# Plain

> Routes customer requests from Slack, Teams, Discord, email and chat along accounts, customer groups and service level agreements instead of along channels, and makes every operation programmable through an API.

- Vendor: Not Just Tickets Ltd
- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/plain
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/werkzeugkasten/plain
- Area: Service & support · Cluster: support built into the product
- Role: Off-the-shelf product · Origin: Established, AI retrofitted
- As of: 2026-07-30 · Reviewed: 2026-07-30 · Author: Dr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
- Toolbox: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox.md

## Verdict

Strengthens the core product: An inbox for customer requests keeps you from falling behind, and no more than that, which every tool in this class does. The reason to pick this one sits a layer deeper: companies, customer groups and service level agreements are first-class objects in the API, and customer cards pull live data from your own product into the thread. Teams that actually build that coupling turn support into part of the product. Teams that do not build it pay for an expensive inbox and would have got just as far with the simplest tool in the class. Hence the core-product verdict rather than the rung below it, but only on that condition.

## Suitability by company size

- Solo: suitable with caveats — Thirty-five dollars for one seat does not hurt, but the structure of accounts, customer groups and response times solves a problem nobody has with a handful of customers. The API only pays off with engineering time, and a solo operator does not have it.
- Mid-market: suitable — Exactly the fit: named business customers, some of them in shared Slack channels, contractually promised response times and a product from which context can be pulled into the thread. Moving up to the plan with SLAs and a help centre costs 299 dollars a month for three seats.
- Enterprise: suitable with caveats — Single sign-on and user provisioning only appear in the top tier, which carries no list price. There is no public commitment on tamper-evident audit logging, and production data sits in London, so outside the EU. For a procurement department these are three points to settle in writing before signing.

## Vendor staying power

Funded: Six years in market, an active company with up-to-date register filings, a fifteen million dollar growth round and named reference customers. That carries for the next few years, but this is not an established vendor with proven profitability.

- Legal entity and company number: Not Just Tickets Ltd, Companies House 12736513, incorporated on 13.07.2020, status active, registered office in Altrincham (Cheshire) (source: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12736513, as of 2026-07-30)
- Funding: USD 15 million growth round in February 2025, led by Battery Ventures, with Index Ventures and Connect Ventures from the earlier round (source: https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/plain-raises-15m-series-a-to-build-the-future-of-collaborative-b2b-support/, as of 2026-07-30)
- Ongoing register activity: Share allotment (SH01) on 29.06.2026, confirmation statement filed as at 12.07.2026, most recent annual accounts as at 31.01.2025 (source: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12736513/filing-history, as of 2026-07-30)
- Audit attestation: SOC 2 Type II, first attested on 01.06.2023; report available only through the trust centre on request (source: https://www.plain.com/changelog/soc2-type-ii, as of 2026-07-30)
- Named reference customers: Sanity, Laravel, Stytch, Raycast (source: https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/plain-raises-15m-series-a-to-build-the-future-of-collaborative-b2b-support/, as of 2026-07-30)

## Cost of leaving

Moderate: Everything held in the system is readable through the GraphQL API, and webhooks emit more than twenty event types. There is no documented bulk export, however, so you write the retrieval yourself. On top of that, cancellation requires thirty days' notice to the end of the term, deletion happens only on request by email, and the terms let the vendor keep aggregated data and data that has become integral to the service. The real switching cost sits in the customer cards and automations you built yourself, not in the thread data.

## Regulation and data

| Point | Finding | Evidence | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data processing agreement | yes, publicly available data processing agreement — The document is public without login and covers instructions, subprocessors, deletion and return. The contracting party is Not Just Tickets Ltd under the law of England and Wales. | evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Storage location | Amazon Web Services, region eu-west-2 (London), so the United Kingdom — The security page names the region explicitly and the API runs under the host core-api.uk.plain.com. The privacy policy speaks more broadly of servers in the United Kingdom and the EEA. A selectable EU region is not documented anywhere. | partially evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Subprocessors | list exists, but not readily readable in public — The data processing addendum points to a list in the trust centre at trust.plain.com/subprocessors. That page is rendered in the browser and could not be read without an account, so no names are substantiated here. New subprocessors are announced with a seven day objection window. | partially evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Third-country transfer | yes, United Kingdom as the main location plus service providers in the United States — From an EU perspective the United Kingdom is a third country, for which the Commission renewed the adequacy decision on 19 December 2025 through 27 December 2031. For the US service providers the privacy policy names standard contractual clauses, and the addendum additionally names the EU clauses 2021/914 (modules two and four) plus the UK addendum. | evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Training on customer data | no, contractually excluded — The addendum commits that customer personal data will not be used, by the vendor or any subprocessor, to train, develop or improve any general or shared models. That is one of the clearer wordings in this class of tool. | evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Retention and deletion | no fixed retention period for active workspaces; inactive workspaces are deleted after six months with fourteen days' notice — Messages taken from Slack are cached for no longer than seven days. Deletion requests run by email to support. The privacy policy names no concrete retention periods, and the terms expressly hold back aggregated data. | partially evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Certifications | SOC 2 Type II at the vendor; no ISO 27001 certificate of its own substantiated — The attestation dates from 1 June 2023 and covers the development process, application, infrastructure and access controls. The report is released only on request through the trust centre. ISO 27001 is named on no public page. | partially evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | unclear — The product ships an agent called Ari and an assistant called Sidekick, both of which speak to customers directly. No statement on the transparency duties under Article 50 of the AI Regulation appears on the security page, in the help centre or in the legal texts. | not evidenced | 2026-07-30 |
| Audit logging | unclear — The top tier lists advanced security together with single sign-on and user provisioning, but says nothing about traceable logs of access and changes. The help centre and security page name only the vendor's internal access controls, not logs that customers can review. | not evidenced | 2026-07-30 |

