n8n is a workflow automation platform that uniquely combines AI capabilities with business process automation, giving technical teams the flexibility of code with the speed of no-code. With 166k+ GitHub stars, 200k+ community members, and 200+ employees today, n8n has become one of the fastest-growing dev tools companies in the world, raising $259M across six rounds, including a $180M Series C in late 2025.

The challenge

By summer 2025, ticket volume had exploded from 100 to over 2,000 per week. The support team, just 8 people, couldn't keep up.

"Response times stretched to 2 or 3 weeks. Customers were complaining a lot, and they were right," Gualter says. "It wasn't the level of support we wanted to provide. There was so much noise coming in that we couldn't get to the real issues fast enough."

Their existing tool, which had worked in the beginning, couldn’t keep pace. The UI felt dated. Integrations were complex to build and maintain.

And for a company whose entire product is about connecting anything to everything, the irony wasn't lost on them: their support tool was the one thing they couldn't easily extend.

With the support team set to double again, Gualter needed to choose: go with a market leader like Zendesk, or bet on something built for how modern technical teams work.

"We were looking for a modern tool with a better experience for agents. But at the same time, we needed a powerful API that I could extend with n8n. We use our own product for everything. Support tooling had to be no different."

Why Plain?

When evaluating platforms, Plain stood out for several key reasons:

• API-first architecture that matched how n8n builds software

• A modern, intuitive UI that agents actually liked

• Transparent, predictable pricing with no surprises as they continued to scale

• A team that felt like partners, not a vendor

"If I had to pick what made the difference, it was two things: the API is incredibly powerful, and the people. This was one of the best POC stages I've done. The Plain team was available, approachable, and genuinely invested in our success."

The implementation was remarkably fast. Despite never having used GraphQL before, Gualter learned it during onboarding and shipped their first AI integration just a week and a half after going live.

"If you look at our Slack channel from the beginning, there were probably 50 threads from me asking questions. Matt [Plain’s CTO] and everyone on the team were incredibly available. That's how I was able to move so fast."

The solution

Plain unified n8n’s support operations with the AI-native support system that their scale demanded.

• Unified multi-channel support. All requests from email, Slack, and their support portal flow into one inbox. Enterprise customers get dedicated Slack channels; everyone else uses their preferred contact method.

• Intelligent AI labeling and auto-assignment. Tickets are labeled and routed automatically based on region, priority, and severity. Agents only see their own queue; no manual triaging required.

• Custom reporting and intelligence. Webhook events pipe into Metabase for custom reporting, providing full visibility into support performance.

• Bring-your-own-AI architecture. Plain's API passes LLM-ready conversation history, so n8n could build their own AI agent without maintaining a separate context database.

n8n's custom architecture with Plain's API

The impact

Since switching to Plain, n8n has transformed its support operation:

• Response times dropped from weeks to hours. Before Plain, customers waited 2-3 weeks for responses. Now, enterprise customers get responses in 6-8 hours on average, with complex tickets fully resolved in 1-2 days.

• AI now handles 60% of tickets. n8n built their own AI agent with clear human escalation paths.

"We have AI in front of 60% of our tickets today. It's the only way we can sustain our growth without hiring linearly. When I look at the reports, the AI agent is doing the work of 10 people and costs a fraction of what one agent would."

• Support scaled sustainably. Ticket volume increased 20x, but the team only doubled in size.

• Expanded beyond support. Plain's flexibility has led to adoption across the company, with legal, security, and other internal teams now using Plain for their own workflows.

• Higher quality per interaction. With AI filtering routine queries, agents spend their time on tickets that actually need a human.

"Agents now focus on improving AI and high-value tickets, rather than filtering through repetitive low-value tickets," says Charles Charalambous, Junior Support Engineer.

What's next

n8n has an ambitious goal: reach 80% AI ticket resolution by the end of 2026. With Plain's API-first approach and their own automation expertise, they’re confident they’ll get there.

"What I'd tell other support teams at scaling dev tools companies: there's nothing out there that offers an edge over Plain. If you're somewhat technical, there's nothing you can't build."