WP Sync is a bridge engine. Once four words are clear, every screen in the plugin reads naturally, and you can plan any automation on the back of an envelope before you open WordPress.
Source:
Any connection WP Sync can read new contacts from. That might be an autoresponder list, a WordPress form, an inbound webhook, a Google Sheet, a webinar, a WooCommerce order, a Stripe or PayPal payment, a Calendly booking, a Facebook lead form, a course enrollment or a WarriorPlus sale. Each connection card on the Connections tab says Source when it can do this job.
Destination:
Any connection WP Sync writes contacts to. That might be another autoresponder list, a spreadsheet row, a webinar registration, an outbound webhook, a Slack, Discord or Telegram message, a help desk contact or a CRM record. Cards that can do this job say Destination.
Bridge:
The rule that links one source to one or more destinations. Each destination on a bridge has its own list, its own action, its own field mapping and its own optional delay or drip. Bridges can be paused, cloned, tested, reordered and given filters. On screen the builder draws it as a little flow: the source badge, an arrow with a filter count, then the destination badges.
How new contacts are detected:
Some connections push. The other app sends the event to your site the instant it happens, so there is nothing to wait for. Stripe, Calendly, WarriorPlus, WooCommerce and Webhook Connect work this way, and their cards carry the word Push. Other connections are polled. Every five minutes WordPress asks each polled source what is new since its last check and relays anything it finds. ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Google Sheets and Zoom work this way.
A worked example:
yoursite.com wants every discovery call booked in Calendly to land in Mailchimp with a Discovery Call tag, and wants the team told in Slack.
- The source is Calendly, watching All Calendly bookings.
- Destination one is Mailchimp, the Discovery Calls audience, with the tag Discovery Call.
- Destination two is Slack, the #new-leads channel.
- A filter says Email does not contain @yoursite.com, so test bookings by the team are skipped.
That is one bridge. Its row on the Bridges tab shows a Calendly badge, an arrow, and Mailchimp and Slack badges, with a small target badge for the filter.
Bridges can carry stories as well as people:
A source such as the RSS Feed in the Connect Pack hands the engine a story with a title, a link and an excerpt instead of an email address. Destinations built to publish it, such as Slack Post or Bluesky, act on it. Destinations that need a real email address, such as autoresponders and CRMs, leave stories alone. The article Turning Feed Items Into Posts covers this.
A bridge without a source:
In the builder you can pick No source. The bridge then has nothing to watch. It runs only when something you attach it to fires it, such as a tracking link click in WP Conversion Tracker, a conversion, or a form that posts to it. On the Bridges tab its source reads Triggered when I attach it.
Common shapes of a bridge:
- One to one: a Mailchimp list to a beehiiv publication.
- One to many: a sale to an email app, a chat channel and a spreadsheet.
- Event to action: a refund to Remove tag.
- No source to action: a link click to Add tag.
- Content to channels: a blog feed to Slack and Bluesky.
Almost every automation you can think of is one of these five.
Tips:
- Think in one direction. If you want two apps to stay in step both ways, build two bridges, one each way, and never point a destination at the same list as the source. The builder refuses that setting so contacts can never loop.
- One bridge with three destinations is easier to follow than three bridges with one each, because the Activity Log shows one row with every result.
- Next, read Sources Versus Destinations to see which apps can play which role.