As businesses shift their customer support channels from traditional email ticketing systems to modern platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord, managing these interactions efficiently has become a challenge. With hundreds of active channels, maintaining streamlined communication can quickly become overwhelming.
Plain, a U.K.-based startup, aims to solve this issue with its API-first platform that consolidates customer interactions across multiple channels, offering businesses a unified support solution.
“It means you can literally talk to your customers wherever they are,” said CEO Simon Rohrbach in an interview.
Plain’s platform supports traditional chat and email functionalities like Zendesk or Intercom, while also integrating modern communication tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord into a single user interface.
“It’s incredibly fast and intuitive. Users love the seamless experience, and we offer all essential support metrics, including SLA tracking and response time analytics,” Rohrbach added.
According to Rohrbach, customer support is undergoing a major shift from being a siloed function to becoming more integrated with customer success, engineering, and other internal teams. Plain’s platform fosters this cross-functional collaboration.
Funding and Expansion Plans
Plain has successfully raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures, with continued support from Index Ventures and Connect Ventures.
The company plans to use part of the funding to establish its first U.S. office in San Francisco, expanding its presence beyond the U.K.
Founded by Rohrbach and Matt Vagni, both former Deliveroo employees, Plain benefits from their experience in scaling and managing customer-facing tools. Rohrbach previously led Deliveroo’s content, research, and design team, while Vagni worked on design systems and internal tools.
Current customers of Plain include Sanity, Laravel, Stytch, and Raycast.
Competitive Landscape
Battery Ventures general partner Neeraj Agrawal noted, “B2B support is entering a new era of collaboration and AI-powered solutions.”
Plain faces competition from U.S.-based startups Thena and Pylon, which are also working to aggregate customer support channels.
Pylon raised $17 million last year in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, securing over 250 customers. Meanwhile, Thena has raised more than $7 million with investors such as Lightspeed and First Round Capital backing its growth.
With its latest funding and expansion plans, Plain is positioning itself as a key player in the evolving customer support landscape.