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PublishSense

PublishSense Help Center

Everything you need to set up PublishSense, choose a plan, publish and share posts, and fix the rare thing that goes wrong. Can't find your answer? Email support@publishsense.com. A person answers.

Updated September 24, 2026

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Getting started

What is PublishSense?

PublishSense is a WordPress plugin that keeps your website publishing. It works out what your customers are searching for, writes a researched post in your voice, checks it, publishes it on your schedule, shares it to your social accounts, and learns from the results. Every post stays on your site and belongs to you.

Who is it for?

Businesses that know a blog brings in customers but never have time to write one: medical and dental practices, clinics, home-service companies, professional firms, shops, and the agencies that run their websites.

What do I need?

A WordPress website where you can install plugins, and an administrator login. You don't need an AI account, a developer account, or any writing skills. Paid plans can also run on your own AI keys; see PublishSense Cloud and your own keys.

How do I install PublishSense?

  1. Download PublishSense from publishsense.com.
  2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the file, press Install Now, then Activate.
  3. Open PublishSense in the WordPress menu and start Smart Setup.

On a paid plan, your license key and download link arrive by email after checkout. Paste the key into PublishSense's license screen and press Activate.

What is Smart Setup?

Smart Setup learns your business before PublishSense writes a word. It reads your public pages and fills in every setting with its best answer: what you sell, who reads your site, what those readers want, what a post should get them to do, the places you serve, and the competitors a post should never link to.

Each answer shows how sure it is (High, Medium or Low) and a one-line reason. It takes about a minute. You can change anything, and Smart Setup never overwrites a setting you've saved. Brand-new site? With fewer than three pages, it asks three questions instead: what the business does, where it works, and who it's for.

How do I get my first post?

Press Find ideas to research topics for your site, or Request a blog post to ask for one on a subject you choose. PublishSense researches, writes, checks the draft and adds a picture. The finished post appears in your requests table.

From then on, PublishSense keeps a few finished posts ready ahead of your schedule, so a post is always waiting when its time comes.

Plans, trials and billing

How much does PublishSense cost?

Plan Posts Price for 1 site
Free 2 a month $0
Weekly 1 a week $29 a month or $279 a year
Three a Week 3 a week $59 a month or $569 a year
Daily 7 a week, one every day $99 a month or $949 a year

Every paid plan includes every feature; plans differ only in how often you publish. Yearly billing saves about 20%. Licenses for 5 and 25 sites cost less per site; see the pricing page.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Try Three a Week free for 14 days, with no card needed. Start it from inside the plugin. If you don't buy when it ends, your site goes back to the Free plan, and nothing you published is removed.

What counts as a post?

Your plan's posts per week is your allowance (2 a month on Free). A finished post with its picture counts as one, including its revisions and its social captions. A post without a picture counts as 0.8, and redrawing a picture counts as 0.2. Finding ideas and Smart Setup are free. Unused posts don't carry over.

Can I change plans?

Yes. Upgrades take effect straight away, and what's left of your current billing period is credited toward the new plan. To move to a smaller plan, email us and we'll switch it at your next renewal.

What happens if I cancel?

Cancel any time from your customer portal or by email. Your plan runs to the end of the period you've paid for, then your site moves to the Free plan: 2 posts a month.

Every post, picture and SEO field PublishSense created stays on your site exactly as it is, forever. Your settings are kept too, so if you come back, PublishSense picks up where it stopped.

What is your refund policy?

If PublishSense isn't right for you, ask for a full refund within 30 days of your first paid charge. No forms, no questions. If you started with a trial, the 30 days begin when you're first charged. Monthly renewals aren't refunded; a yearly renewal is refunded in full if you ask within 14 days of the charge. Read the full Refund and Cancellation Policy.

Who bills me?

Freemius, our reseller and merchant of record, processes every payment, adds sales tax or VAT where it applies, and emails your receipts. Manage your plan, card, invoices and sites in the customer portal at customers.freemius.com.

Writing and publishing

How does PublishSense decide what to write?

It researches before it writes. Ideas come from what people search for in your field and your area and the questions they ask. Once Search Console is connected, ideas also come from the searches that already bring people to your site and the topics you haven't covered yet.

PublishSense never targets a phrase you've already covered in the last 12 months, so your posts don't compete with each other.

What does every post include?

  • A two-sentence answer at the top, then question-shaped headings that each open with a direct answer: the format search engines and AI answers quote.
  • A source for every figure, linked to the organization that published it.
  • At least three links to your own pages and posts, and links out to trusted non-competitors only.
  • A picture with a descriptive file name and alt text.
  • An FAQ, an "Updated" date, and an author box with your byline and credentials.
  • The SEO title, description, focus keyphrase and social fields, written into your SEO plugin, plus structured data.
  • For local businesses, the towns you serve, used the way people search: in the title for services people look for nearby, in the body for research topics.

Will it sound like me?

Yes. Smart Setup captures three sentences in your site's own voice, and every post is written to match. Posts carry your byline and your business facts, such as your locations, credentials and services, so they read as yours.

