What is an AI support stack?

An AI support stack is a layered architecture that combines AI agents, a unified inbox, orchestration logic, communication channels, and an intelligence layer. Rather than using a single tool with AI bolted on, a proper AI support stack lets each component do a specific job while sharing data across the whole system.

How does Plain's AI agent, Ari, differ from a generic chatbot?

Ari is built specifically for B2B support. It engages rather than deflects, pulls answers from your actual documentation and product knowledge, and escalates to a human with full context when it hits the limits of what it can resolve autonomously. Generic chatbots typically fall back to unhelpful responses on technical queries — Ari doesn't.

Which channels does Plain support?

Plain supports Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, in-app chat, live chat, contact forms, and a headless customer portal. Every channel feeds into a single unified inbox.

How does Plain's pricing work?

Plain starts at $35 per seat per month. There are no per-resolution AI fees and no surprise charges tied to AI usage. A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card required.

How long does it take to set up Plain?

Plain is designed to get you from zero to first resolved ticket in under 30 minutes. Connecting channels, pointing Ari at your knowledge sources, and enabling Lookup are all self-serve steps with no engineering required.

Does Plain replace Zendesk or Intercom?

Yes. Plain is a complete alternative to legacy helpdesk tools like Zendesk, Intercom, and Freshdesk — built specifically for B2B engineering teams. Unlike those tools, Plain was designed from the ground up around AI agents, not tickets.

The AI support stack for B2B teams

Plain gives B2B teams the AI support stack they've been waiting for.

Connect Slack, Teams, Discord, and email into one unified inbox. Deploy Ari, your AI agent, to resolve issues before your team wakes up. Get from zero to live in under 30 minutes.

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14-day free trial · No credit card required · Live in under 30 minutes

Trusted by technical B2B teams

Quick facts

The numbers behind Plain

< 30 min

Setup time from zero to first resolved ticket

12 min

Tinybird cut first response time from 1 hour to 12 minutes

5 layers

Full agentic stack: infrastructure, AI, orchestration, channels, intelligence

$35/seat

Starting price, no surprise AI fees, no per-resolution charges

Unified inbox

Channel complexity is the root cause of slow B2B support.

Your customers ping you on Slack Connect, send formal requests over email, and raise technical issues in Discord. Meanwhile, your team is jumping between tabs to track it all.

This isn't a people problem. It's a tooling problem. Plain unifies every conversation into one fast, structured inbox — whether the query arrived via Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, or an in-app form. Plain acts as the customer-facing layer in your stack AI infrastructure, feeding structured support data into your vector database, CRM, and any other products in your technology stack.

Learn more at plain.com

Slack Connect

Microsoft Teams

Discord

In-app chat

Live chat

Contact forms

Customer portal

No professional services needed

Support automation from zero to first resolved ticket in under 30 minutes.

No implementation partner. No six-month onboarding. No professional services fee. Just connect, configure, and resolve.

Connect your channels

Link Slack Connect, Teams, Discord, email, and any other channel in minutes. Every conversation flows into one unified inbox — no data migration, no professional services.

Point Ari at your knowledge

Add your docs, pricing page, Help Center, or internal FAQs as knowledge sources. Ari reads them and starts resolving issues autonomously from day one.

Automate triage, handle what AI can't

When Ari is unsure, it escalates with full context already attached. Sidekick drafts the reply. Your rep reviews, sends, and moves on.

Watch Insights compound

As conversations accumulate, Plain Insights detects trends, surfaces churn signals, and delivers daily summaries. All infrastructure components — inbox, AI agent, knowledge base, analytics — work together. Your product team finally has real signal.

AI support stack

Not AI bolted on. AI built in.

Most vendors bolt AI onto a legacy ticketing system and call it an AI infrastructure solution. Plain is a modern AI stack where each layer — from AI models and language models to routing and data storage — has a specific job. No MLOps tuning required. No performance degradation as you scale.

Ari · AI Agent

Generative AI that resolves customer issues before your team wakes up.

