Support software for founders, not call centres.
If you are the founder answering support@ between everything else, you do not need a contact-centre platform. You need your shared inbox to become owned tickets with clear ownership, saved replies, honest SLA timers and reporting, priced by team band so a helper never costs a full seat. Solves does that, email-first, in GBP.
Starter is paid from the start, for small teams, not free forever.
See it in action
Every email becomes a ticket you own
This is the founder's desk: an owned ticket with the customer thread, your public replies and private notes kept apart. You reply from email, but nothing slips and nobody steps on your work.
- One owner and a clear state on every ticket
- Public replies and private notes hard-separated
- Saved replies to insert your most-typed answers
The short answer
You are a founder doing support, not a support department
When you run a small business, support is one of a dozen hats you wear. A shared inbox works at first, then quietly stops working: messages get answered twice or not at all, you cannot tell what is owed a reply today, and helpers cannot pitch in without a seat each. Solves keeps the email simplicity and adds the missing structure, ownership, states, notes, SLA timers and reports, without turning support into a second job.
This page is for the founder or owner-led team of two to five people leaving a shared inbox behind. It covers why the inbox breaks, what to set up first, how to run support solo, when to add a helper, what to measure and the common mistakes to avoid. The aim is a desk you can run in the margins of your day, not a platform you have to learn before you can answer a customer.
Solves is email-first on purpose. It does not run phone lines, live chat shifts or social inboxes, because a small team cannot staff those well and pretending otherwise just sets customers up to be let down. What it gives you is a queue that never loses a message and response times you can actually keep.
Why it breaks
Why a shared inbox stops working as you grow
A shared support@ inbox is the right place to start and the wrong place to stay. It shows everyone the same messages but tells no one who owns what, and that gap is where customers fall through.
Three things break first, and they break in this order:
- Ownership goes missing. Everyone can see the inbox, so everyone assumes someone else has it. The polite, easy emails get three replies and the awkward one waits a week.
- Visibility goes dark. You cannot tell how many messages are open, how old the oldest one is, or whether you are keeping your own response promises, because an inbox is a pile, not a queue.
- Collaboration gets messy. To bring in a colleague you forward the thread, paste context into chat, or talk over someone's shoulder, and the customer sometimes sees an internal aside that was never meant for them.
None of this means you have outgrown email. It means you have outgrown the inbox as a tool for sharing work. The fix is to keep email and add ownership, a real queue and a hard wall between what the customer sees and what stays internal.
The signs it is time to move
- You have asked "did anyone reply to this?" out loud more than once this week.
- A second person now helps with support, even occasionally.
- You support more than one brand, address or storefront from the same inbox.
- A customer has seen an internal comment, or two of you have replied to the same person.
- You cannot answer "how long are we taking to reply?" with a number.
Set up first
What to set up first when you leave the inbox
You do not need to configure everything on day one. Five things give you most of the benefit, and you can add the rest as you go.
1. Connect your support address
Point your existing support@ address at Solves with forwarding-first mailbox setup. New email becomes a ticket straight away, so you keep working while you finish the rest. Live sending from Solves stays gated until your mailbox checks pass or a founder override is recorded, so a reply never goes out from an address that is not ready. Moving off the shared inbox by forwarding is the shipped, low-risk way to start.
2. Turn on ownership
Assign tickets, even if for now that means everything is yours. Ownership is the single change that stops the "did anyone reply?" problem, because every ticket has exactly one person responsible and a state that says where it stands: New, Open, Waiting for Customer, Snoozed, Resolved or Closed.
3. Save your three most-typed replies
You answer the same handful of questions constantly. Save those replies once and insert them in a click. They keep your tone consistent when you are busy, and they are the fastest win for a solo founder. Saved replies can be scoped to a single brand or shared across the whole organisation.
4. Set simple response targets
Decide what counts as a timely first reply for your business and let the SLA timers track it. First-response and resolution timers, with per-brand or organisation targets in minutes, surface a breaching view so you see what genuinely needs attention today instead of guessing.
5. Save the queue views you will live in
You do not work the whole pile at once. Saved queue views give you New, Unassigned, Waiting, Snoozed, Breaching SLA, Resolved and All out of the box, with filters for brand, mailbox, assignee, state, priority, tag and search. A solo founder mostly lives in New and Breaching SLA, which is two clicks, not a dashboard to build.
What you get
The pieces a tiny team actually uses
Everything here is shipped today. No channels you cannot staff, no per-seat surprise.
Owned tickets
Every email becomes a ticket with one owner and a clear state, so nothing is answered twice and nothing is left for "someone".
How tickets workSaved replies
Insert your most-typed answers in a click, scoped to a brand or shared org-wide, so your tone stays steady when the day is busy.
Notes vs replies
Private notes for the team are hard-separated from public replies, with a guard against stale replies, so an internal aside never reaches a customer.
See the separationHonest SLA timers
First-response and resolution targets in minutes, with a breaching view so you reply to the right thing first.
