Questions worth asking.

It keeps a record of the work conversations you already have. Your people use whichever place suits the moment – a ComplyChat channel, or Microsoft Teams – and ComplyChat writes one record from both into your own Microsoft 365. Your own channel is the cleanest of the two: the record is made in our system and lands in your own Microsoft 365, with no other messaging app in the middle, no separate number per group and no risk of being thrown off someone else's platform – and nothing from Meta touches it. Anyone outside your organisation reaches that same channel with a plain text and an SMS code, no app to install. Microsoft Teams captures both one-to-one and whole-group conversations for staff and inter-agency work. Wherever the message comes from, the permanent record of truth lives in your own Microsoft 365 – per organisation, never pooled, and we never become your system of record. We run the channel and hold a working copy to operate it, which you can switch to a 90-day purge or, on a dedicated deployment, keep in your own Azure.

Quickly, once your Global Admin runs the install – that is what starts the clock. None of our channels touch Meta: your own channels and Microsoft Teams need no phone number at all, so once your Microsoft 365 is set up they capture into it from day one. Your published number for the SMS doorbell is live within days, and it is there to reach people, not the centre of things, so it never holds up your go-live. Your evidence pack – Microsoft Purview keeping and holding your records – settles within about a week as Microsoft applies it in the background. Your part is the admin install and approving the wording people are shown.

In your own channels and on Microsoft Teams the record is made inside your own systems, so there is no other messaging store to square up at all. Messages sent through a channel, verified by text, are written straight into the record as they're sent – there's no separate encrypted store to reconcile with, because the channel is ours to run. From there each message is saved into your own Microsoft 365, under your own rules for keeping, holding and reading it. We do not claim that nobody can read the record – you can't have both a usable record and one nobody can read. Any supplier promising both is misrepresenting how this works.

Yes, and we make it automatic. Telling people is both a GDPR rule and the right thing to do, so everyone added to a channel gets a notice telling them it is on the record, and can object or leave at any time. We also give you wording for staff, for relatives joining a channel, and for your trustee board. In practice, almost everyone is reassured rather than alarmed.

Yes. Anywhere messaging has become important to how you work, keeping a record of it becomes important too. Fundraising teams, volunteer coordinators, safeguarding leads and trustee chats are all covered on the channels you run, your published numbers and Microsoft Teams alike. You pay one flat price per tier no matter how many staff use it, and adding people is always free, so using it more widely never costs more.

You talk, mostly – and you use it. Bring the scenario that worries you: the group nobody admits to, the leaver with two years of messages on their phone, the SAR you'd dread. In the first minute or two we put a real channel on your own phone and you send a message in it yourself, rather than watching us demonstrate it. We map your exposure against the rules that apply to you as we go, and before the call ends we send you a magic link that signs you into your own client portal, where you can see your own record. There is nothing to install, nothing to prepare and nothing to pass, and if we're not the fit we'll say so on the call.

Yes. We invoice you and you pay by bank transfer, which is how a school, college or charity finance office usually wants to buy. If you work to purchase orders, raise one and send us the number – or the PO form itself – and we'll quote it on your invoice. Fees are exclusive of VAT, added at the prevailing rate where applicable, and a yearly plan is invoiced in advance for the year. Card payment isn't switched on yet; until it is, every account is invoiced. Billing questions go to enquiries@chat.org.uk.

You take everything that matters with you – and the record itself already lives in your own Microsoft 365, so the records were never ours to hold back. To be just as clear about what stops: the service stops – capturing new messages, your channels, the Teams links, the SMS doorbell and the admin page all end with the subscription – but your record stays in your own Microsoft 365. Every message saved up to that day stays yours, in your own Microsoft 365. Any published number we run for you: we will either help you port it to your own account, where your provider allows, or release it and close it. The little we do hold – account records, settings – is sent to you in open formats within fourteen days, its deletion confirmed in writing, and we help you change any passwords we ever handled. There are no fees to leave. We intend to earn the renewal, not enforce it.

Less than you'd fear, because of where the record of truth lives. Your permanent record is saved into your own Microsoft 365, per organisation and never pooled, and we never become your system of record. To run the channel we hold a working copy of message content in our own multi-tenant Azure – so a break-in at our end could expose recent operational conversation data, never a permanent, pooled archive of every client. You control how long that working copy lasts: switch on a 90-day purge from your admin portal, or take a dedicated deployment where even the working copy sits in your own Azure, so we keep nothing long-term. Our central billing and account systems hold only the dull layer: account records, settings, billing. We guard all of it to the standards in the security section, and if it were ever broken into we would tell you within the time UK GDPR sets, in plain English. In May 2025, a message-archiving company that made itself the permanent system of record – pooling readable copies of every client's WhatsApp and Signal messages on its own servers – was broken into, and the messages were reportedly taken in well under half an hour. The lesson is not to let a vendor pool everyone's permanent records in one vault: your record of truth stays in your own tenant, never ours. When you compare suppliers, put this exact question to each of them – and ask where the permanent record lives.

No. ComplyChat gives your community the familiar messaging experience they already know, inside a channel you own – verified by SMS, never routed through Meta's network. Staff answer from Microsoft Teams, and the lasting record lands in your own Microsoft 365.

They text your published number. A quick SMS code verifies who they are, and they land straight in your channel in their browser – nothing to install, no account with anyone else. Every message is kept in your own Microsoft 365, and everyone is told it is on the record.