Frequently asked questions

Obtainr is a tool that chases people by email for documents and information on your behalf. You describe what you need and from whom; it drafts the email, sends it from your own Gmail or Outlook account, and gives the recipient a secure upload link that needs no account. When a reply arrives it checks it against your requirements and reports what's still outstanding. It's built for UK conveyancers, solicitors, estate agents and accountants.

Yes. You set one chase up in the normal way, then add the other people to it by pasting their names and email addresses — the requirements are described once and everyone in the group is asked for the same things. The group is one row in your chase list, which opens to show each person. Underneath, nothing is shared: every recipient gets their own email thread and their own upload link, because a shared link would let one of them see another's documents. Each chase finishes on its own; there is no combined “batch complete”. It doesn't change the price — ten people is ten chases — and Obtainr checks the whole group against your remaining allowance before it starts, so it refuses the lot rather than chasing six of ten and stopping.

It sends from your own mailbox. You connect Gmail or Outlook once using OAuth, and every chase goes out from your address, in your name, on a normal thread. Replies land in your usual inbox. There's no relay domain, no “sent on behalf of” header and no branding from us, so the recipient sees an ordinary email from a person they already deal with.

No. Obtainr only reads the thread a given chase is running on. It does not scan, index or search the rest of your mail, and it doesn't train anything on it. Connections use OAuth, so we never hold your email password, and stored credentials are encrypted at rest. Disconnecting a mailbox in settings stops every chase running through it straight away.

No, and they do not have to use the link either. Every chase carries a secure upload portal — no account, no password, no app — that asks for exactly what you specified, and most people tap it on a phone and photograph the document there and then. But anyone who would rather hit reply and attach the file can do that instead: attachments on a reply are read exactly as an upload is, and go through the same check. There is no wrong way for someone to answer. The link stops working when the chase completes or after 30 days, whichever comes first.

An LLM checks each reply against the requirements you agreed when setting up the chase, and reports which items are still outstanding. It doesn't mark a job done just because an email arrived. If a client sends two months of bank statements when you asked for three, Obtainr identifies the gap and drafts the next chase asking for the missing month, on the same thread.

Obtainr chases them again, if you asked it to. When you start a chase you choose how long to wait on silence — 3 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours or a week — and it sends the next chase itself once that time passes with nothing back. New accounts start on a week. Set it to Never — for the account or for one chase — and a chase you'd rather follow up by hand stays that way. Follow-ups count towards the same turn limit as any other chase, and only go out on weekdays between 8am and 6pm: they leave from your mailbox under your name, and nobody wants a 2am reminder from their solicitor.

Yes. Obtainr has two modes and you can pick per chase. Fully automatic sends and follows up on its own. Approval mode holds every message until you say so — you can edit any of it, then either let Obtainr send it or copy it and send it from your own mail client. Many people run approval mode for their first few chases and stay there permanently, which works fine.

Up to a turn limit you set, which defaults to two. A turn is one round of the conversation: Obtainr sends, and then either the recipient replies and it checks what came back, or they stay silent long enough that it asks again. A cooperative recipient usually takes one or two turns. The limit is what stops a chase running away with itself — silence follow-ups are counted against it too, so the worst case is bounded whether someone replies badly or not at all.

No. The AI is included in every plan — there is nothing to sign up for and no key to paste in. If you would rather the processing ran on your own provider account, you can still bring your own key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: one field in settings, and it takes over from ours immediately.

Three plans, one price for the whole firm — not per user. Standard is £49 a month for one person and 100 chases; Team is £129 for up to 5 people and 500 chases; Firm is £349 for up to 20 people and 2,000 chases. Everyone on the plan shares the one allowance, and every feature is in every plan — the larger ones buy more people and more chases, nothing else. A chase is one recipient and one set of requirements, including every follow-up needed to satisfy them, not per email. There's a 14-day free trial, and recipients are never charged and never need accounts.

Obtainr is built for UK firms whose work stalls waiting on other people's paperwork: conveyancers and property solicitors chasing certified ID, proof of funds, TA6 and TA10 forms, mortgage offers and search results; estate agents chasing the same documents up a chain; and accountants and bookkeepers chasing clients for bank statements, receipts, dividend vouchers, ID and signatures ahead of a deadline.

Not yet. You can connect a WhatsApp Business account in settings, but chasing is email-only at the moment — Obtainr doesn't send or receive WhatsApp messages. Every chase goes out by email from your connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox, with the upload link included so recipients can still complete the request from their phone in a few seconds.