20x support capacity
n8n scaled support volume 20x while growing the team just 2x. AI handles 60% of tickets.
Plain vs Crisp
Why support teams choose Plain over Crisp
Crisp is a shared inbox for chat, email, and social. Plain is open infrastructure for B2B support, so your channels, workflows, and AI agents are never limited by what fits in an inbox.
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COMPARISON TABLE
How Plain compares with Crisp, side by side
Plain
Crisp
What it was built for
Customer support, from the ground up.
SLAs, tiers, and routing are yours to configure in the workflow builder or through the API. AI resolves what doesn't need a person, with the option to bring your own agent.
Live chat, extended.
A chat widget that grew into a messaging platform, with a shared inbox, chatbot builder, and knowledge base around it.
Channels
Slack-native on every plan.
Slack, email, chat, and in-app on every plan, with Teams and Discord as you scale. Customers get your replies in the channel they're already in.
Widget, email, and consumer messaging.
Chat widget, email, Telegram, Messenger, Instagram, SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, Line, and phone. Your team can reply from Slack, but customers do not use a shared Slack channel.
Account context
Account context, built in.
Every ticket is tied to a customer and their account, with tier, support volume, and open threads. Bring in fields from your CRM or your own database, and build custom cards from your own API.
Visitor profiles, capped by plan.
A CRM built around the person who opened the chat, from Mini up, with lifecycle tracking and timeline activity waiting for Essentials. Customer profiles are capped: 100 on Free, 5,000 on Mini, 50,000 on Essentials, 200,000 on Plus.
Automation
Build what you need, from day one.
Workflows and routing you configure yourself, in the builder or through the API, with no cap.
Nothing below $95.
No workflow automation on Free or Mini. Essentials unlocks the chatbot builder, conditional flows, webhooks, and API triggers. Template count and AI-based triggers stay behind Plus at $295.
AI packaging
AI included, billed on usage.
Every plan includes a monthly credit allowance, and top-up credits never expire. Customer Agent and Sidekick Agent are both in the plan, on every tier.
Features gated by tier.
Hugo, Crisp's AI agent, runs on a monthly balance: none on Free, $5 on Mini, $25 on Essentials, $75 on Plus. The internal copilot, knowledge training, and MCP server all need Essentials at $95.
Help center
Included on every plan.
A help center your AI can cite and your customers can search, from Foundation up.
Essentials and up.
No knowledge base at all on Free or Mini, so a $45 customer has nothing for customers to self-serve from.
Bring your own agent
Run your own model.
Any LLM or third-party agent through the API and Machine Users, alongside or instead of Plain's own.
Hugo, or a chatbot you build.
A no-code chatbot builder and an MCP server, but no documented path for running your own model as a participant in the support flow.
Seats
Free viewer seats, unlimited, on every plan.
Anyone on your team can see conversations for free.
Included by tier, and capped below Plus.
2 seats on Free, 4 on Mini, 10 on Essentials, 20+ on Plus. Extra agents at $10 a month are available only on Plus, so growing past your tier's count means changing plan.
Pricing
Published, AI included.
$45/user/mo Foundation, $99/user/mo Horizon, custom Frontier, billed annually. AI credits included, viewer seats free, 7-day trial with no credit card.
Flat per workspace.
Free, Mini $45, Essentials $95, Plus $295 a month, per workspace rather than per seat, plus Hugo credits. 14-day trial with all features and no card.
The top reasons why B2B teams choose Plain
Your customers are in Slack.
You support customers in Slack, Teams, and Discord, and they get your replies right in the channel they're already in. Crisp reaches them through a widget on your site.
Your support knows the account, not just the visitor.
Every ticket is tied to a customer and their account, with tier, support volume, and open threads. Route by account value and set SLAs by tier.
Anything you can do by hand, you can do through the API.
Full API access from day one: build headless support, embed it in your product, run your own AI agents inside Plain, or put Plain behind the tools your team already uses.
What companies are seeing with Plain
50 hours saved each week
Resend reclaimed 50 hours a week across a five-person team that handles 1,000 tickets weekly.
95% faster first response time
Voltage Park cut first response time from over an hour to 3 minutes after leaving a legacy help desk.
98% faster resolution time
Tinybird reduced enterprise resolution time from 6 days to 2 hours.
