Vol. 01 · No. 02
Summer 2026
Answerable messaging · for UK trustee and council boards

If someone asked for it tomorrow, could you produce it?

A solicitor's letter asks for "all messages about my mother". A safeguarding review needs a handover chat that sits on the personal phone of someone who left in March. Somewhere in your organisation the honest answer is "on people's own phones" – and not one word of it can be produced.

That is the thing we build against. ComplyChat gives those conversations a channel your organisation owns – as easy as the messaging your people already prefer, verified by text, nothing to install – and once your Microsoft 365 tenant is connected, the lasting record files there: your tenant, your retention rules, per organisation, never pooled with anyone else's. We never become your system of record.

Ten minutes on a call: within the first minute or two you are messaging in a real channel from your own phone, a member of staff answers from Microsoft Teams, and before we hang up a magic link signs you into the client portal, where you can see your own record. You drive it, not us. No pitch deck. Or take our measure first and open a channel yourself, right now, without speaking to anyone: of the thirty-four vendors we surveyed, twenty-six will not even publish a price.

The Answerable Guarantee, in the contract on every tier. If a Subject Access Request touches your channels and you cannot produce the record from them within one working day, our team works it with you, free. If it still cannot be produced, we refund your full year. It does not cover a record you deliberately deleted yourself, or a tenant changed away from the setup we documented with you at onboarding – and it is never withheld for a setup we advised ourselves.

Built and run in the UK. Your messages are processed in UK Azure, and your record stays in your own UK Microsoft tenant.

Chair of a board? See what a board's own channel looks like – the board's record, clean from the start. Or ask for the one-page trustee briefing, no call needed.

The live product · not a demo Open a real channel A real channel in your browser. Verified by SMS in seconds – no app to download, no account with anyone else. comply.chat.org.uk

Product demo · ask it anything

ComplyChat online Recorded
Your record sits in your own Microsoft 365 The permanent record of truth lives in your own Microsoft 365, never pooled with anyone else's – we run the channels and hold a working copy to operate them, and you control how long that lasts.
01Told, always Everyone added to a channel is told it is on the record, and can object or leave at any time
02No app, no account Verified by SMS in seconds – no app to download, no account with anyone else
03Calls too Voice and video calls are recorded with clear labelling, and land in your own Microsoft 365 with a transcript
04UK, no Meta Every message is processed in UK Azure, with no Meta step in the middle
Answerable messaging · written as your board would minute it

There is no such thing as a private work conversation. There is only one you can answer for, and one you cannot.

01 · The exposure. Work conversations about the people we serve happen on channels this organisation does not own. If they were asked for, we could not produce them and we could not hold them, and they end when a phone is replaced or a term expires.

02 · What changes. Those conversations move to a channel we own, which families, volunteers and the public reach from a plain text with nothing to install. Everyone on it is told it is on the record and can object or leave at any time. From the first governed message onward, and once our Microsoft 365 tenant is connected, the record files there – under the retention and legal-hold rules we already run for email.

03 · What it does not fix. It cannot read anyone's personal phone, and it cannot pull in conversations that already happened. Nothing lawful can. The record starts clean, and closing the rest stays governance work for us. Our supplier publishes that on their own website, before we buy.

It outlives the person.

A term ends, a phone is replaced, a member of staff leaves. Their access ends. The record does not move, because it was never anywhere but your own Microsoft 365.

Nobody is watched in secret.

Everyone added to a channel gets a notice that it is on the record. They can object or leave at any time. We supply the wording.

Your own people produce it.

A read-only Replay viewer for a quick look back, and Microsoft Purview search and export in your own tenant, on your own licensing, for the request itself. We do not answer it for you. You do, from your own record – and if you cannot, we refund your year.

See what Replay shows

Showcase 01 · Where the record lives

Your record is a folder in your own Microsoft 365.

Every captured message is filed into a document library in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, on a site your administrator picked, through a permission that reaches that one site and nothing else. That library is the system of record. We do not hold a second permanent copy of it, and there is nothing for us to hand back if you leave.

It starts once your tenant is connected at onboarding. From then on a message is on the record the instant it is sent, and files across into your Microsoft 365 continuously, typically within the minute.

Your portal carries a button, Open your archive in SharePoint, that takes an administrator straight to the site holding the record.

