How Rules Work
Rules are the engine of MailPrism. Each rule is a single idea:
When an email matches my conditions, run my actions.
That's the whole model. Everything else on this page is detail — the parts of a rule, the order they run in, and how often MailPrism processes new mail.
Anatomy of a rule
Every rule is built from the same parts. You set them in the rule builder (Rules → Create Rule) and can change them any time.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | How you'll recognize the rule in your list. |
| Description | Optional notes about what the rule is for. |
| Conditions | The when — what an email must match. Combine with AND / OR / NOT and nested groups. |
| Actions | The what — what happens when the conditions match. You can add several; they run in order. |
| Priority | The order rules run in when more than one could match. |
| Stop processing | If on, no later rules run on that email once this rule matches. |
| Applies to | All connected Gmail accounts, or only specific ones. |
| Enabled | A simple on/off toggle. Disabled rules are kept but never run. |
Conditions, briefly
Conditions match on far more than just the sender. You can match on subject, body, labels, attachments, the time and day, how often a sender mails you, your relationship with the sender, response-tracking state, and AI signals like urgency and category.
→ The full list: Conditions reference
Actions, briefly
When a rule matches, it can label, archive, star, mark read, forward, draft or send a reply, unsubscribe, update response tracking, start a nudge, notify you, and more. Actions within a rule run in order, top to bottom.
→ The full list: Actions reference
The order rules run in
When an email arrives, MailPrism doesn't run your rules at random. It sorts them by priority, then works down the list.
Priority is a number, and the lowest number runs first. A rule with priority
0 runs before a rule with priority 10. 0 is the highest priority you can
set on a normal rule.
So the running order is:
- Sort every enabled rule by priority — lowest number first.
- Evaluate each rule's conditions against the email, in that order.
- When a rule matches, run its actions.
- If a matching rule has Stop processing turned on, stop there for this email. Otherwise, keep going and let other matching rules run too.
Stop processing
By default, an email can match — and be acted on by — several rules. Stop processing changes that: once the rule matches, MailPrism runs its actions and then stops evaluating any later (lower-priority) rules for that email.
Give a high-priority "VIP sender" rule a low priority number (e.g. 0) and turn
on Stop processing. Important senders are then handled first, before any
broad catch-all rule can archive or relabel them.
What "matched" means
A rule matches when its conditions evaluate to true for the email. You combine conditions with AND, OR, and NOT, and you can nest them into groups for precise logic — for example (From contains "amazon" OR "ebay") AND Subject contains "shipped". The Conditions reference covers this in full.
How often rules run
MailPrism reacts to your mail in two ways, working together:
- Gmail push notifications — Gmail tells MailPrism the moment something changes, so processing can start without waiting for a fixed polling interval.
- A processing frequency you choose — under Settings → Scheduling you set how often rules process new mail.
Processing frequency
The Processing frequency setting (Settings → Scheduling) has three options:
| Option | What it means |
|---|---|
| Real-time | Process emails as they arrive (as often as your plan allows). |
| Hourly | Process new emails once per hour. |
| Daily | Process new emails once per day. |
The same Scheduling page also lets you tune batch size (how many emails a single run handles), a cooldown between runs, and a per-hour rate limit.
Quiet hours
If you turn on Quiet hours (Settings → Scheduling), rules pause during the window you set. Emails that arrive during quiet hours are queued and processed when the window ends — nothing is skipped, just delayed. Quiet hours use the timezone from your Date & Time settings.
How much MailPrism can process each month depends on your plan. See your current limits and usage in Billing rather than relying on a number here.
Where rules run: applies to
A rule can run on all your connected Gmail accounts or only specific ones. Set this with the Applies to option when you build or edit a rule — handy when a work-only or personal-only automation shouldn't touch your other inbox.
Managing your rules
On the Rules page you can:
- Filter by status — All, Active, Paused, or Errors — and search by name or description.
- Enable or disable a rule with its toggle, without deleting it.
- View, edit, or delete a rule from its card.
- Export all your rules to a JSON file from the More menu (for backup or moving between accounts).
- See each rule's execution count and last activity at a glance.
- Open Execution History to see every run, and undo recent rule actions.
→ See Analytics & logs for the audit trail and the undo grace period.
Core rules
Some rules ship as system defaults and carry a Core Rule badge — for example the rules that keep response tracking working. You can turn a core rule off, but you can't delete it. Everything is logged in your Execution History either way.
What's next
- Conditions reference — every field and operator.
- Actions reference — every action and its options.
- Rule library — start from a ready-made template.
- Best practices — keep rules reliable as they grow.