Ari is built on large language models and generative AI tuned specifically for B2B support. It uses semantic search across your knowledge sources — Help Center, docs, pricing pages, and internal FAQs — to return contextually accurate answers. Unlike generic chatbots that rely on keyword routing or rigid decision trees, Ari understands the intent behind a question and resolves it autonomously. When it reaches the limits of what it can handle, it escalates to your human team with full context already attached.

Learn more

Sidekick · Rep Copilot

Makes every support rep faster without adding headcount.

Sidekick sits inside Plain as an always-on AI assistant. It knows the customer's full history, previous conversations, and the relevant product context before your rep has read a single line. A keyboard shortcut opens Sidekick. From there, reps can draft replies, search all knowledge sources, summarize a thread, and pull key account details without switching tabs. Sidekick handles the lookup and the drafting. The rep handles the relationship.

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Lookup · Cursor Integration

Ends engineering escalations for technical queries.

Lookup connects Plain directly to your codebase through a Cursor integration. When a customer asks how a specific API endpoint behaves, Lookup queries the actual code and returns a definitive, code-accurate answer in minutes. No engineering ticket. No back-and-forth. No delay. Tinybird cut first response time from one hour to 12 minutes after switching to Plain.

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Insights · Product Intelligence

Turns support conversations into product intelligence.

Plain Insights automatically groups similar requests into themes. It detects trends across conversations, surfaces churn signals before they become churned accounts, and delivers daily summaries with data governance built in — so your product team always knows what shifted, who is affected, and which products or features need attention. It is the kind of product intelligence that normally requires a dedicated data pipeline. In Plain, it happens automatically from your existing support conversations.

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Help Center · Self-Serve

Builds a self-serve layer that scales on its own.

Plain's Help Center turns your support conversations into documentation with a single click — the AI identifies a resolved ticket, drafts an article from it, and publishes it to your knowledge base. Every article your Help Center generates pre-empts the next five support tickets. Over time, the self-serve layer absorbs a growing share of routine volume.

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API-First Architecture

API-first infrastructure that lets you build exactly what your team needs.

Plain is API-first — every feature visible in the product is accessible programmatically via the GraphQL API. Machine users, custom AI models and intelligent applications powered by your own model providers, CRM integrations, Linear and Jira syncs, and custom LLM applications are all supported. Plain functions as a core infrastructure component in your modern AI stack, handling the customer-facing layer while your orchestration platforms and internal tools handle the rest.

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The honest comparison

Why B2B teams are replacing their legacy helpdesks with Plain.

Legacy helpdesks

Poor data storage, no AI-native architecture

AI bolted on top of a 15-year-old ticketing system
Per-resolution fees that punish you for using AI
Siloed tools — Slack in one tab, email in another, no shared routing
Engineering pulled into support escalations daily
Support data locked in silos, invisible to your cloud stack
Six-month implementation timelines with no deployment flexibility

Plain

Enterprise-grade security, built-in AI from day one

AI built into every layer of the technology stack from day one
Flat seat pricing — no surprise AI or model provider charges
One unified inbox for every channel, every team, every technology
Lookup ends engineering escalations via Cursor integration
Insights surfaces trends, themes, and churn signals from your data collection
Live in under 30 minutes — no professional services, no cloud migration

Customer stories

The teams winning on customer retention use Plain.

“We're confident it will keep supporting us as we continue to grow.”
Jo Barrow
Chief of Staff, Granola
Granola ran their support through Plain as they scaled from zero to 100x their user base.

“Tinybird cut first response time from one hour to 12 minutes after switching to Plain.”
Tinybird Team
Infrastructure Platform
The Lookup feature connects Plain directly to the codebase, eliminating engineering escalations.

Plain is used by engineering-led companies including:

VercelCursorn8nRaycastStytchSanityTinybirdGranolaAshbySourcegraph

See Plain working on your support queue

Pricing

Simple pricing. No surprises.

No per-resolution AI fees. No surprise charges tied to AI usage. Just a flat seat price that scales with your team.

All-inclusive plan

$35/seat/month

Billed annually. No credit card for trial.