Does PublishSense publish without asking me?

Only if you turn on Auto-publish. Until then, each finished post waits as a draft. Open it from your requests table, read or edit it in the WordPress editor, and press Publish.

With Auto-publish on, PublishSense publishes at your scheduled times and shares each post to your connected accounts.

When do posts go out?

You choose posts per week, and PublishSense spreads them evenly across the week at 6:00 a.m. in your site's time zone, unless you pin your own days and times. The hour barely affects search rankings; it decides when that day's social posts can go out.

If nothing is ready at a scheduled time, the post is late, never skipped. It goes out the moment it passes its checks, and its row says "Published late" and why.

How does PublishSense check quality?

Every draft is reviewed against written rules before it can publish:

  • Every figure must link to a source that contains it.
  • Filler phrases are refused.
  • Links to your competitors are removed.
  • Each post must score at least 80 out of 100 on an SEO check covering keyphrase placement, headings, readability, links and image alt text.

A draft that fails isn't thrown away. PublishSense repairs it and checks it again. You'll see the score on each post's row.

Will Google penalize posts PublishSense writes?

Not for how they're made. Google's guidance is that it rewards helpful content however it's produced; its spam policy targets pages mass-produced to rank without helping anyone. PublishSense is built for the first kind: research before writing, a source for every figure, one topic per post, and a review before anything publishes.

No one can honestly promise rankings, and we don't. See the disclaimer.

Can I edit a post after it publishes?

Of course; it's your post. Once you edit a post, PublishSense leaves it alone: it won't add links to it or change it later.

Pictures

What do the pictures look like?

Each post gets its own editorial-style picture, matched to the post and to what your readers want to feel. People in the pictures are fictional, never real patients, customers or staff, and pictures never contain text. The alt text describes the picture and notes that it's AI-generated, and the file carries the standard label that says so.

Can I turn pictures off or use my own?

Yes. Set Featured pictures to Off, and upload a Default share image for your social posts. You can also replace any post's picture with your own in the WordPress editor, like any featured image.

How do I redraw a picture?

Press Redraw on the post's row. To redraw several, select them in the Posts list and choose Redraw featured images (PublishSense). A redraw counts as 0.2 of a post.

Social sharing

Which accounts can PublishSense post to?

X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google Business Profile, plus Telegram, HighLevel's Social Planner, and webhooks for Zapier or Make. Each network switches on as it approves PublishSense's app; until then, its button reads Coming soon.

How do I connect an account?

Press Connect, approve PublishSense on the network's own screen, and you're done. Every network requires that one approval per account; after it, nothing else is asked of you. You never create a developer app.

Do I write the captions?

No. PublishSense writes the headline, summary, call to action and hashtags for each network, posts at the hours each network's audience is most active, then learns your best hours. It starts from these times, in your site's time zone:

Network Starting time
LinkedIn 8:00 a.m. (Tuesday to Thursday when you post less than daily)
Facebook Noon to 3:00 p.m.
Instagram 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
X 9:00 a.m., noon or 7:00 p.m.
Google Business Profile 10:00 a.m.
Telegram When the post publishes

A network stopped posting. What happened?

Short outages retry on their own, three times: after 10, 30 and 90 minutes. If a network rejects the connection because of an expired login, a changed password or new permissions, PublishSense pauses that network for that site and shows a notice. Reconnect the account and sharing resumes. Nothing is ever posted twice.

Search engines and SEO plugins

Which SEO plugins does PublishSense work with?

Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework and Slim SEO. PublishSense detects whichever you run and fills in its fields, with nothing for you to set. No SEO plugin? PublishSense writes the page title, description, social tags and structured data itself.

Does it add structured data?

Yes. It adds to your SEO plugin's structured data rather than duplicating it. FAQ markup helps search engines and AI tools read your answers. Google shows FAQ rich results for only a small set of sites, so we don't promise them.

How do search engines find new posts?

Through your sitemap, as with any page. PublishSense also notifies IndexNow, which tells Bing and other search engines at once, unless another plugin on your site already does. Google doesn't take part in IndexNow.

If nothing else on your site serves an llms.txt file, PublishSense serves one listing your latest posts. Some AI tools read it; Google says it doesn't use it.

Why connect Google Search Console?

So PublishSense learns from your real clicks and searches: which pictures, headlines and places win, and what people already search for that you haven't written about yet. Access is read-only.

If you use Google's Site Kit plugin with Search Console connected, PublishSense uses that connection with no second sign-in. Otherwise, press Connect under Search Console in Settings and approve.

PublishSense Cloud and your own keys

What is PublishSense Cloud?

The service that does the heavy lifting for your site. It runs the writing and picture models, connects your social and Google accounts through PublishSense's own approved apps, and keeps your schedule on time even when your site has no visitors. It's included in every plan, and you never need an AI account of your own.

Can I use my own AI keys instead?

Yes, on any paid plan. Add your Anthropic and OpenAI keys in Settings and choose Your own keys. Your providers bill you directly and PublishSense doesn't count posts against your allowance, but your plan's posts per week still applies. For the best picture model, complete OpenAI's organization verification in your OpenAI settings first.

