Spiceworks
Spiceworks covers the Microsoft 365 outage from the help desk's side.
Comparison · Support
Plain vs DoneDone
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Plain and DoneDone — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Plain vs DoneDone: at a glance
What is Plain?
Plain built an autonomous support agent, and has now built the controls to trust it.
Plain's changelog is dated entries with no titles, and nearly all of it concerns two AI surfaces: Ari, the customer-facing responder, and Sidekick, the internal agent. Sidekick spent July gaining reach — its own full-page home, reusable workspace skills, and connection to arbitrary MCP servers. The newest release turns to Ari and adds what was missing around it: a way to test it before customers see it, provenance behind each answer, configurable tone, and explicit escalation rules.
What is DoneDone?
DoneDone's editor gets tables, spreadsheet paste and text colors.
DoneDone's November 13 release adds tables to the text editor, with direct paste from Google Sheets or Excel, plus text sizes, colors, highlighting and strikethrough. It follows the November 2 rework of Scheduled Tasks and October's bulk checklist entry and single email connection for several Mailboxes. Late summer brought workflow automations and custom fields.
Plain vs DoneDone: editorial side-by-side
Plain
8.8SUPPORT
Plain built an autonomous support agent, and has now built the controls to trust it.
◆ Current state
Plain's changelog is dated entries with no titles, and nearly all of it concerns two AI surfaces: Ari, the customer-facing responder, and Sidekick, the internal agent. Sidekick spent July gaining reach — its own full-page home, reusable workspace skills, and connection to arbitrary MCP servers. The newest release turns to Ari and adds what was missing around it: a way to test it before customers see it, provenance behind each answer, configurable tone, and explicit escalation rules.
◆ Where it's heading
The sequence reads as capability first, then governance. Plain rebuilt Ari into an agentic first responder, opened Sidekick to any MCP server, and let teams write skills the whole workspace shares — all of which widen what the agents can do and reach. The current release closes the loop the other way, making that autonomy inspectable and bounded before it is switched on. That is the order support-AI vendors have to complete in: teams will not put an agent in front of customers on capability claims alone.
◆ Prediction
With testing and provenance in place, the next step is likely measurement — resolution and escalation rates per skill, or per-answer quality review feeding back into the skills teams write. The entries are short summaries linking off-site, so per-release depth is limited.
DoneDone
5.0SUPPORT
DoneDone's editor gets tables, spreadsheet paste and text colors.
◆ Current state
DoneDone's November 13 release adds tables to the text editor, with direct paste from Google Sheets or Excel, plus text sizes, colors, highlighting and strikethrough. It follows the November 2 rework of Scheduled Tasks and October's bulk checklist entry and single email connection for several Mailboxes. Late summer brought workflow automations and custom fields.
◆ Where it's heading
After the bigger summer releases, DoneDone has moved into steady polish of daily actions: replies, checklists, schedules and now formatting. Each release removes friction for small help-desk teams rather than adding a new module.
◆ Prediction
More small usability updates on email and tasks are likely; the entries give no sign of another large module soon.
Alternatives to Plain and DoneDone
Other Support products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Plain or DoneDone.
Twilio
Twilio's voice AI stops cutting callers off mid-sentence, using its own turn-taking model.
Xurrent
Xurrent's November update blocks unverified email senders from changing records.
LiveAgent
LiveAgent 5.71 starts letting bots work chats over MCP and answer the phones.
Chatway
Chatway adds a Ticket Center, moving from live chat toward a full helpdesk.
Faveo Helpdesk
Faveo Helpdesk's free edition has shipped mostly security patches and stack upgrades since 2019.
See all Plain alternatives → · See all DoneDone alternatives →
Recent activity from Plain and DoneDone
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 16h agoDoneDoneTables and More Formatting Options in the Text Editor
- 11d agoDoneDoneImproved: More Control Over Scheduled Tasks
- 21d agoDoneDoneSmall Improvements to Checklists and Replies
- 1mo agoDoneDoneNew: Use One Email Connection Across Multiple Mailboxes
- 1mo agoDoneDoneUpdated Email Filters!
- 2mo agoDoneDoneCustom Fields are live! 🎉 ⚡
- 2mo agoPlainTest Ari before customers see it, with per-answer proof ⚡
- 3mo agoPlainImport past conversations from any tool, no built-in importer
- 3mo agoPlainSidekick connects to any MCP server ⚡
- 3mo agoPlainSidekick gains reusable, workspace-shared skills ⚡
- 3mo agoPlainShare published workflows by link
- 4mo agoPlainSidekick gets its own full-page home and tool controls
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Plain and DoneDone?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Plain is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 8.8 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Plain better than DoneDone?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Plain is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 8.8 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Support products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Plain?
Top Plain alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Plain alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/plain for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to DoneDone?
Top DoneDone alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "DoneDone alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/donedone for the full list with editorial commentary on each.