20 WordPress Automations Most Sites Should Have
The most common WordPress automations are not exotic. They are the repetitive tasks most site owners handle manually every day: sending a welcome email when someone registers, following up on a form submission, assigning a role after a purchase, notifying the team when an order arrives.
Krom Automation handles all 20 workflows below in the free version, using a visual drag-and-drop canvas with no code required. This article names the trigger, the action and the outcome for each one, so you can decide which to build first.
Most guides on WordPress automation start with tools, then work backwards to tasks. This one does the opposite.
Every item here starts with the problem you are actually trying to solve, then maps it to the trigger and action that solves it. If you want to understand the underlying concepts before diving in, the WordPress Automation Glossary covers every term you will encounter.
The 20 automations below are grouped by area. Work through them in order if you are starting from scratch. The first five deliver the most impact on almost every site type and take under 30 minutes each to configure.
Browse the full feature list for Krom Automation to see every trigger and action available before you start.
Quick Summary
| Group | Automations covered | Free or Pro |
|---|---|---|
| User onboarding | 1 to 4 | Free |
| Form and lead handling | 5 to 8 | Free + Pro integrations |
| WooCommerce order flows | 9 to 12 | Free + Pro |
| Content and publishing | 13 to 15 | Free |
| Admin and maintenance | 16 to 17 | Free + Pro |
| Team and messaging | 18 to 19 | Pro |
| AI-assisted workflows | 20 | Free |
User Onboarding Automations
New user moments are the highest-leverage point on any membership, community or e-commerce site. A person who just registered is more engaged than they will be 48 hours later, and most sites waste that window by sending nothing or sending a default WordPress notification email.
1. Welcome Email on Registration
Trigger: User Registered. Action: Send Email.
The email goes out within seconds of sign-up, with the user’s first name pulled in via a merge tag so it reads as personal rather than automated. Sites that send a timely welcome email see first-week login rates roughly 3 to 4 times higher than those that send nothing.
This is the single best first workflow to build. The step-by-step guide for your first workflow walks through the exact setup, including how to add merge tags for the username and login URL.
2. Onboarding Sequence Over 7 Days
Trigger: User Registered. Actions: Send Email, then Delay 2 days, then Send Email, then Delay 5 days, then Send Email.
Three emails across one week covers setup help, a feature highlight and a soft check-in without requiring any manual effort after the workflow is live. The 7-day onboarding sequence guide has a full content template for each email.
3. Role Assignment After Purchase
Trigger: Order Completed (WooCommerce). Action: Change User Role.
A customer who buys a membership product gets promoted from Subscriber to Member automatically, and their access changes the moment the order is marked complete. Doing this manually at any reasonable volume takes 2 to 5 minutes per order and introduces errors when orders arrive overnight.
4. Password Reset Confirmation
Trigger: Password Reset. Action: Send Email.
The default WordPress password reset email is plain, unbranded and gives no reassurance. Replacing it with a branded, friendly confirmation reduces support tickets from users who are not sure the reset worked.
The registration moment is the highest-engagement window a site ever gets with a new user. Most sites waste it by sending nothing.
Form and Lead Handling Automations
Forms generate leads. What happens in the 5 minutes after a form is submitted determines whether that lead converts or goes cold. Manual follow-up at that speed is not realistic, which is why form-to-action automations are among the most common WordPress automations in use.
5. Instant Reply to Form Submission
Trigger: Form submitted (Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Elementor Forms or Ninja Forms). Action: Send Email to the submitter.
A reply landing within 60 seconds signals that the business is responsive, even if a human follows up hours later. See the integration setup for Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Elementor Forms and Ninja Forms.
6. Add Form Submitter to Email Marketing List
Trigger: Form submitted. Action: Subscribe to Mailchimp, ConvertKit, MailerLite, MailPoet or ActiveCampaign list. The submitter enters a nurture sequence automatically, without needing the Mailchimp or ConvertKit form embed.
This matters for sites that want a single form to trigger both the CRM entry and the email list addition. The Mailchimp integration docs cover list selection, tag assignment and double opt-in handling.
7. Sync Lead to CRM
Trigger: Form submitted or User Registered. Action: Create or update contact in FluentCRM or ActiveCampaign.
Lead data reaches the CRM within seconds rather than in a nightly CSV import. For teams using FluentCRM or ActiveCampaign, the integration maps form fields to contact fields automatically.
8. Internal Notification on High-Value Form
Trigger: Form submitted (with a conditional branch checking the enquiry type or budget field). Action: Send Email to the sales inbox. Low-value enquiries go to a shared inbox.
High-value ones get a separate, flagged notification to the right person within 60 seconds of submission. The conditions and branching documentation explains how to set the Yes/No split.
A lead that gets no reply within 5 minutes is not a warm lead anymore. It is just a name in a database.
WooCommerce Order Flow Automations
WooCommerce stores generate at least 6 to 8 touchpoints per order that most store owners handle manually or skip entirely. Automating even 3 of them saves 10 to 20 minutes per order day and removes the variability that comes from human follow-up.
