Managing a business can feel overwhelming, especially when you're juggling so many different tasks. That's why I decided to try out Automatic Manager, an all-in-one tool designed to help streamline business operations.
From inventory management to staff scheduling, it claims to automate the tedious stuff so you can focus on growing your business. After spending some time with it, I have to say, I’m impressed.
The interface is straightforward, the automation tools actually save time, and overall, it made my day-to-day operations a lot smoother.
In this review, I’ll share my personal experience with its features, what I loved, and a few areas where I think it could improve.
Keep reading to learn all about the Automatic Email Manager extension and to figure out if it's right for your business.
An Introduction to the Automatic Email Manager
On the surface, the Automatic Email Manager offers a way for business owners to increase productivity by automatically printing out important, incoming emails. The tool helps all business by turning your emails into PDFs, images, and other printable formats, then sending them directly to your printers without having to click that Print button every time.
The tool also has features for automatically sending replies or forwarding those emails to other people. It works by setting up actions to send emails or reply to emails, all of which use email templates for an automated workflow. It's even possible to incorporate automated attachments.
Besides all that, the Automatic Email Manager cleans out your email after a certain amount of time, moves copies to different folders, and processes emails based on conditions you configure prior to running the extension. Not to mention, it works with the most popular email services such as Gmail, Office 365, and Yahoo.
So How Does the Automatic Email Manager Help Your Ecommerce Store?
Many of the basic features covered above will make your workday more efficient, considering many online store owners spend far too much time messing with emails, whether it's replying to emails or printing out copies for filing.
However, the Automatic Email Manager has some unique capabilities just for ecommerce shops.
To begin, it integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and Prestashop, just to name a few. The extension is actually a Windows software you download to your computer, but that then combines with your online store and can pull order information for sending off to your printers.
As an example, a restaurant often receives orders for takeouts and deliveries, all of which come through the online store's email messaging system. Many restaurant owners manually print or send these food orders to the kitchen. Unfortunately, that takes an incredible amount of time throughout the day, and it leaves your business open to human error.
The Automatic Email Manager takes out the guesswork, since you can set rules to send or print your orders once they arrive in the inbox. A restaurant manager may automatically send the order to the kitchen, save a copy in a folder, and print out the order, all in one automated process.
We can say the same for regular online stores. You might have to send orders to suppliers, warehouse workers, or other employees. In that case, the Automatic Email Manager takes the lead by completing the email sending to all parties. Not to mention, it prints out the orders for you to save as hard copies.
We envision this working rather well for packing lists and order slips, seeing as how at some point you need to have a physical version of your orders.
How Does It Work?
The Automatic Email Manager works its magic in a few simple steps:
Starting out, you download the Windows software to your computer and activate it on as many devices as you want. The Automatic Email Manager website offers a free demo download for you to try out for 30 days.
Once it's installed, you configure the account by naming a new process. You can then type in the email you want to check. For example, it makes sense to include the address that receives the order confirmation emails that come from your online store.
This way, you don't even need to connect the extension to your store, as it's all run through your email account.
With the new name (for your own reference), and the Email address inserted, click the Next button to proceed.
Next up, you choose which type of email account you're adding. This does not differ from setting up your email account to forward to a mobile app on your phone.
Most email accounts have the IMAP or POP3 information within the settings area. However, the Automatic Email Manager extensions also have automated setup procedures for some more popular email accounts, like Office 365 and Gmail.
Select the email account you're using, and click on the Next button.
The configuration all depends on your email provider. In this case, I'm setting up a basic IMAP4 account. There's a little more information I need to type in since I must find the username and password for that account.
The standard integrations like Gmail and Yahoo simply redirect you to the login page for that email service. For example, when using a Gmail account it sends you to the Gmail login page, automatically linking the two programs as long as you type in your username and password. What's great about this is that many people already have those details saved within their browsers.
After everything is inserted, click on the Test Connection button. If the connection works, choose the Next button to move onward.
The next page shows the genuine power of the Automatic Email Manager. You can decide to check the email account in real-time, every few minutes, or every day at a specified time. There's even the option to only check an email account on some days, like maybe for emails that aren't as important.
Select your desired timing and click the Next button.
The next page has features for making Action Groups. These actions determine what happens to the emails after the Automatic Email Manager logs them in the extension. For instance, you may want to add an action to print the email on your default printer. On the other hand, you could make an action for forwarding the email to someone else or merging an email with attachments to another hard drive or disk.