Multi-brand ready
Run more than one brand or storefront from one queue, each with its own address and signature, when one brand becomes two.
Multi-brand supportReports you will read
Open backlog, ageing, waiting, first response, resolution and created-versus-resolved, so you can answer "how are we doing?" with a number.
Running it solo
How to run support on your own, in three habits
Work New, then Breaching
Start each support pass in the New view to triage fresh email, then check Breaching SLA so anything close to a missed promise gets answered before it slips. Two views, a few minutes, done.
Lean on saved replies and notes
Answer repeat questions with saved replies, and leave yourself a private note on anything you are waiting to hear back on. Set the state to Waiting for Customer so it leaves your live count.
Glance at the numbers weekly
Once a week look at first response and open backlog. If backlog is climbing or first response is drifting, that is your signal to save more replies, or to bring in a helper.
Adding help
When to add a helper, and how to do it cheaply
The right time to add a second person is before you are drowning, not after. The usual triggers are simple: backlog that creeps up day on day, first-response times that drift past your target, or your own week so full that support waits until evening.
In most helpdesks, adding even an occasional helper means buying a full monthly seat, which is why founders soldier on alone for too long. Solves prices by team band, not per agent, so the person who clears overflow on a busy Monday does not cost the same as a full-time agent. You size the plan to your band and let people help.
Bring people in at the right level
Team permissions use plain role presets rather than an enterprise role builder. You decide which brands a person can see and whether they can reply, add notes only as a light collaborator, or manage a brand. A bookkeeper might get notes-only access to the accounts brand; a part-time helper might reply on one storefront and never see another.
- A light collaborator can read tickets and add private notes, but not send public replies, which is perfect for a colleague who knows the answer but should not be the voice to the customer.
- A per-brand reply role lets a helper work one brand or mailbox without touching the rest.
- Ticket-visibility scope keeps history a person should not see out of their view entirely.
Keep the wrong reply from going out
As soon as a second person joins, two old shared-inbox risks return: replying to the wrong customer and replying as the wrong brand. Solves locks the composer to the ticket's brand and mailbox, so a reply for one brand cannot quietly go out as another, and a stale-reply guard stops a reply being sent against a ticket that moved on while it was being written.
What to measure
What to measure when you are small
You do not need a wall of dashboards. A handful of numbers tell you whether support is healthy and whether it is time to change something. Solves reports cover the ones that matter for a small team.
| Open backlog | How many tickets are open right now. The simplest health check. Steadily rising backlog means demand is outrunning your time. |
|---|---|
| First response time | How long a customer waits for a first useful reply. The number customers feel most. Watch it drift before it embarrasses you. |
| Ageing | How old your open tickets are getting. A few very old tickets quietly eroding trust are easy to miss without an ageing view. |
| Waiting | What is parked on the customer versus genuinely on you, so your live count reflects real work, not threads you are simply waiting on. |
| Resolution time | How long it takes to close things out, so you can see whether issues are being finished or just nudged along. |
| Created vs resolved | Whether you are clearing as fast as new tickets arrive. Two lines drifting apart is the clearest "get help" signal there is. |
All of these filter by brand, so even a two-brand founder can tell whether one identity is the source of the load. Keep the habit light: a weekly glance at first response and created-versus-resolved is enough to catch trouble early.
Avoid these
Common mistakes small teams make leaving the inbox
Most of the pain of moving off a shared inbox comes from a few avoidable mistakes. Sidestep these and the switch is quick.
Buying a contact-centre platform
A two-person team does not need omnichannel routing, a voice stack and an AI suite. You will pay for capability you cannot staff and spend your first month configuring instead of replying. Start with what you genuinely use, email tickets done well, and add scope only when a real need appears.
Paying per seat for occasional help
Per-agent pricing punishes exactly the flexible, all-hands-on-deck way small teams actually work. If your tool charges a full seat for someone who helps two hours a week, you will either overpay or keep a helper locked out. Team bands avoid that trap.
Skipping mailbox verification
Rushing live sending before your domain checks pass is how replies land in spam or bounce. Solves gates live sending until the mailbox is verified or a founder override is recorded, precisely so a small team does not quietly wreck its deliverability on day one.
Letting notes leak to customers
In a forwarded-email setup it is far too easy to send an internal aside to the customer. A hard separation between private notes and public replies removes that risk entirely, which matters most when a second person joins and context starts flying around.
Measuring nothing
If you never look at backlog or first response, you only learn you have a problem when a customer complains. A weekly two-minute glance at a couple of numbers is the cheapest insurance a founder can buy.
Honest pricing
Pricing that does not punish a small team
Solves is priced in GBP ex VAT by team band, not per agent, so growing your team or pulling in a helper does not trigger a per-seat bill. You pay for a band of usage and let people help.
