How to capture Psychology Today inquiries without retyping them

Psychology Today has no public API, so no tool can retrieve inquiries from it directly. What practices automate instead is the notification email they already receive: it is parsed, logged to a CRM or spreadsheet, and turned into a task and a reply within minutes. The inquiry stops if someone doesn't check an inbox.

TL;DR

• No API, so the notification email is the integration point, and it is enough.
• Speed of reply is the whole game: an inquiry answered within minutes converts; one answered tomorrow often already found someone else.
• A person still writes or approves every reply, always. Automation drafts and routes; it does not talk to prospective clients.
• Log every inquiry with its source, and for the first time you can actually see your funnel.
• Keragon connects the inbox to the EHR or CRM without code, with a BAA on every paid plan.

Why directory inquiries leak

Here is the funnel most solo practices actually run. Someone in distress finally decides to reach out, finds a profile, and writes a message that took courage. The inquiry lands in an inbox. It gets seen hours later, between sessions, on a phone. The reply goes out that evening, or the next day, from memory, with no record of what was said. Nothing gets written down anywhere: not the source, not the presenting need, not whether they ever replied. Ask the practice its inquiry-to-consult rate and the honest answer is that nobody knows.

The leak has two costs. The obvious one is revenue: a directory profile is a recurring expense, and every inquiry that dies in the inbox is marketing spend with no return. The quieter one is the person on the other end, who reads "no reply" as "no room for me" and may not try a second time. Fixing the funnel is a business improvement that happens to also be the kind thing.

Multiply the leak by the number of channels, and it compounds. Most practices run more than one front door: a Psychology Today profile, sometimes Zencare or TherapyDen, a website contact form, and word-of-mouth referrals arriving by text to the clinician personally. Each channel has its own notification format, its own inbox, and its own way of being forgotten, which is why the fix has to be a capture pattern rather than a resolution to check email more often. Resolutions lose to Tuesdays.

Does Psychology Today have an API or integration?

No. As of August 2026, Psychology Today offers no public API, no webhooks, and no supported integration through which software could read inquiries from a provider profile. Its member dashboard tracks calls and emails from the profile, but that data resides within Psychology Today; there is no supported way to automatically move it into your own systems. Any tool claiming a direct Psychology Today integration is not working through a supported interface. What the practice does own is the notification email the directory sends when someone reaches out, and that is where the automation runs.

The pattern: automate the notification, not the directory

The mechanism is simple and completely inside the practice's own systems. The data being automated is the practice's own email, arriving in the practice's own inbox; nothing touches the directory itself. Never scrape Psychology Today, automate logins to it, or extract data from the directory; the notification email makes all of that unnecessary anyway.

The same boundary applies to the tempting shortcuts. Third-party scrapers of the directory exist; they harvest the public directory for lead generation and have nothing to do with handling your own inquiries, and pointing anything like that at inquiry data would trade a solved problem for a compliance one. The notification email is supported, sufficient, and already yours.

Workflow diagram

1. The inquiry notification arrives in the practice's own inbox
2. It is parsed into structured fields: name, contact details, the presenting need as the prospect described it, insurance if given, and the source, tagged as the directory
3. It is logged to the CRM, a spreadsheet, or the EHR's prospect record, with the source on the record
4. A task and a reminder are created with a response SLA, so nothing sits unseen
5. A drafted reply is prepared from a template, and a person reviews, personalizes, and sends it

Step five is the boundary that matters most, and it is worth stating as policy rather than burying as a footnote: a human sends the reply, every time. This audience does not want AI talking to prospective clients, and neither does this article. The model is human in front, automation behind, and saying it out loud is a differentiator, not a limitation: automation gets the inquiry seen, logged, and drafted within minutes, and the human gets to be the first voice the client actually hears.

One more design rule: because a directory inquiry can contain sensitive details from the first message, treat it as protected health information from the moment it arrives. That means the inbox, the parser, the CRM, and everything else in the chain runs under a signed business associate agreement, including the automation layer. It also means the practice makes no assumptions about the directory's own compliance posture in either direction; that is Psychology Today's claim to make, not the practice's. Your obligations start in your inbox, and the pattern above keeps everything there.

Two practical parsing notes from real builds. Inquiry notifications are not perfectly uniform, so the parser needs a fallback: anything it cannot classify becomes a task with the raw message attached, never a silently dropped email. And the presenting need belongs in the record verbatim, as the prospect wrote it, because that first self-description is exactly what the clinician wants to see before the consult and exactly what gets lost when inquiries are handled from memory.

The response clock, and what runs each step

The pattern only pays if each step has an owner and a clock. This split is the one that works for a clinician who is in sessions most of the day:

The design insight is that the clock a practice cannot control (when a clinician is free) stops mattering once the clock it can control (how fast the inquiry is seen, logged and drafted) runs on automation. A solo practitioner checking messages at three natural breaks a day still answers every inquiry same-day, because the reading, sorting and drafting already happened. The person spends ninety seconds on judgment and warmth, not on transcription.

What to say: response templates that get a reply

The templates are the utility payload of this whole pattern, because speed only wins if the message that arrives quickly is worth receiving. The register that works is warm and specific: these messages are read by someone in distress deciding whether to reach out again, so anything transactional or machine-sounding is a rejection in disguise. Read each one aloud before saving it as a template. Four that cover most of the funnel, all synthetic examples to adapt:

First response, within minutes of the inquiry: "Hi Maya, thank you for reaching out, and I'm glad you did. From what you shared, this sounds like something I work with often, and I'd be happy to talk. I have Tuesday at 4 pm or Thursday at 11 am open for a brief intro call this week; would either work for you? If not, tell me what suits, and we'll find a time." Acknowledge, confirm fit, offer two concrete times.