## Cost

- Entry: Thirty-five dollars per seat per month on the entry plan, one seat included, plus 2,000 credits a month for the assistant. A seven day trial without a payment method, viewer seats are unlimited on every plan, and young companies get a fifty percent discount. (as of 2026-07-30)
- Where it gets expensive: At the tier jump, not through growth. Response times, escalation paths, help centre, Microsoft Teams and the CRM connection only appear on the middle plan: 299 dollars a month for three seats, with every further seat then costing 99 rather than 35 dollars. That is close to triple the seat price for features you need the moment you have contractually promised response times. Single sign-on, user provisioning and advanced security sit in the top tier, for which no list price is published. Monthly credits expire, and only purchased ones roll over.

## Three routes compared

### Established ticketing system of the broad class

The grown systems are cheaper to start with, carry more extensions and have a guide for every question. They organise work around the ticket and the channel, however, not around the account and the contract. Shared Slack channels with business customers arrive as an add-on rather than sitting at the core, and the link to your own product data stays a sidebar display instead of an object you work with.

### Resolution agent billed per resolved case

The new class bills not per seat but per deflected case, and pays off where many similar requests arrive from many end users. In business with named corporate customers the arithmetic flips: the value lies not in deflection but in the context a human with contract knowledge brings. Measuring support by resolution rate optimises the wrong number here.

### Shared Slack channels plus your own database

With three to ten corporate customers this is the honest route: shared channels, a spreadsheet of commitments, a model for summarising. It breaks at holiday cover, at provable response times and at the question of what actually happened last month. More importantly, the part worth building yourself is the coupling to your own product data, not the inbox. That coupling is exactly what this tool exposes as an API.

Recommendation by size:

- Solo: Stay with the shared inbox until the first customer asks about response times.
- Mid-market: Buy, but plan the customer cards from your own product data in from the start.
- Enterprise: Before signing, settle the UK storage location, audit logging and the top tier price in writing.

## Context

- Implements method: [Bowtie Funnel / Revenue Architecture](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/bowtie-funnel) — The right half of the bowtie measures onboarding, usage and expansion, and Plain organises cases along accounts, customer tiers and service commitments, which is what gives that half any data at all.
- Implements method: [Service Blueprinting](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/service-blueprinting) — A blueprint asks which internal step hangs off which customer step, and customer cards that pull live product data into the case make that coupling visible in daily operation.
- Implements method: [Solution as Four Relational Processes](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/loesung-vier-prozesse) — The method shows vendors losing ground in post-deployment support, and a case system that treats companies and customer tiers as objects in their own right is where that fourth process can be managed at all.
- Displaces: Ticketing system without account context, Shared inbox for customer requests, Separate spreadsheet of response times per customer

## Evidence

- Plans, seat prices, included credits and tier boundaries — https://www.plain.com/pricing (as of 2026-07-30)
- Storage in AWS eu-west-2 London, encryption, deletion of inactive workspaces, Slack cache, SOC 2 Type II — https://help.plain.com/article/security (as of 2026-07-30)
- Data processing addendum, training exclusion, standard contractual clauses, seven day objection window for subprocessors — https://www.plain.com/legal/dpa (as of 2026-07-30)
- Legal entity Not Just Tickets Ltd, company number 12736513, thirty day notice period, retention of aggregated data, price changes with thirty days' notice — https://www.plain.com/legal/terms-and-conditions (as of 2026-07-30)
- Incorporated 13 July 2020, status active, share allotment 29 June 2026, confirmation statement 12 July 2026 — https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12736513/filing-history (as of 2026-07-30)
- Fifteen million dollar growth round in February 2025 and named reference customers — https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/plain-raises-15m-series-a-to-build-the-future-of-collaborative-b2b-support/ (as of 2026-07-30)
- Companies, customer groups, service level agreements and customer cards as first-class API objects — https://www.plain.com/docs/graphql/introduction (as of 2026-07-30)
- Credits are consumed only by the assistant, monthly ones expire, purchased ones roll over — https://help.plain.com/article/ai-credits (as of 2026-07-30)
- Renewal of the EU adequacy decision for the United Kingdom on 19 December 2025 through 27 December 2031 — https://eucrim.eu/news/commission-renewed-adequacy-decisions-for-data-transfers-to-the-uk/ (as of 2026-07-30)