Unified inbox (Slack, Teams, Discord, email)
Ari AI agent — autonomous resolution
Sidekick — AI copilot for every rep
Lookup — codebase integration via Cursor
Insights — trend detection & churn signals
Help Center with AI-generated articles
Full GraphQL API access
Linear, Jira, CRM integrations
14-day free trial, no credit card

Start free trial

14 days free · No credit card required

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI support stack?: An AI support stack is a layered architecture — a modern AI stack — that combines AI agents, a unified inbox, orchestration logic, communication channels, and an intelligence layer. Rather than using a single tool with AI bolted on, a proper AI support stack lets each infrastructure component do a specific job while sharing data across the whole system. Plain is built on this principle: every layer from data storage to LLM routing is purpose-built for B2B support, not retrofitted onto legacy tools.
How does Plain's AI agent, Ari, differ from a generic chatbot?: Ari is built on generative AI and large language models specifically tuned for B2B support. Unlike generic chatbots that rely on simple keyword matching, Ari uses semantic search across your knowledge sources — Help Center, docs, and FAQs — to return contextually accurate answers. It engages rather than deflects, and when it hits the limits of what it can resolve autonomously, it escalates to your human team with full context already attached. No fine-tuning or MLOps expertise required to deploy it.
Which channels does Plain support?: Plain supports Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, in-app chat, live chat, contact forms, and a headless customer portal. Every channel feeds into a single unified inbox, so your team never has to switch tools to track a conversation. Plain handles the routing logic automatically — no manual triage, no workflow configuration, no complexity to manage across your communication tools.
How does Plain fit into a modern AI infrastructure?: Plain is designed as a composable layer in your modern AI infrastructure. It works alongside orchestration platforms, model providers, and your existing technology stack rather than replacing them. The GraphQL API gives you full programmatic access so you can connect Plain to your cloud data pipelines, vector database, CRM, or any AI models your team is already running. Think of it as the customer-facing intelligence layer of your broader AI infrastructure — handling collection, routing, and deployment of support interactions at scale.
How does Plain Insights help product teams?: Plain Insights automatically groups support conversations into recurring themes, detects trends over time, and flags churn signals. Product teams use this data to understand what customers are struggling with, prioritize features, and respond to emerging issues before they become widespread problems. It surfaces the kind of product intelligence that normally requires a dedicated data governance process — delivered automatically from your support conversations.
Can Plain integrate with existing tools like Linear, Jira, or Salesforce?: Yes. Plain's API-first architecture supports integrations with issue trackers like Linear and Jira, CRMs, and any internal system your team runs. Machine users and programmatic access via the GraphQL API mean you can build exactly the integration your workflow needs without waiting for a native connector. For teams running LLM applications or intelligent applications powered by custom AI models, Plain's API acts as the support data layer feeding those systems.
How does Lookup reduce engineering escalations?: Lookup connects Plain to your codebase through a Cursor integration. When a customer asks a question about code behavior, API endpoints, or implementation details, Lookup queries the actual codebase and returns a definitive answer in minutes — without creating an engineering ticket or pulling a developer away from their work. It is one of the core infrastructure components that makes Plain faster than any legacy helpdesk at handling technical B2B support at scale.
What kind of companies use Plain?: Plain is used by technical B2B companies building on modern AI and cloud technologies — including Vercel, Cursor, n8n, Raycast, Stytch, Sanity, Tinybird, Granola, Ashby, and Sourcegraph. These are companies with API-first cultures, technically sophisticated customers, and support needs that span Slack, email, and in-app channels simultaneously. Their products include AI models, developer tools, and data products that require support teams to match the same performance standards as their engineering teams.
How does Plain's pricing work?: Plain starts at $35 per seat per month. There are no per-resolution AI fees and no surprise charges tied to AI usage, deployment costs, or model provider calls. A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card required, giving teams a real production environment to evaluate the full stack — from Ari and Sidekick to Insights and Lookup — before committing.
How quickly can we go live with Plain?: Most teams go from zero to first resolved ticket in under 30 minutes. There is no implementation partner required, no professional services engagement, no MLOps tuning, and no data migration needed. Connect your channels, point Ari at your knowledge sources, and you are live. Plain handles the deployment, scaling, and performance optimization — your team just resolves tickets.