See what else lands in the record

Client portalOakfield Trust
The Archive pane of the ComplyChat client portal, showing the connected SharePoint site, the archive folder and current filing health for a fictional organisation, Oakfield Trust.
Your own portal · your own record

Governed archive filing into the customer's own M365 SharePoint

Per-message item record (JSON in .txt)

Oakfield TrustShared Documents
<your SharePoint site>/Shared Documents/ +-- ComplyChat Archive/ +-- archive card.txt +-- Find a contact/ | +-- Contacts 2026-08-22.csv | +-- Channels 2026-08-22.csv +-- Channels/ | +-- Safeguarding - Year 7 (ch-a1b2c3d4)/ | | +-- channel card.txt | | +-- Contacts in this channel 2026-08-22.csv | | +-- Contact 7c2f91d4a3b8/ | | +-- contact card 7c2f91d4a3b8.txt | | +-- | | +-- interim/ | | +-- attachments/2026-08/ | | +-- calls/2026-08/ | | +-- records/2026-08/ | | +-- | +-- Y6 Residential 2025 (ch-9d41f7a2)/ +-- Direct messages/ | +-- DM 5f0e9a7b3c21/ +-- Notes to self/ +-- Self 91ab04c2d7e8/

Channel folders carry the name your organisation chose. Everything below them is a keyed pseudonym. No one's name or number is in a folder name – identity lives in the file contents.

Under every readable transcript sits the machine-readable one. Each message files as a single JSON document, named .txt so that Microsoft Purview indexes its words: who sent it and to whom, when, what it said, what was attached, any reactions, every prior version of an edited message, and the checksum of the media that came with it.

Conversation 2026-07.txtThe month, readable
Oakfield Trust
Channel      Safeguarding - Year 7
Contact      7c2f91d4a3b8
Month        July 2026

2026-07-08 09:14:02Z  Priya Shah  +447700900123
  Here is the signed slip
  image  2026-07-08 091402Z m4507 in image.jpg
records/2026-08The same message, machine-readable
schema
cc-archive/2
id
4507
channel
Safeguarding - Year 7
thread_code
7c2f91d4a3b8
direction
inbound
sent_at
2026-07-08T09:14:02.000Z
from
Priya Shah +447700900123
msg_type
image
body_text
Here is the signed slip
media
original_filename IMG_2231.HEICfiled_as 2026-07-08 091402Z m4507 in image.jpgquickXorHash vJ0mVv3s0y6mQ0k1bQ8zZ0aJ2mA=
filed_at
2026-07-08T09:14:41.882Z

Showcase 02 · Nobody is watched in secret

Everyone is told. In the conversation itself, not in a policy nobody opens.

Every chat carries a standing line saying the conversation is kept in the organisation's record. It sits at the top of the transcript where the conversation is, not in a document somebody signed once. The full notice is one tap away, in the chat's own settings pane.

Beside it the header carries a persistent Recorded tag, and tapping either one opens the full notice: what is kept, who keeps it, why, for how long, and how to object or leave. It names your organisation, and it cites Articles 13 and 14 of the UK GDPR, because that is the obligation it discharges.

This is the part that makes the rest of it lawful. A record everybody knows about is evidence. A record nobody was told about is a problem you have not had yet.

Standing transparency line in every conversation

Persistent "Recorded" tag and transparency notice

Safeguarding - Year 7 Group ·Recorded

Why this conversation is kept

Oakfield Trust keeps a record of this conversation, including messages, files and recorded calls, so that it can answer questions about the care and services it provides. You can object, or leave this channel, at any time.

Priya Shah Here is the signed slip 09:14
Thank you, received. 09:16Read

Showcase 03 · Calls

There is no such thing here as an unrecorded call.

A bolt-on recorder can fail quietly and leave you with a call nobody kept. This one cannot. If recording has not gone active within about twenty seconds, the call ends for everyone and is filed as failed. There is no state in which the conversation continues and the record does not.

Before the call connects, both people see a screen that names recording first, and the screen that starts it says so. Once recording is live, a spoken notice plays to both parties, so the notice itself is on the recording. The banner stays up for the whole call.

Recorded-or-off teardown guarantee

Pre-call consent screen · Spoken in-call recording announcement

The screen shown before the device's microphone permission prompt, explaining why access is needed to place a recorded call.

Permission, with a reason attached

The consent dialog shown before a recorded call connects, stating the call will be recorded and stored in the organisation's own systems.

Consent, naming recording first

Recorded04:12

Safeguarding - Year 7

Recording live, and everyone can see it

A recorded-call card in a ComplyChat conversation, showing the call duration with a labelled written summary beneath it.
After the call · the card in the conversation

Afterwards the call card carries a short written summary. The summary is a labelled working aid and is never filed into the record. What files is the recording itself and its transcript.

Showcase 04 · The trust ask, inverted

A record of every access – and not one word of what was said.

Every administrative or operator access to your organisation's data is written as a tamper-evident chained event carrying counts, ids and settings, never message content. Each event carries the fingerprint of the one before it, so the chain can be re-checked from end to end by somebody who does not trust us, which is the correct posture for somebody buying this.

The whole chain is re-verified nightly, and again every time an administrator opens the feed. If it ever broke, the report would name the event it broke at rather than showing a green tick and hoping.

