I was spending too much time managing email.
Not necessarily writing emails. Dealing with them.
Reading something just to work out what it was. Moving it somewhere sensible. Remembering that it still needed attention. Sending the same acknowledgement for the hundredth time. Turning an email into a task. Checking later to make sure it had actually been dealt with.
None of those jobs are particularly difficult.
But when they happen all day, every day, they quietly consume an enormous amount of time.
I didn't want another helpdesk. I didn't want another subscription, another dashboard or another system I had to remember to check.
I already had Gmail. I already had WordPress.
So I taught WordPress to deal with the boring bits of my inbox for me.
That became Susan Port.
Email often creates work before you've even done the work.
Susan Port is for the little repetitive jobs surrounding email that somehow become a substantial part of the working day.
"I'll deal with that later."
You read an email, mentally add it to your list, carry on working and then have to remember that it exists.
"I send this reply all the time."
New enquiry. Same acknowledgement. Different name. Different subject. Another couple of minutes gone.
"That really needs to become a task."
An email arrives containing actual work, so now you need to copy the important bits into whichever system you use to manage that work.
"Did I actually deal with that?"
Your inbox is simultaneously a communication tool, a to-do list, an archive and a place where things quietly disappear.
Give your inbox a virtual assistant.
Susan Port connects your WordPress installation directly to Gmail and watches for the messages you tell it to care about.
When one arrives, Susan can decide what should happen next.
It can organise the email using Gmail labels, mark it as something that needs action, send an appropriate acknowledgement, or trigger additional actions through installed add-ons.
Gmail stays Gmail. You can still open it, read messages and reply normally. Susan simply handles the repetitive administration around it.
The aim isn't to automate the human conversation. It's to automate everything that doesn't need to be a human conversation.
When this happens, do that.
You create rules around the emails that matter to you. Susan Port handles those rules automatically in the background.
An email arrives
It arrives in Gmail exactly as it normally would.
Susan recognises it
Rules can look at the sender, sender domain, subject or words contained within the message.
Susan decides what happens
The email can be labelled, moved into an Action workflow, acknowledged automatically or passed to an add-on.
You deal with what matters
Instead of treating every email as equal, your attention goes to the messages that genuinely require you.
Imagine every website enquiry taking care of its own admin.
Someone sends an enquiry to your business.
Susan recognises the address or subject, applies your Action label and sends an acknowledgement using one of your templates.
The reply can use information from the original message, including the sender's name, email address and subject, so it doesn't have to feel like an anonymous autoresponder.
If you have an appropriate add-on installed, the same rule could also hand the work off somewhere else.
If work arrives by email, Susan can probably make part of it easier.
Stop using your memory as a CRM.
Recognise client requests, put them into an Action workflow and acknowledge them while you're busy doing something else.
Separate genuine work from inbox noise.
Route support requests, project messages and important client emails differently instead of treating the entire inbox as one giant queue.
Acknowledge enquiries immediately.
Quote requests, booking enquiries and customer questions can receive an instant contextual response before you've even opened Gmail.
Recognise the messages that need intervention.
Create rules around common subjects or keywords and make sure the emails that actually require action don't disappear amongst everything else.
Turn incoming work into actual work.
With the appropriate add-on, an email can become a task rather than something somebody needs to manually copy into another system.
Give important senders a different route.
A message from a key client, supplier or particular domain can trigger its own workflow rather than waiting amongst ordinary email.
Automation shouldn't depend on somebody visiting your website.
Susan includes a secure external cron endpoint so mailbox processing can run reliably on a schedule even when the website itself is quiet.
Automate the predictable parts.
If you find yourself doing the same thing whenever a particular type of email arrives, that's exactly the sort of repetition Susan was built for.
Templates can still know who they're talking to.
Susan Port's reply templates can automatically insert information from the email they're responding to.
That means an acknowledgement can address the person by name, reference their subject and sign off using your website's name without you rewriting the same response every time.
Throttling also prevents Susan from repeatedly firing the same automatic response back at somebody every time they send another message.
Hi {{sender_name}},
Thanks for your email regarding
{{subject}}.
I've received your message and will take a look as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
{{site_name}}
Your email doesn't take a detour through me.
Susan Port isn't a hosted helpdesk sitting between you and your customers.
Your WordPress installation connects directly to Google's Gmail APIs using Google's OAuth system.
Susan doesn't need your Gmail password. OAuth configuration and tokens are stored within your own WordPress database, and the Gmail information needed to perform your rules passes directly between your website and Google.
Susan Port does not send your Gmail data to 1J2.
I deliberately built it this way because I didn't want to create another service that required everybody's email to pass through my servers.
So I documented the whole thing inside the plugin.
Because Susan connects directly to your Gmail account, each installation uses its own Google Cloud OAuth credentials.
The plugin shows you the redirect URI you need and includes step-by-step documentation explaining how to create the Google Cloud project, enable the Gmail API and connect everything together.
There are also individual Gmail read, modify and send tests. If something isn't configured correctly, you can see which part has failed instead of simply being told that Gmail doesn't work.
This isn't a demo with the useful bits removed.
I originally planned to sell Susan Port itself as a paid plugin.
The more I developed it, the less sense that made.
The useful core of Susan is Gmail connectivity, inbox organisation, rules and reply templates. I want people to be able to install that, use it and decide for themselves whether it makes their working day easier.
So the core plugin is free through WordPress.
The commercial side is optional add-ons for people who want Susan to communicate with additional systems.
Get Susan Port from WordPress
Add the integrations your workflow actually needs.
Susan Port was built to be modular. Instead of filling the free plugin with integrations most people will never use, additional services can be added separately.
Buy only the add-ons that make sense for the way you work.
Susan Port – Asana Add-on
Asana integration for Susan Port (Support). Creates tasks when rules match.
Susan Port - Webhook Add-on
Webhook add-on for Susan Port. Sends email context to a webhook endpoint using a small queue.
Susan wasn't invented because I thought the world needed another plugin.
Susan started because I knew what it felt like when an inbox stopped being useful and started becoming something you wanted to avoid.
Years ago, email could genuinely make me anxious. The more I avoided it, the worse it became, until opening my inbox felt less like checking messages and more like confronting everything I hadn't dealt with.
Having somebody help me put a proper system around it changed that. Suddenly email felt manageable again, and that sense of relief stayed with me.
Later, when I started building Susan for myself, I realised this probably wasn't just my problem.
There are freelancers worried they've missed a client message. Small business owners checking email late at night. People leaving messages unread because that's the only way they can remember something still needs attention.
Susan Port is for them too.
If Susan can make somebody else's inbox feel a little less overwhelming, then she's doing exactly what I built her for.
WordPress doesn't have to be just the software that runs your website.
I increasingly use WordPress as operational software.
Susan Port is a good example of why.
WordPress receives information from Gmail, applies your business rules, moves that information through a workflow, generates responses and can dispatch work into other systems.
At that point it isn't simply managing web pages.
It's quietly doing part of the job that somebody otherwise had to do manually.
Let Susan handle the repetitive inbox work.
Download the free WordPress plugin, connect Gmail and set up the rules that help you stay calmer, clearer and more in control of your day.