9. Order Confirmation with Personalised Details
Trigger: Order Created. Action: Send Email using merge tags to include the order number, product name and estimated delivery window.
WooCommerce sends its own order confirmation, but it is plain and unbranded by default. A second, branded email with a personal tone improves customer satisfaction scores and reduces “did my order go through?” support queries.
10. Post-Delivery Follow-Up and Review Request
Trigger: Order Completed. Action: Delay 7 days, then Send Email asking for a review.
Seven days gives the customer time to receive and use the product before the ask arrives. This single automation typically generates 3 to 5 times more reviews than hoping customers return voluntarily to leave one.
11. Coupon for Second Purchase
Trigger: Order Completed. Action: Create Coupon, then Send Email with the code.
A unique, expiring coupon included in the post-purchase email drives repeat orders without running a sitewide discount. The coupon is created dynamically for each customer, so it cannot be shared or reused.
12. Subscription Status Alerts
Trigger: Subscription renewed, cancelled or payment failed (WooCommerce Subscriptions). Action: Send Email to the customer or update user meta.
Catching a failed payment within seconds of it happening and sending a clear recovery email recovers a meaningful percentage of otherwise lost recurring revenue. The WooCommerce Subscriptions integration covers all subscription lifecycle triggers.
Content and Publishing Automations
Most content automation guides focus on social sharing. The higher-value automations happen before the content is published: auto-tagging, internal classification and status notifications. These are the gaps that no competing guide addresses.
13. Auto-Tag New Posts with AI
Trigger: Post Published. Action: AI Auto-Tag. Krom Automation reads the post content and assigns relevant tags automatically, using whichever AI provider you have connected (GPT-4o, Gemini 2.5 or Llama).
On a site publishing 20 or more posts per month, manual tagging takes 3 to 5 minutes per post and gets skipped half the time. AI tagging is consistent and instant.
14. Automatic Social Sharing on Publish
Trigger: Post Published. Action: Post to Facebook, Twitter/X or LinkedIn. The post goes live on social within seconds of publishing, without requiring a separate scheduling tool or manual copy-paste.
The blog post distribution guide covers how to write a workflow that customises the social caption per platform. The social media integration documentation has the full setup steps.
15. Notify Team on Post Status Change
Trigger: Post Status Changed (for example, draft to pending review). Action: Send Email to the editor. Content teams on WordPress rarely have a formal review workflow.
This automation creates one without adding a plugin or changing the editorial process. An editor gets an email the moment a writer marks a post as pending, including the post title and a direct edit link via merge tag.
Admin and Maintenance Automations
No competing guide covers this category, but it is where a surprising amount of admin time disappears. The automations below are not glamorous, but the sites that have them run more cleanly and waste less time on tasks that feel like they should handle themselves.
16. Log and Notify on Suspicious Login
Trigger: User Login, with a conditional branch checking the user role or login time. Action: Send Email to the site administrator.
A standard WordPress site has no built-in alert when an admin account logs in from an unexpected context. Adding a conditional notification for admin logins outside of business hours costs nothing and catches credential compromise faster than any periodic manual audit.
17. Scheduled Data Export or Report
Trigger: Schedule (daily, weekly or monthly, set via the Pro Schedule trigger). Action: HTTP Request to an external reporting endpoint, or Send Email with a summary. Rather than logging in to check stats, the report arrives.
The Schedule trigger documentation covers interval options including custom cron expressions. See also the guide on automated WordPress reports for a practical workflow example.
Team and Messaging Automations
WordPress events rarely stay inside WordPress. A new order, a support ticket, a failed payment, a new member signup: these are all events a team needs to know about in real time, in whatever tool they actually use. Routing them to Slack or Discord takes under 5 minutes to configure and eliminates the check-the-dashboard habit entirely.
18. Slack or Discord Notification on Key Events
Trigger: Order Created, User Registered, Comment Submitted or any other event. Action: Send message to a Slack channel or Discord server.
The team sees the event within seconds in the tool they already have open. The messaging integrations documentation covers Slack, Discord, Twilio and Telegram setup.
19. Log Key Events to Google Sheets
Trigger: Any event, for example Order Completed or User Registered. Action: Append a row to a Google Sheet.
Every order, signup or form submission builds a live log that anyone on the team can filter, sort or hand to an accountant without needing WordPress access. The Google Sheets integration documentation shows how to map merge tags to specific columns.
AI-Assisted Automation
20. AI Content Moderation on Comment Submission
Trigger: Comment Submitted. Action: AI Content Moderation, then a conditional branch. Comments that pass go straight to Approved.
Comments flagged as spam or inappropriate go to Pending for manual review. On a site receiving 50 to 200 comments per week, this workflow reduces moderation time by roughly 60 to 80 percent while keeping a human in the loop for edge cases.
All three AI actions in Krom Automation (Generate Text, Content Moderation and Auto-Tag) are included free. You supply your own API key and pay your AI provider directly at standard rates. wpRigel does not charge per call or mark up tokens.
