Systems and methods for flow control and congestion management of messages among acceleration components (ACs) configurable to accelerate a service are provided. An example system comprises a software plane including host components configured to execute instructions corresponding to a service and an acceleration plane including ACs configurable to accelerate the service. In a first mode a sending AC is configured to, in response to receiving a first indication from a receiving AC, send subsequent packets corresponding to a first message associated with the service using a larger inter-packet gap than an inter-packet gap used for previous packets corresponding to the first message associated with the service, and in the second mode the sending AC is configured to, in response to receiving a second indication from the receiving AC, delay a transmission of a next packet corresponding to the first message associated with the service.