Roles + permissions

Plain offers flexible roles to help teams collaborate with the right level of access.

Whether you're handling daily support, working cross-functionally, or managing setup and billing, each role is tailored to common responsibilities in B2B support.

Available roles

Owner

• Full access to all settings and data

• Can manage billing, delete the workspace, and generate API keys

• Ideal for company founders or operations leads who oversee contracts and admin

Admin

• Access to everything in Plain except for billing and workspace deletion

• Can configure integrations, manage team settings, and oversee workflows

• Best suited for support leads, team managers, or platform owners

Support

• Can message customers and use all in-app support features

• Perfect for support agents, engineers, or anyone actively replying to customers

Viewer (Free)

• Can view all support requests and internal discussions

• Cannot send messages to customers via Plain

• Unlimited and completely free – ideal for teammates in product, engineering, legal, or sales who need visibility without participating in replies

Seat types and pricing

• Owner, Admin, and Support roles are paid seats

• Viewer seats are free and unlimited

Managing access

You can manage:

• Adding or removing users

• Changing someone’s role

• Viewing seat usage and billing details

All from Settings → Members for user management and Settings → Billing for subscription and seat management.

Custom roles

Custom roles give you more flexibility in managing access within your workspace.

You can create and assign roles that are fully tailored to your team’s structure - whether that’s for specific clients, departments, or types of support work.

To manage custom roles, go to Settings → Roles → Add Role.

Once created, custom roles can be assigned to both new and existing members just like any other role.

Thread access and visibility

Custom roles also let you control exactly which threads a user can access.

When setting up a custom role, you can define access rules across several dimensions, such as:

• Tenants - Limit visibility to threads from specific tenants

• Companies - Restrict access to support requests from particular companies

• Tiers - Control visibility by customer tier (e.g. “Enterprise” or “Pro”)

• Labels - Filter by thread labels like “Product” or “Sales”

• Channels - Limit access to specific support channels, such as email or chat

You can mix and match these filters to precisely define what the role can see.

For example, you could create a role that can only view threads labeled “Sales” for a specific company, or one that only sees email requests from Enterprise customers.

Any threads that don’t match the configured filters will be completely hidden from members with that role.