The most important thing was meeting our customers where they were. Plain let us do that effectively, and the API-first nature meant we could adapt the tool to our needs, not change our workflows to suit the tool.
Spencer Mellon
Technical Support Manager, Voltage Park
Migrated from Crisp to Plain
How we make migrating to Plain easy.
Migrating a system of record isn't what anyone gets excited about. So here's what the process actually looks like, specifically.
1
We buy out your contract.
If you're mid-contract with Crisp, we'll buy out your remaining months so you're not paying twice.
2
We create an action plan.
Week 1-2: sandbox setup and test import. Week 3-4: pilot with 4 to 5 power users. Week 5-6: full rollout.
3
We rebuild what matters.
We treat migration as a reset, not a lift-and-shift. We don't replicate your Crisp workflows in Plain. We figure out what you were actually trying to achieve, and build that instead.
Our honest comparison promise
Most comparison pages are dressed-up sales collateral.
Comparison tables are especially easy to rig: choose the rows carefully enough, and one side always wins.
Competition is good. Selective, outdated comparison pages aren't.
So here's our promise. Every row in our table cites a source, covers both products in the same level of detail, and includes the places where Crisp is the better choice. If you've received a comparison about Plain from a competitor, or found a false claim here, we're happy to fact-check and correct: factcheck@plain.com.
Simon Rohrbach
Co-Founder & CEO, Plain
Where Crisp may be a better fit.
You're a small team and email is the job.
Crisp is a focused shared inbox for teams managing customer conversations. If that's the job, Crisp may be more tool than you need from Plain.
You want to start free.
Five users, one inbox, and one Docs site at no cost. Plain's entry is $45 per user a month after a 7-day trial.
Your team isn't technical.
Crisp is built to be set up quickly without an engineer. Plain's higher ceiling is useful when your support model needs product data and an API.
Questions and answers.
Frequently asked questions we get when comparing Plain and Crisp.
What is the difference between Plain and Crisp?
Crisp started as a live chat widget and grew into a messaging platform, with a shared inbox, chatbot builder, and knowledge base around it. It's built for visitors on your website. Plain is infrastructure for B2B customer support. Every ticket is tied to a customer and the account they belong to, Slack and Teams are real channels, AI resolves and investigates, and everything in the UI is in the API. Crisp suits teams whose support arrives through a chat bubble. Plain suits teams supporting named accounts with tiers and SLAs.
Can Plain replace Crisp?
For B2B support, yes. You get Slack, Teams, Discord, email, chat, and in-app in one queue, a help center, AI agents, workflows, and an API to build on. If most of your volume is anonymous website visitors, Crisp is built for that and Plain isn't.
How does Plain's pricing compare with Crisp's?
They're different models. Crisp bills per workspace: free for 2 seats, then Mini at $45, Essentials at $95, and Plus at $295 a month, with extra agents at $10 each beyond your tier's included seats. Plain bills per user: $45/user/month Foundation, $99/user/month Horizon, and Frontier custom, billed annually, with viewer seats free and AI credits included. At a given team size Crisp's flat fee can work out cheaper per person. The difference shows up in what's included: both of Plain's AI agents are in every plan, while Crisp's internal copilot needs Essentials at $95.
Is Crisp expensive?
The plans aren't. Hugo is where it moves. Every paid tier includes a monthly AI credit balance, $5 on Mini, $25 on Essentials, $75 on Plus. Those credits reset at the end of each month.
Does Crisp support Slack?
Not as a customer channel. There's an integration for notifying your team, but customers reach you through the widget, email, or social. Plain runs Slack as a native channel on every plan: 25 channels on Foundation, unlimited on Horizon and above, with Teams and Discord as you scale. A message in a private customer channel is a ticket, with an SLA.
Does Plain show customer data from our product?
Yes. Every ticket is tied to a customer and their account, with tier, support volume, and open threads. You can bring in fields from your CRM or your own database, or build custom cards from your own API. Crisp has a visitor CRM from the Essentials tier up, built around the person who opened the chat rather than the account they belong to.
Does Plain's AI cost extra?
No. Both AI agents are included in every plan and run on your monthly credit allowance. Top-up credits never expire.
Does Plain require an engineering team to run?
No. Support teams of two to two hundred run on Plain day to day. The smallest is two co-founders with no support function at all. AI works with no code, started from a ticket, Slack, a workflow, or a schedule. Engineering enters when you want it to.