Email Automation for Small Business
A plain guide to email automation for small business: which flows to build first, how they work, common mistakes, and how to keep them healthy.
Operations
AI Email Inbox Assistant
The assistant reads every email that reaches your shared inbox, tags it, routes it to the right person and drafts a reply. Your team reviews the draft, edits if needed and presses send.
Build time2 to 3 weeks
Fixed priceFrom $1,500
The codeYours, 100%
The problem
Why businesses ask us for this
Your info@ or orders@ inbox can get hundreds of emails a week: customer questions, supplier updates, invoices, spam, and the occasional urgent problem buried in the middle. Someone has to read everything just to work out who should handle it. Simple questions wait a day for a reply. Urgent ones get missed because they look like everything else. And the same answers get typed out again and again, slightly differently each time, by whoever happens to pick them up.
An online pet supplies shop with one overloaded inbox
Example: An online pet supplies shop has one support inbox shared by three part-time staff. Every morning they wade through order questions, supplier updates and spam to find the urgent ones. With the assistant, each email arrives tagged and summarized. Delivery questions already have a draft reply with the tracking link. Anything mentioning a sick pet or a damaged delivery is flagged as urgent. Staff check the drafts, tweak a few and send, and spend the rest of the morning on the problems that need them.
How it works
From the first message to the finished job, step by step
It reads each new email
The assistant connects to your Gmail or Outlook shared inbox with limited, revocable permissions. Each new email, including attachments, is read and summarized in one line.
It sorts and routes
Emails are tagged by type, such as order question, complaint, invoice or spam, and given a priority. Rules you control then assign them to a person or team, and urgent ones trigger an alert.
It drafts the reply
For common requests, it writes a draft reply in your tone, using your templates, policies and live order or account data where connected. Drafts sit in the email thread, ready to edit.
A person approves and sends
Your team reads the draft, changes what is needed and sends it. Edits are logged, which shows where templates and instructions need work. Optional auto-send can be enabled later for narrow, low-risk categories only.
What you get
Features built in from day one
Drafts inside your inbox
Replies appear as normal drafts in Gmail or Outlook, so nobody learns a new tool. Your team keeps working the way they already do.
Tags, priorities and summaries
Every email gets a type, priority and short summary, so you can scan a morning's inbox quickly and spot the urgent ones first.
Reads attachments
Invoices, order forms and photos attached to emails are read too. Key details are pulled into the summary or passed to your other systems.
Order and account lookups
Connected to Shopify or your own database, drafts include the real order status, tracking link or account detail instead of a placeholder.
Tone and policy controls
A short style guide and a list of things it must never promise, like refunds outside policy, keep drafts consistent across your whole team.
Workload view
See volume by type, response times and backlog by person, so staffing and template decisions rest on real numbers rather than guesswork.
Models and data
Which AI model it runs on
Most of the work, like reading, tagging and routing, is simple classification, so a small, low-cost model handles it at high volume. Drafting replies uses a stronger GPT, Claude or Gemini model, but only for the emails worth answering, which keeps the bill down. Spam and newsletters are filtered out before any AI call. We test models on a sample of your real emails and keep the choice in configuration. Moving to another provider, or to an open-weight model on your servers, does not need a rebuild.
Price and timeline
From $1,500fixed quote
Typical build: 2 to 3 weeks. Tagging runs on a cheap model and only real emails get drafts, so AI usage usually stays a modest monthly cost, estimated from a sample of your mail.
- Written scope and one price before any code
- Working version on a staging link in week one
- Code in your repository from the first commit
- Optional 24-month support plan
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI inbox assistant cost?
A setup for one shared inbox, with tagging, routing rules, drafted replies and a basic dashboard, starts from $1,500. Order lookups, several inboxes or a help desk like Zendesk or Front add scope. If you only need simple sorting rules without AI drafting, that is a smaller automation job in the $500 to $1,500 range.
Will it ever send an email on its own?
Not unless you decide it should. By default every reply is a draft that a person approves. Drafts can still be wrong, for example quoting the wrong policy or missing the real question, so the review step is the safety net. You can later allow auto-send for narrow cases, like order-status questions with a confirmed tracking number, and keep everything else in draft mode.
How long does it take to set up?
Usually 2 to 3 weeks. We start by sorting a few hundred of your past emails to agree on the categories and routing rules, then write the reply instructions with your team. The assistant runs in tag-and-draft mode from the start, so there is no risky switchover day.
Does it work with help desks like Front, Help Scout or Zendesk?
Yes. If your team already works in a shared inbox tool, the assistant adds tags, internal notes and suggested replies there instead of in Gmail or Outlook. Routing follows the tool's own assignment features, so your existing views and reports keep working. If you are on plain Gmail or Outlook, you do not need to buy a help desk to use it.
Who can read our emails, and where is the data kept?
The assistant gets the narrowest mailbox permission that works, and you can revoke it at any time. Email content is processed on paid AI API terms that exclude training, and only the summary, tags and drafts are stored, in a database on your cloud account. We can exclude certain senders, like your accountant or HR, from processing entirely.
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Want this built for your business?
Send us a few real examples of the task. You get a written scope, a fixed price and a timeline within two working days.