In recent years, the adaptive exponential synchronization (AES) problem of delayed complex networks has been extensively studied. Existing results rely heavily on assuming the differentiability of the time-varying delay, which is not easy to verify in reality. Dealing with nondifferentiable delay in the field of AES is still a challenging problem. In this brief, the AES problem of complex networks with general time-varying delay is addressed, especially when the delay is nondifferentiable. A delay differential inequality is proposed to deal with the exponential stability of delayed nonlinear systems, which is more general than the widely used Halanay inequality. Next, the boundedness of the adaptive control gain is theoretically proved, which is neglected in much of the literature. Then, the AES criteria for networks with general delay are established for the first time by using the proposed inequality and the boundedness of the control gain. Finally, an example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.