And you can take it away from us. One button downloads the entire content-free ledger as JSONL, one event per line, to hand to an auditor or to diff against the copy filed in your own tenant.

Client portalOakfield Trust
The Trust and transparency pane of the ComplyChat client portal, listing content-free access events with the chain fingerprint beneath them.
Your own feed · your own auditor's copy

Content-free hash-chained access-transparency ledger

Chain verification and broken-chain reporting · Access-transparency feed with chain re-verification · JSONL export of the whole transparency ledger

Chain verified end to end Chain broken at event 4 of 6

  1. 062026-08-21 09:14ZAdministrator opened a channel recordOakfield Trustc41f…9e2
  2. 052026-08-20 16:02ZRetention window changed to 90 daysOakfield Trust8b70…15d
  3. 042026-08-20 11:47ZDistribution log exported Oakfield Trust2ad9…f04
  4. 032026-08-19 08:30ZAn administrator was invitedOakfield Trustffe1…73c
  5. 022026-08-18 22:00ZDaily digest filed into your tenantOakfield Trust91c2…0aa
  6. 012026-08-18 07:55ZChannel created: Safeguarding - Year 7Oakfield Trust40de…b18

Nothing here is a message. Each row is an action, a count and a fingerprint.

The button on event 04 alters that row; the banner above then names the event the chain broke at.

Exit · in the contract

The strongest thing we can say about your record is that we do not hold it.

Leave whenever you like. The record was always yours, in your own Microsoft 365 – there is nothing to hand back and barely anything to delete. We confirm in writing that the little we hold is gone, and there are no fees to leave. If we're not earning the renewal, we shouldn't have it.

We surveyed thirty-four vendors in this market. Twenty-five of them pool every client's permanent records in their own cloud. Twenty-six will not publish a price. We do neither.

The two-minute check

What would this look like for us?

Three quick questions – see how it works for an organisation like yours, and exactly what it costs. Nothing to fill in, no email needed.

What it costs

One flat price per tier. Adding more people is always free.

Tier 01 Foundation
Foundation
A single site, service or small organisation
£199 / month
Or £1,990 / yr · invoiced in advance
  • Two channels – typically one for staff, one for families
  • Your whole team, and as many families and volunteers as you like – no charge per person
  • Your own local number, answered from Microsoft Teams
  • The record in your own Microsoft 365, with retention applied in your own tenant
  • Read-only Replay, plus Purview search and export in your own tenant
  • Setup included on yearly plans · email support within 48 hours
Tier 03 Enterprise
Enterprise
Large or multi-site organisations
From £1,500 / month
From £18,000 / yr · custom
  • As many channels as you like, a separate record per site
  • Microsoft Teams across every site, with numbers wherever you reach families
  • Retention rules and legal holds, set up across every site with you
  • Read-only Replay across every site, including channels you have closed
  • Purview search and bulk export across every site, from your own record
  • A named lead and promised response times · setup across every site included

Every number is the number you pay, before VAT. Setup is included on every yearly plan. See what is in each tier

Seven questions

Questions worth asking.

The long answers, and a dozen more questions, are on the FAQ page.

No, and we would not sell you one. Board portals hold the meeting – the pack, the agenda, the minutes, the register – and if you have one, keep it. We hold the conversation around it, and the far larger share of it that never touches a board at all: the duty line, the family, the frontline, the volunteer. Most of the organisations we build for do not own a portal, which is rather the point.
No. Nothing from Meta touches this. We give your people the same easy messaging in a channel your organisation owns, so the conversation happens somewhere you can produce it.
In your own Microsoft 365, in your own tenant, with your own retention rules applied. Not pooled with anyone else's, and not with us.
No. We will not pull in your old conversations – each channel opens clean, on the record, from the first governed message.
Their access ends. The record does not move. It was never anywhere but your own Microsoft 365.
No. The service is designed to ISO 27001:2022 and the certificate is on its way, not yet held. Until we are certified we say targeting, not certified.
You ask us, and we carry it out. There is no button for it in your portal. Nothing already filed is edited and nothing is quietly removed: the working copy is erased, staged media is hard-deleted, and each affected folder in your own Microsoft 365 gains a dated amendment recording what happened. The record grows a correction rather than losing a page, and you get an erasure certificate – written for the person who has to sign the reply to a DPO or a solicitor.

How erasure reaches the record

The demo · from your own phone

Ten minutes. You send the first message.

A call with our team. In the first minute or two you send a message in a real channel from your own phone, and a member of staff answers it from Microsoft Teams. Before the call ends we send you a magic link that signs you into the client portal, where you can see your own record. No pitch deck, and a straight answer on whether we are right for you. Even if that answer is no.

The briefing: one page on the risks in your work messaging, written for boards. No follow-up unless you ask for one.