AI moderation that flags for human review, rather than auto-deleting, is the right default. Automated confidence scores are not 100 percent, and a false deletion is worse than a short delay.
What Does All of This Cost?
Fourteen of the 20 automations above run on the free version of Krom Automation. The six that need Pro (the Schedule trigger, Slack and Discord messaging, Google Sheets, and the social media integrations) require a paid plan. Here is how the cost stacks up across the realistic decision points.
| Scenario | Plan needed | Cost, year 1 | Cost from year 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 free automations only, 1 site | Free | $0 | $0 |
| All 20 automations, 1 site | Basic annual | $119 | $119/year |
| All 20 automations, up to 5 sites | Standard annual | $199 | $199/year |
| All 20 automations, unlimited sites | Enterprise annual | $369 | $369/year |
| All 20 automations, 1 site, no renewal | Basic lifetime | $299 | $0 |
Every Pro plan includes every feature. The only variable is how many sites you can activate the licence on. All plans carry a 14-day money-back guarantee.
What These Automations Do Not Replace
Krom Automation is WordPress-native, which means the trigger or the action needs to involve your WordPress site. It is not the right tool for automating between two external services with no WordPress involvement. For that use case, a dedicated external automation platform is the better fit.
Delays in Krom Automation run via Action Scheduler, which depends on WordPress Cron. On very low-traffic sites where no one visits for hours at a time, a delayed action fires late unless you configure a real server cron job. The delay and scheduling documentation explains how to set that up and when it matters.
The guide on what to automate first is useful if you are looking for a prioritised starting point rather than a full list. It covers which automations deliver the fastest return and which ones to leave until the basics are stable.
How to Build Your First Workflow
Every workflow in Krom Automation follows the same pattern: pick a trigger, add one or more actions, set any conditions or delays, then test with the simulator before activating. The step-by-step workflow builder guide walks through each part of the canvas. The workflow simulator runs a dry run with zero side effects, so you can confirm the logic works before any real user triggers it.
Krom Automation ships with 20 ready-made workflow templates in the free version, covering the most common automations including several from this list. You can import a template, adjust the email copy or conditions to fit your site, and activate it in under 10 minutes.
- Install the plugin from the WordPress.org plugin directory
- Open Krom Automation in your WordPress admin and choose a template or start from a blank canvas
- Select your trigger from the 16 available free triggers
- Add actions from the 21 available free actions
- Add a condition branch or delay if the workflow needs one
- Run the simulator to confirm the logic, then activate
The overview of how Krom Automation works covers the full mental model if you want to understand triggers, actions and the execution engine before you start building.
Also from wpRigel
Pollify is a Gutenberg-native poll, survey and quiz plugin. Polls are built directly as blocks inside the editor, so there are no shortcodes to paste and no separate configuration screen to learn. It fits naturally into any post or page without disrupting the writing workflow.
Commandify is a command palette for the WordPress admin. Press Cmd or Ctrl plus K to jump anywhere in the dashboard, search posts, users or products, and run admin actions without clicking through menus. It is the only command palette plugin with real WooCommerce order, product and customer management built in.
Start with the Free Version
Fourteen of the 20 automations on this list are available in the free version of Krom Automation, with no trial period, no run caps and no features locked behind a paywall. The free plugin covers user onboarding, form follow-ups, WooCommerce order flows, AI auto-tagging, content moderation and team email notifications.
If you run more than one site or need the Pro integrations for Slack, Google Sheets or social media, see the full plan breakdown to find the right tier. Every plan includes a 14-day money-back guarantee, so there is no risk in testing Pro on a real site before committing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use these automations without writing any code?
Yes. Every workflow in Krom Automation is built on a visual drag-and-drop canvas.
You pick triggers and actions from a list, connect them with lines, and add conditions or delays using form fields. No PHP, no JavaScript and no shortcodes are involved.
Do I need WooCommerce installed to use Krom Automation?
No. WooCommerce is optional. The WooCommerce triggers and actions activate automatically if WooCommerce is present, but the rest of the plugin works on any WordPress site regardless of whether WooCommerce is installed.
Will these automations slow down my site?
Workflows run in the background via Action Scheduler, which means they execute outside of page load requests. A visitor browsing your site never waits for a workflow to finish. See the honest answer on automation plugin performance for more detail on how background execution works.
How do I connect my email marketing tool to these workflows?
Krom Automation Pro includes direct integrations for Mailchimp, ConvertKit, MailerLite, MailPoet and ActiveCampaign. Each integration lets you subscribe contacts, add tags and trigger sequences directly from a workflow action, without passing data through a third-party connector.
What happens if an automation fails?
Krom Automation logs every workflow execution with a full per-step audit trail. Failed executions trigger an email notification to the site administrator and retry automatically with configurable backoff. You can see the full execution history and drill into any failed step from the analytics dashboard.
Can I test a workflow before it goes live?
Yes. The built-in workflow simulator runs a complete dry run with zero side effects.
No emails are sent, no posts are created and no external APIs are called during a simulation. The simulator shows you exactly which path the workflow would take and flags any configuration errors before activation.