Fly.io, a fast-growing cloud hosting platform, helps developers deploy applications globally with minimal effort. As their customer base grew, Fly.io needed a support platform that could keep up – one that allowed their technical team to work quickly, customize workflows, and scale efficiently.

The challenge

Fly.io’s support team consists of nine full-time engineers plus a rotating on-call engineer. They previously used Help Scout for Premium Support, which worked well for them for years, but it began to show its limitations as Fly.io grew.

Kyle McLaren, who is working on the support experience at Fly, explained, “I love Help Scout, but we needed to move faster on a platform that could ship the features we need.”

With more customers subscribing to Fly.io’s paid support plans, the team needed:

• A more flexible API to integrate deeply into their workflows.

• Faster handling of support tickets without unnecessary manual work.

• Better tooling to support engineers rotating in weekly to assist with customer issues.

Why Plain?

Fly.io chose Plain primarily for its speed, flexibility, and extensibility. The decision was driven by the strength of Plain’s API, which allowed Fly.io to build custom workflows and automate processes far more easily than they could with Help Scout.

Kyle shared, “The Plain API just works with you – it’s flexible, easy to build with, and helped us get up and running really fast.”

Unlike traditional support platforms, Plain provided Fly.io with:

• A developer-friendly API that made it simple to extend and customize workflows.

• Custom integrations with Fly.io’s support portal, centralizing email and portal requests.

• Faster thread resolution through a clean interface and features like sticky assignments, which Fly.io is now experimenting with to improve continuity for customers.

Fly.io didn’t conduct a broad evaluation of other tools before choosing Plain. They were already 90% sure about the decision before beginning their migration, knowing that Plain’s speed, flexibility, and developer-first approach made it the best fit for their needs.

Fly.io’s support portal: a custom-built solution powered by Plain

One of the biggest improvements since moving to Plain has been Fly.io’s support portal, which allows customers to submit and track support requests directly from their dashboard. 

Kyle McLaren shared, “It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Between Plain and Phoenix, it was just a joy to set up.” Kyle and his team built the portal piece by piece, using Plain’s API to customize the experience exactly to their needs.

The portal has already proven invaluable for Fly.io’s customers, particularly newer users who prefer submitting tickets through the dashboard rather than email. As Fly.io continues to scale, they plan to expand the portal further, eventually making it a one-stop shop where customers can manage their entire support lifecycle – without ever needing to check their inbox.

The solution

Migrating to Plain gave Fly.io the ability to build a more efficient, scalable support system that aligned with their technical team’s workflows. Key improvements included:

1. A unified support experience – Whether customers reach out via email or Fly.io’s support portal, all threads go into Plain, allowing the team to manage everything in one place.

2. Custom-built metrics dashboard – Fly.io used Plain’s API to create a public metrics dashboard, improving transparency and internal reporting.

3. Seamless handoffs between engineers – With rotating engineers assisting on support, Plain makes it easier to keep track of ticket ownership and internal discussions.

4. Customer insights at their fingertips – Fly.io extensively uses customer cards, reducing the need to dig through multiple dashboards to find relevant customer data.

Kyle highlighted, “Customer cards have saved us many engineering hours per year – it’s a massive time saver.”

The impact

Since moving to Plain, Fly.io has significantly improved its support operations:

• Faster workflows – Engineers can now resolve issues quickly with direct access to customer context in Plain, without switching between tools.

• Greater efficiency – The team spends less time managing tickets and more time helping customers.

• Scalable support – Fly.io is preparing to expand its support coverage, including testing ways to open up technical support to a broader audience.

• Strong community engagement – Free-tier customers are supported through Fly.io’s Discourse community, which is highly active and largely self-sustaining.

• A future-ready system – Fly.io plans to integrate GitHub into Plain, further improving collaboration between support and engineering.

Kyle emphasized, “Plain gives us the speed and flexibility we need to scale. It’s a platform that grows with us.”

Looking ahead

Fly.io is continuing to expand its support operations, including hiring a Director of Customer Support and additional engineers. The team also plans to further develop their support portal, making it a fully self-service experience for customers. They plan to offer access to the support portal for free to folks who make use of their new managed Postgres offering, Fly MPG. 

With Plain powering their support, Fly.io is confident in their ability to scale – without slowing down.