Is my content used to train AI?

No. PublishSense never uses your content for training and never shares it. Under Anthropic's and OpenAI's current terms, content sent through their business APIs isn't used to train their models by default. PublishSense Cloud deletes request contents after 30 days.

Licenses, sites and updates

How do I move my license to another site?

Deactivate the license on the old site, or remove that site from the license in your customer portal at customers.freemius.com. Then activate the key on the new site. Test copies on localhost or staging addresses don't use up a site.

How do updates work?

Like any plugin: new versions appear under Dashboard → Updates, and Install PublishSense updates automatically is on by default. Before every update, PublishSense saves a snapshot of your settings, and updates never change your settings, your schedule or your posts. To get new versions early, turn on Get early (beta) versions.

I see two PublishSense plugins. What do I do?

Only one copy ever runs: the newest. PublishSense switches older copies off and shows a notice with a button that removes them safely. Use that button. Don't use Delete on the Plugins screen for an old copy, because an old copy's delete routine can erase settings both copies share.

What happens if I deactivate or delete PublishSense?

Deactivating stops the schedule and keeps everything. When you delete it, you choose between Keep my settings and history for a reinstall (the default) and Remove PublishSense's settings, history and connections.

Either way, your posts, pictures and SEO fields stay exactly where they are. Removing also disconnects your social and Google accounts and frees the site on your license.

I'm an agency. How do I manage client sites?

Buy a 5- or 25-site license and activate it on each client's site. In your customer portal, open the license and check This license is activated on my client(s) site(s). That hides your billing details, license key and pricing from your clients.

A white-label plan with your own brand on the plugin is on the way; see Partners and agencies.

Privacy and health information

What does PublishSense read and send?

Smart Setup reads only your public pages and a few things WordPress knows about itself. It never reads private posts, drafts, customer records, orders or anything behind a login.

With PublishSense Cloud, requests go through PublishSense's relay to the AI providers. With your own keys, they go straight from your site to your provider. Connected-account tokens are stored encrypted. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

Can a medical or dental practice use PublishSense?

Yes, for your public blog and social posts. Never enter patient information of any kind: no names, stories, photos or details that could identify a patient or relate to their care. PublishSense isn't built to handle protected health information, and we don't sign business associate agreements (BAAs).

Posts are general education, not medical advice. Review anything clinical before it publishes.

Does PublishSense guarantee rankings?

No one honestly can. Rankings, AI citations and traffic depend on search engines and many things outside anyone's control. PublishSense gives every post the best chance it can.

Troubleshooting

A post didn't go out at its scheduled time

Check the health card on the PublishSense Dashboard. It shows the last scheduler run, the next time slot, how many posts are ready, and the last failure with its reason. A late post goes out as soon as it passes its checks, and its row says "Published late" and why.

If the card says "WordPress's scheduler only runs when someone visits", add a cron job in your web host's control panel that runs every 5 minutes, with your own address in place of the example:

curl -s https://yourwebsite.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null

A draft failed review

That's the safety net working. PublishSense repairs a failed draft: it links or removes an unsourced figure, removes a competitor link, rewrites whatever broke a rule, then checks it again. Open What happened on the row to see each attempt.

"PublishSense is back on the Free plan"

Your paid subscription ended, or a payment didn't go through. Everything you published stays. Press Resume to restart your plan, or update your card in the customer portal.

The SEO fields are empty in my SEO plugin

PublishSense fills the fields of the SEO plugin that's active when a post is written. If you've installed or switched SEO plugins since, email us and we'll help you carry the fields over.

Search Console says it isn't connected

Press Connect under Search Console in Settings and approve read-only access with the Google account that owns your site's Search Console property. If you use Site Kit, connect Search Console in Site Kit first and PublishSense will use that connection.

Connecting X failed: "You weren't able to give access to the App"

This applies only when you connect X through your own developer app (your own keys). The cause is almost always the app's callback address or its permissions. Open the Connect X screen, copy the Callback URI exactly as shown into your X app's settings, set App permissions to Read and write, and try again while signed in to X as the account that should post.

A warning says a picture model is retiring

PublishSense warns you 30 days before a picture model it uses is retired, and tells you why better models were skipped. On your own OpenAI key, the usual fix is completing OpenAI's organization verification.

Partners and agencies

How does the affiliate program work?

Recommend PublishSense and earn a recurring commission on every customer you refer, including free users who upgrade later. Join from your customer portal. The rates and rules are in the Partner and Affiliate Program Terms.

Can I resell PublishSense under my own brand?

A white-label plan for agencies, with your brand on the plugin, your own landing page and your own prices, is coming, by invitation. Email support@publishsense.com with "White label" in the subject line to join the waitlist.

Contact

Email support@publishsense.com. A person reads every message, and most get an answer within one business day.

Legal documents, including terms, privacy, refunds and partner terms: publishsense.com/legal.

PublishSense is a product of Blockchain Entertainment LLC, 8 The Green, Ste R, Dover, DE 19901, United States.