Start at GBP 29: three users, one brand, one mailbox and 1,000 tickets a month, for small teams. It is paid, not free forever, which is the honest version of "free" that the market often blurs. When you are ready, paid bands run Starter at GBP 29, Team at GBP 79, Growth at GBP 149 and Agency/MSP at GBP 299 a month, ex VAT, and paying annually gives you twelve months for ten.
If you are an early adopter, the pilot is the best value: the first 20 paid customers get the Team band at GBP 49 a month for six months, then GBP 79, with setup help and saved-reply migration to get you moving quickly. It is a fair trade for feedback or a testimonial while Solves is in pilot.
There is no per-seat penalty buried anywhere in this. A founder who occasionally hands a brand to a helper pays for the band, not for the helper, which is the whole point.
Honest comparison
Team bands vs per-agent pricing for a small team
A generic look at why per-seat pricing hurts founders and flexible teams, and where Solves draws its line. Figures are illustrative of the per-agent model, not any one vendor.
| Solves team bands | Typical per-agent helpdesk | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | One GBP band for the whole team | A monthly fee for every named agent |
| Cost of an occasional helper | Covered by your band | A full seat, even for two hours a week |
| Free entry point | Starter, GBP 29, paid from the start | Varies: some have a free tier, some are trial only |
| Currency and pricing | GBP ex VAT, designed for UK SMEs | Often USD, with US-centric defaults |
| Multi-brand | Included, scaled by band | Frequently a higher-tier add-on |
| Phone, live chat and social | Not included, by design | Often available, at a price you must staff |
Competitor facts last verified 13 June 2026. Re-check the vendor's current plans before deciding.
This is a generic model comparison, not a quote of any named competitor. Some rivals do offer a genuine free tier, and pricing changes often, so always check a vendor's current pricing page before deciding.
Email-first, on purpose
Solves handles support email: owned tickets, ownership, notes, SLAs, multi-brand and reporting. It does not do live chat, phone or social inboxes. That focus is exactly why a founder or a team of two can run support well without it taking over the week.
FAQ
Questions founders ask
What is the best software for customer service for a founder or small team?
For a founder or an owner-led team still living in a shared inbox, the best customer service software is the one that turns email into owned, trackable work without a per-seat tax or a setup project. You want owned tickets, clear ownership, public replies kept separate from private notes, saved replies, simple SLA timers and honest reporting, and you want all of that on email first rather than a sprawl of channels you cannot staff. Solves is built for exactly that: it takes a shared support address, makes every message a ticket someone owns, and prices by team band so a helper picking up overflow never costs a full seat. The wider answer is to score any tool against your real day: time to first useful reply, whether helpers can pitch in cheaply, and whether you can see backlog and response times at a glance.
What are the 7 Cs of customer service?
The 7 Cs are a memory aid for the qualities good support shares: clarity (say what you mean plainly), communication (reply, set expectations, follow up), competence (know the answer or find it), courtesy (stay polite under pressure), consistency (the same standard from every person every time), credibility (do what you promised), and a customer-first attitude (solve the person's actual problem). A tiny team can hit all seven without a big tool. Ownership stops messages slipping, so communication stays consistent. Saved replies keep clarity and courtesy steady when you are busy. SLA timers protect the promise behind credibility. Private notes let a second person stay competent on a ticket without the customer ever seeing the working out.
Can one person realistically run support in Solves?
Yes. Solves is designed so a single founder can run support without it eating the day. New email lands as a ticket assigned to you, the queue views show you what is new, waiting and breaching, saved replies cut repeat typing, and first-response and resolution SLA timers tell you what genuinely needs a reply today versus what can wait. When you bring in a helper, you give them access to one brand or notes-only collaboration without paying for a full seat, so the tool grows with you rather than forcing a jump.
Do I pay per agent in Solves?
No. Solves uses GBP team bands rather than per-agent pricing, so the occasional helper who clears a busy Monday does not cost a full monthly seat. You size the plan to your team band and let people help. The Starter is GBP 29 for three users, one brand, one mailbox and 1,000 tickets a month while you test, and paid bands run Starter at GBP 29, Team at GBP 79, Growth at GBP 149 and Agency/MSP at GBP 299 a month, ex VAT, with annual billing priced as twelve months for ten.
How is Solves different from just using a shared inbox?
A shared inbox shows the same messages to everyone but tells no one who owns what. Two people reply to the same customer, an awkward one gets left for someone else, and nobody can see how long things are taking. Solves keeps the email feel but adds ownership, ticket states, private notes that customers never see, saved queue views, SLA timers and reporting. You still work from email, you just stop losing messages and stepping on each other.
Is Solves only for UK businesses?
Solves is UK-first by design: pricing is in GBP ex VAT, the copy and defaults suit UK SMEs, and invoices are VAT-visible. It works perfectly well for any small team that sends support email, but the pricing and product defaults are tuned for the UK, which is rare in a market dominated by US-dollar, per-agent tools.
Turn support@ into owned tickets today
Start at £29, keep your existing address, and stop losing messages in a shared inbox.