Every morning, the same problem.
Most small business inboxes are a mixture of the genuinely urgent and the utterly irrelevant, with nothing on the outside of an email to tell you which is which. Somewhere in there are the three messages that actually need your attention today, quite possibly one that needed it yesterday, and the rest that can wait until tomorrow. The only way to find out which is which is to open them all.
So you work through the pile, or you scan it quickly and hope nothing important gets missed. On most days, nothing does. On a busy day, when you are with a customer, mid-job, or just stretched too thin to be careful, something slips through.
It might be a new enquiry that sat unread long enough for the customer to go elsewhere, a complaint that was easy to resolve when it arrived and difficult by the time you reached it, or a supplier message that became an emergency because nobody caught it early enough.
What it does
The Email Triage automation monitors your Gmail inbox and processes every new message automatically. Each email is read by an AI, classified into a category you define, and labelled — before you open your inbox.
You decide the labels that make sense for your business. Common examples:
- Action needed — emails that require a response or a task today
- Client — messages from your customers
- Supplier — messages from people you buy from
- Finance — invoices, receipts, and bank notifications
- Advertiser — promotional emails that can wait
- Ignore — newsletters, notifications, and noise
When you open your inbox, the sorting is already done. The emails that need your attention today are visible. Everything else is filed.
The configuration lives in a Google Sheet — not a piece of software you’ve never seen before. If you want to add a new label, adjust a category, or add a sender you want to ignore, you update the sheet. No technical knowledge required.
There is also an optional draft reply feature: the automation can prepare a draft response to emails that look like they need one. Nothing is ever sent automatically. Every draft sits in your Gmail drafts folder, waiting for you to review, edit, and send.
Who it’s for
Email Triage works best for small business owners where:
- You receive a high volume of email — and a significant portion is either low priority or noise
- Missing an enquiry has a real cost — a new customer whose email sat unread for two days has often moved on by then
- You use Gmail — this version of the automation is built for Gmail (others may be possible)
It’s a strong fit for tradespeople, florists, consultants, retailers, salons, and any owner-operated business where the owner is the one reading and acting on emails, and where a missed or delayed reply costs money.
The cost of a buried email
The problem is not the time spent reading. It is the time spent reading things that did not need reading, while the things that did need reading were sitting underneath them.
A new enquiry ignored for 48 hours is likely already lost. A customer complaint left until tomorrow is harder to resolve than one picked up today. A supplier issue that sits unread until it becomes urgent is always more expensive than the same issue caught early.
Email Triage does not make you faster at reading emails. It makes the important ones impossible to miss.
What’s included
One-off setup fee: £300
Everything needed to get your Email Triage automation running on your own infrastructure:
- Configuration of your label structure in Gmail
- Setting up your Google Sheet with your initial categories, senders to exclude, and rules
- Connecting your Gmail account to the automation
- Testing across a sample of your recent emails to confirm accuracy
- Handover with instructions on how to update your configuration
Optional: automatic draft replies — add £300
If you want the automation to prepare draft responses to emails that look like they need a reply, this can be added at setup or later. Every draft sits in your Gmail drafts folder. Nothing is ever sent without your review.
Monthly service fee: £150/month
Ongoing management of your automation:
- Monitoring that emails are being processed and labelled correctly
- Updates to your label configuration as your business changes
- Support if anything needs adjusting
Email processing costs: passed through at cost
The AI cost of analysing each email is typically £0.01–£0.05 for a standard message, rising to around £0.10 for long, complex threads. For most businesses receiving 20–50 emails per day, this adds £5–£25/month depending on volume and message length.
These costs appear on your own API account bill. There is no markup.
Getting set up
- Free consultation — we talk through your inbox, the categories that matter for your business, and what you want the automation to handle
- Setup — we configure the automation, connect it to your Gmail, and test it with a sample of real emails (typically 3–5 days)
- Go live — your inbox starts being sorted automatically from that point
Most clients are live within a week of their first conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Which email providers does this work with? This version of the automation is built for Gmail. If you use Outlook or another provider, get in touch — it may be possible depending on the API available.
What if the AI puts an email in the wrong category? You update your Google Sheet to correct the classification rule, and the change takes effect immediately for future emails. The categories you define are the categories the AI follows, so the fix is always straightforward.
Can the automation reply to emails? There is an optional draft reply feature. The automation can prepare a draft response to emails that look like they need one. Nothing is ever sent without your review. Drafts sit in your Gmail drafts folder until you approve and send them.
How much does the AI processing actually cost? It depends on email volume and message length. For most small businesses, typical AI processing costs are £5–£25 per month. This cost appears on your own API bill.
Is there a minimum contract? There is a minimum initial term of 3 months. This gives the automation time to bed in and lets you see the full impact before committing long term. After that, rolling monthly.
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What you will need
Your automation runs on infrastructure you own. You will need the following accounts before or during onboarding:
- A Hetzner (or equivalent) cloud server account for your n8n instance
- An OpenRouter or Anthropic account for the AI email analysis
- A Gmail account — the one you want the automation to triage
These accounts can be set up during onboarding if needed. Ongoing server and API costs are typically £5–£15 per month in total, billed directly to you by the providers.
What the monthly fee covers
The monthly fee covers monitoring and maintenance of the automation and the infrastructure it runs on.
- Monitoring. Every automation is watched. If a webhook stops working, an API key expires, or a provider has an outage, you are told before your customers notice.
- Maintenance. Your n8n instance is kept current with security advisories and software upgrades. When AI model providers deprecate older versions, the automation is updated and tested before the old version is switched off.
- AI and API costs stay on your bill. Because you own the accounts, providers charge you directly. There is no markup. A usage summary is included in your monthly update so you can see exactly what was spent.
- Small tweaks are included. When your business changes, the automation is updated as part of the monthly service without a new project quote.
- No long lock-in. There is a minimum initial term of three months, which covers the cost of onboarding. After that, the service is rolling monthly. If you cancel, you keep the automation, the server, and all your accounts.
Ownership and licensing
Your server, API accounts, and all data processed by the automation are yours. If the engagement ends for any reason, you keep everything.
The automation workflow is the intellectual property of ObserveAutomation. This includes the logic, prompts, and integration design. Your licence to use it inside your own business continues indefinitely, including after the engagement ends. You may not share, sell, or sublicense the workflow.