 QUOTA_EXCEEDED.

Relay.app (final published prices)

From the 29 June 2026 capture of relay.app/pricing on the Internet Archive (re-checked 13 October 2026): Free at $0 with 1 user, 200 steps and 500 AI credits a month; Professional at $19 a month billed annually, 1 user, 750 steps and 2,000 AI credits; Team at $59 a month billed annually, 10 users, 1,500 steps and 2,000 AI credits; Enterprise custom. The billing toggle read "Annual (Save 50%)". None of it can be bought now.

Cost Comparison (Estimated Annual)

Moxo is the wrong choice for a Relay team whose workflows were one person's automations with an approval in the middle: on its last published list it cost about 22 times Relay's Professional plan and metered a unit those workflows never needed. It fits when the approval was always the front of a longer case with people outside the company.

Migration Framework

Start from what your Relay workflow waited for.

Editor's Note: Relay.app's pricing page, captured on 29 June 2026, listed run-history retention of "30 days" on Free, and free accounts were then given the same 30 days, from the closure announcement on 16 July to deletion after 15 August. If that retention was a rolling window, a free user who waited for the deadline could export nothing older than the announcement. Moxo's API reference describes GET /v1/flows/{id}/export, a ZIP of a flow's data and attachments, as "useful for archival, compliance exports, and migrations", but its Terms name no export window after termination, so we would run it as each case closes. — Rafal Fila, ShadowGen