None of the integrations do what you want. In every case, you have to implement your own from scratch.
The system crashes a lot. Often it takes 45 seconds to a load page.
The interface for talking with clients is clunky.
Closed tickets don’t stay closed if the ticket request replies to your email with a new separate issue, bringing with it potentially months-old questions that have already been solved.
We pay thousands of dollars already and this will probably in a year or two be tens of thousands based on our scaling.
It is clunky and the email alerts for new tickets don't link back to the tickets.
It seems a little outdated and I wish it was a little more visually appealing.
The User experience is pretty old-styled. It can be made much better for ease of use.
No option for filtering search. Very basic filtering that isn't helpful, it's also always SO slow.
Notifications tend to be distracting and there is extreme difficulty with navigating the history portion of the chats.
It constantly crashed or malfunctioned, slowing my team and impeding their stats.
It is very user-unfriendly, creating a workflow, a report, and setting up the chat flows needs so much improvement.
If you delete something there is no undelete option. This was found out after almost 5000 customers were deleted from our tenant…
The built-in tools are inadequate for connecting your other systems.
The UX is clunky! I'd bet that all three are built by separate teams that don't talk.
Their support is poor -- especially for a company focused on helping companies deliver support.
The more you engage, the more expensive the platform gets.
All the basic support things like SLAs are behind a major paywall.
Horrible notification settings, so many missed opportunities and sales resulting from this.
They see customers only as $$$. No flexibility, hidden fees, forcing features you don't need.
This thing is clunky and hard to use. It is very difficult to keep track of who you are even helping.
The UI feels like it's from 2005.
Very limited workflows, and no way to forward emails to existing tickets.
It feels like multiple apps, poorly glued together.
Last I checked, other users have been requesting the same feature since 5 years ago! And they still haven’t worked on it…
Any level of beyond-basic customization is impossible.
Great for cookie-cutter companies, terrible for anything else.
We actually switched to an inferior product because the support was so poor.
Progress is painfully slow, and they seem to prioritize shiny new features over fixing their existing product.
The tickets don't update when customer responded on email.
Have 4x'ed the price every 2 years on us with no new value.
Hundreds of bugs never get fixed.
Filled with bugs so often emails are sent to the wrong email/customer.
The UI is so miserable.
I often lose ongoing emails and have to search for them.
The UI is very cumbersome to use when you have a lot of tickets coming through.
Very very slow tool.
Expected a better level of suppoort from a company that builds customer support product.
The pricing is not transparent at all, difficult to understand, and engineered to trick you.
The interface is terribly confusing and difficult to use. It seems out-dated and bulky and I'm rarely able to find what I'm looking for.
The backend needs serious UX research to become usable. It's pretty bad right now.
Sometimes internal notes will send to customers, which is really terrible.
The design of the product is too simple & old.
Sometimes the colour theme can be very boring and it gets the eye a bit tired after working long hours with tickets.
It has so many settings that are hard to nail the configuration to your needs.
It is very rigid. Some attributes cannot be configured or changed.
Tool seems to be slow and needs improvements on the speed.
It can run slow, breaks down, and if your admin departs without documenting everything correctly, you are left to pick up the pieces.
The tickets don't update when customer responded on email.
The customer-facing portal was not customizable at all. It clashed with our branding.
Your support tool is keeping you from your users. We exist to help you stay insanely close to them.
Support has changed, but support tools have not. Most of them are slow to use, have poorly documented APIs, clunky app frameworks, and inflexible data models. They've been built for B2C e-commerce companies, where support is seen as a cost and deflection is the name of the game. They make support harder, not easier.
Modern B2B support works differently. It’s support, success and sales all mixed into one. It doesn’t just happen over email, but wherever your customers are. Delight is no longer just response time, it’s shipping a bug fix within 30 minutes. Disappointing a customer doesn't mean losing one person's business, it means losing an entire company.
With Plain, we set out to build a support tool that's made for this kind of support. We don't see support tooling as just an app, but as infrastructure to be built on. And with Plain, we're building the infrastructure for every customer interaction. It's CS without the BS.
We're building ours around these simple values:
1
Crafted for support, made for the whole company
Support isn't just a team – it's a company culture. Everything, from our product to our pricing, is made for everyone from support team members to engineers and product managers to work together.
2
Works wherever you work with customers
You shouldn't have to leave the tools you already use just to help your customers – and neither should they. Plain is always going to be where you are: In issue tracking tools like Linear, messaging apps like Discord or Slack, or your email inbox.
3
Driven by your data
Plain will always work with your systems, not replace them. You've got your own database and we have no interest in being one. You won't ever have to sync your data with us – instead, we'll work with the data you already have.
4
Designed to be the fastest
When you're moving through a queue, every bit of friction matters. We're building Plain to be the fastest and most keyboard-friendly support tool you’ve ever used. We're making every interaction keyboard-friendly, and 100ms or less.
5
Built to be built with
No two businesses are alike, and your support tool shouldn't be either. Plain is built API-first so you're never limited by whatever we don't bring out of the box. Anything you can do in the app, you can do programmatically.
While we won't always get it right, we want for Plain to live up to each and every one of these principles. We'd love for you to join us on the journey – as a customer or team member – and to help us build a tool that people love.
Matt and Simon
Co-Founders