The Automatic Email Manager provides several action templates to get you started. All you have to do is click on the “+” button to see the various templates and adjust them to your liking. There's also an option to make an action from scratch.
Once you add an action, it shows up on the list of actions on this page. You have the chance to add more actions for this email account, where all of them get listed on this page.
What's more is that each action has its own customization options. To open those up, click Edit for the action of your choosing.
As you can see, the Action Groups from before are simply collections of several actions.
Therefore, this Action Group template offers three actions to occur whenever an email comes through this address.
It prints the email body, prints all attachments, and sets an email flag. Much like the groups, you're able to add as many actions as you want within each group.
It's important to click each action to ensure you have all the settings added. As an example, each printer action needs you to specify a printer within your organization.
Therefore, click on an action to see the required settings. In this situation we would choose a printer, decide on a template, and consider the other options like whether or not to add a page number or a stamp. You can even save paper by grouping multiple pages per sheet.
The Automatic Email Manager tools provide rules and conditions within those actions as well. This makes for a more specific action, seeing as how you can prompt an action whenever a rule is met.
For instance, all of your order emails may have some sort of wording in the subject line. Therefore, you can target the order wording so that only those emails get printed and sent to other people.
Any other email that comes through this account is treated as a regular email, so you won't end up printing personal emails that don't relate to your business.
Once you have your action groups, actions, and rules, the accounts appear on the front page of the Automatic Email Manager. You can always go into an account to change the actions and rules, or you have the option to include even more accounts.
The bottom of the window tells you when the next check occurs, so you can easily test to see if the printer is working or if the forwarding rule works out for your business.
It's also nice to know that you can make actions for saving backups on multiple disks. Furthermore, the Automatic Email Manager extension works well with receipt printers in a retail or restaurant environment. You must have the official printer driver from the manufacturer for that printer to work.
Automatic Email Manager Pricing
Pricing for the Automatic Email Manager is transparent. You can start with one license per computer and sign up for either a one-year subscription or a lifetime subscription that's more expensive but never expires. What's great about the one-year subscription is that you save money on a yearly basis and you receive a 50% discount after the first year.
Here's a look at the pricing information for Automatic Email Manager:
- 1 license – $89 for a one-year subscription.
- 2 to 4 licenses – $65 per unit for a one-year subsection.
- 5 to 9 licenses – $59 per unit for a one-year subscription.
- 10 to 49 licenses – $52 per unit for a one-year subscription.
- 50 to 99 licenses – $45 per unit for a one-year subscription.
- More than 100 licenses – $37 per unit for a one-year subscription.
The first year pricing gets cut to 50% if you choose to renew. You also get all the new updates upon renewal. As you may notice, it's more economical to buy multiple licenses, so if you need the services on several units it cuts the unit price by going for a package.
The one-time payment plans are a little different:
- 1 license – $249 per unit.
- 2 to 4 licenses – $239 per unit.
- 50 to 9 licenses – $236 per unit.
- 10 to 49 licenses – $232 per unit.
- More than 50 licenses – $228 per unit.
Again, going for a lifetime plan ensures that you're saving money in the long-run. It's a little more expensive up-front, but after a few years it appears to be more affordable. Not to mention, the lifetime plans also provide support and updates for as long as you use the extension.
The Customer Support
After analyzing the customer service from the Automatic Email Manager we discovered that the company provides exceptional response times and a few ways to contact them.
To begin, you can send them an email and expect a response within a few hours. There's also an online chat box that leads you to the knowledgebase articles and the contact form.
The tool doesn't have a direct phone line to call, but the email system, combined with the help and support page, comes together for answering all of your questions. You can type a keyword into the Help and Support page to locate documentation about a myriad of topics like for setting up conditions and printing out different formats.
Finally, the Automatic Email Manager team offers several social media pages, including a Facebook page, Twitter, and YouTube Channel. This way, you can reach out to them on social media or simply learn about the product through videos and discussions with other users.
Is the Automatic Email Manager Right for Your Online Store?
We highly recommend the Automatic Email Manager for ecommerce shops that print out order forms, picking lists, or backups for those orders. It's also great for forwarding emails to other people in your organization! Click here to get started with the Automatic Email Manager.
Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about the Automatic Email Manager.
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