The insurance and fee question, answered plainly: "Hi Maya, great question, and I'd rather be clear upfront: I'm not in-network with Aetna, but I can provide a superbill you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement, and my rate is $150 per session. If you'd like, we can talk through what that usually means in practice on a quick call." Plain numbers, no hedging, an open door. Keep clinical details out of the email; the intake form is where they belong.

No capacity right now, warmly: "Hi Maya, thank you for reaching out; that took courage and I don't take it lightly. I don't have openings at the moment, and I don't want to leave you waiting on a maybe. If you'd like, I can add you to my waitlist and let you know the moment something opens, and I'm also glad to suggest two colleagues I trust who may have room now." A warm no with two real paths beats a slow maybe.

The 48-hour nudge when there has been no reply: "Hi Maya, just checking in gently; no pressure at all. If you're still looking, the offer of a quick intro call stands, and if the timing isn't right, that's completely okay too. Wishing you well either way." One nudge, then respect the silence.

What to measure once it is captured

The point of logging every inquiry is that the funnel becomes visible for the first time. Four numbers, monthly: inquiries by source (which tells you what each directory actually returns for its fee), time to first reply (the number the automation moves most), inquiry-to-consult rate (the conversion the templates move), and no-response rate (which tells you whether the nudge is working and when to stop). A practice that can see these four can decide its marketing spend on evidence; a practice that cannot is renewing directory subscriptions on faith.

A synthetic example of what the visibility buys: a practice logging sources for a quarter finds one directory produced eleven inquiries and five consults while another produced nine inquiries and zero, with every zero preceded by a reply sent more than a day late. That is two decisions made in one glance, one about budget and one about process, and neither was visible while the funnel lived in an inbox.

The same logged data feeds the rest of the operational loop: consults become bookings, bookings get reminder cadences, and lapsed prospects get respectful follow-up, which is where this article hands off to the no-show and winback playbook.

Wiring it up without a developer

Keragon connects the practice inbox, the CRM, the calendar, and the EHR and runs the whole capture loop without code: parsing the notification, logging the inquiry with its source, opening the task with an SLA, and drafting the reply for a person to send, all under a BAA on every paid plan, with a 14-day free trial. The EHR stays the system of record. It works alongside whichever EHR the practice runs, including the closed ones: on SimplePractice or TherapyNotes, the same pattern runs from the inbox and calendar, covered in the closed-EHR automation guide and on the TherapyNotes integration page. From capture, the data flows straight into patient intake automation, and Keragon Agents keep a person in front of every client-facing step; the mental health automation hub has the rest of the segment playbook.

FAQ

Does Psychology Today have an API?

No. As of August 2026, there is no public API, no webhooks, and no supported integration for provider profiles. The supported automation surface is the notification email the practice receives, which is the practice's own data in its own inbox.

Can I integrate Psychology Today with SimplePractice?

Not directly, and doubly so: Psychology Today has no API to read from, and SimplePractice has no public API to write to. The working pattern bridges them by leveraging what the practice owns: the notification email is parsed and logged, and a person enters the new client into SimplePractice once, using a clean, structured summary rather than a forwarded email.

How fast should I reply to a Psychology Today inquiry?

Within minutes where possible, and within the same business day at the outside. Someone contacting a therapist has often finally acted after a long hesitation, and frequently messages more than one profile; the first warm, concrete reply usually gets the consult. This is exactly what automating the capture and draft makes achievable without a person watching the inbox all day.

Is it HIPAA-compliant to email a prospective client?

It can be, handled properly: BAA-covered email tooling, minimal clinical content in the message, and the detailed history moved to a secure intake form rather than an email thread. Treat inquiry content as PHI from the moment of arrival, and ensure every tool in the chain, including the automation layer, is covered by a signed business associate agreement (HHS publishes sample BAA provisions that show what that covers).

Can I automate replies to directory inquiries?

Draft yes, send no. Automation can parse the inquiry, log it, open the task, and prepare a templated draft within minutes; a person reviews, personalizes, and sends. The reply to someone reaching out for therapy should come from a human, both because this audience expects it and because the first message sets the tone for the whole relationship.

How do I track where clients came from?

Tag the source on every inquiry at capture time, automatically: the directory, the website form, a referral. Once the source rides the record from first contact to booked consult, attribution stops being guesswork, and directory subscriptions can be judged by what they actually return.

What if I have no availability?

Reply anyway, quickly and warmly: a waitlist offer plus a referral to trusted colleagues beats silence in every way that matters. A structured waitlist also turns today's no into a future yes, because the practice can reach out the moment a slot opens, rather than hoping the person tries again.

Can I capture inquiries from Zencare and other directories too?

Yes. The pattern is directory-agnostic because it runs on the notification email, which every directory sends. Zencare, TherapyDen, GoodTherapy, and the rest each get their own source tag in the parser, and the same log then shows which directories actually produce clients.

Do I need a CRM?

You need a structured place for prospects that is not the inbox; whether that is a CRM, a spreadsheet, or the EHR's prospect records depends on volume. Solo practices often start with a well-structured spreadsheet and graduate to a CRM when the caseload or the team grows. The non-negotiable part is that inquiries are logged somewhere queryable, with their source.

Will automating this make my practice feel impersonal?

Run properly, the opposite. Automation handles the part that was already impersonal (the waiting, the lost details, the inbox roulette) and buys the human time to be genuinely personal in the part that counts: a warm, specific reply that arrives while reaching out still feels possible. The client never talks to a machine; they just stop falling through the cracks.