What is Ten?

How Ten works

Start from the customer's side, because that is the end most people meet first.

1. 1.You ask. In plain language, the way you would text a friend. "Somewhere to eat jollof near Bonapriso." "A room for two nights." "Send this parcel to Akwa."
2. 2.Ten finds it. It searches the businesses on Ten around you — their real catalogues, prices and availability, not a directory of phone numbers.
3. 3.Ten does it. The order is placed, the booking requested, the appointment made, the delivery arranged. You pay with mobile money.
4. 4.You follow it. Every order, stay and appointment lands on one timeline in Activity, each with its own status, so you always know where things stand.

On the business side the same four steps are the other half of the same events: the request arrives in the inbox, the catalogue is what was searched, the payment is recorded against the customer, and the order or booking shows up in the day's reports without anybody typing it in twice.

What should I use Ten for?

Anything you would otherwise call, message or walk to a business for. In practice that is four kinds of thing:

• —Ordering. Food, groceries, medicine, anything a shop nearby sells.
• —Booking. A room, an apartment, a table, an appointment with a salon or a professional.
• —Sending. A package across town, handled by a delivery business on Ten.
• —Asking. What is open now, what something costs, whether a place has what you want, where your order has got to.

What you get

• —Ask Juls. Say what you need in your own words, in the app or on WhatsApp.
• —Search. Find businesses, products, rooms and services near you.
• —Order, book and send. Place an order, request a booking or have a package delivered, without leaving the conversation.
• —Pay with mobile money. The default way to pay, not an alternative behind a card form.
• —Activity. Every order, stay and appointment on one timeline, each with its own status.
• —Messages. Talk to the businesses you are buying from, in the same place.
• —Business pages. Every business has a page at ten.cm/@theirname — their catalogue, hours and location.

What Ten is not is a general assistant. It will not do your homework, plan your holiday or write your code. It is for getting things from businesses around you, and for running one. That boundary is deliberate and it is built into the product, not just written on this page.

What is Ten Business?

Ten Business is the other half of the same system: everything a business needs to run and grow, in one app.

It covers the work, whatever the trade — customers and their history, invoices, payments and what is owed, your team with the roles you set, and reports on the day and the month. It covers being found, through a free Front page and through Ten's own marketplace. And it covers the conversation, through one inbox that gathers WhatsApp, your Front page and the marketplaces together.

Then there is Juls, your AI business companion. You ask for the work in your own words — "what should I restock?", "invoice Marie for yesterday", "why did sales drop last week?" — and Juls does it against your actual records, not a guess. Separately, an AI agent can answer your customers on your behalf, at any hour, and hand over to a person the moment one is needed.

Ten works for any kind of business

The tools underneath are shared; what changes is the vocabulary and the specialist parts on top.

A business that does more than one of these does not need more than one account.

The tools you get to run it

Pick your trade and this is the set you are given.

• —Point of sale. Ring up a product, an order, a delivery, an invoice or an expense at the counter.
• —Inventory. What you have, what is running out, and what it is worth.
• —Orders. Every order from the counter, your page and the marketplaces, in one queue.
• —Deliveries. Dispatch to your own riders or to Ten couriers.
• —Customers. Everyone you have served and everything they have bought.
• —Finance. Payments in, expenses out, and what is still owed.
• —Reports. What sold, what it cost you, and what you kept.

Finance and Reports are on every kind of business on Ten. The rest changes with the trade — and so does the vocabulary: the same tool is Customers to a shop, Guests to a guest house and Clients to a professional.

And the tools to grow it

These are the same for every kind of business.

• —Front. A free public page, microsite and app for your business — your catalogue, hours, location and links, on one address.
• —Verified badge. The blue check on your page, so customers know the business is real.
• —Marketplace. Get listed where customers are already looking — on Ten, and on Zap and Loco alongside it.
• —AI agents. An agent that answers your customers at any hour, takes orders and bookings when you allow it, and fetches a person the moment one is needed.
• —Messages. One inbox for WhatsApp, your Front page and the marketplaces, for your whole team.
• —Reviews. What customers said, and your reply.
• —Promotions. Promotions and campaigns over WhatsApp, SMS and email. Coming soon
• —Fam. Run a paid or free loyalty programme around your business. Coming soon

Almost all of it is on every plan, including the free one. The few things that are not are named in what Ten costs. Ten Business has the full tour.

Can I use Ten on WhatsApp?

Yes, on both sides, and they are different things.

As a person, you can message Juls on WhatsApp exactly as you would in the app. Same assistant, same conversation, same account — you do not have to install anything to start.

As a business, you can connect your own WhatsApp number to Ten. Your customer messages then land in the same inbox as everything else, your team can answer them, and your AI agent can answer them when nobody is free to.

WhatsApp opened the conversation. Ten completes it — the experience and the transaction, end to end.

Do I need to pay to use Ten?

If you are a customer: no

The Ten app is free. There is no subscription, no fee to ask Juls for something, and no charge for placing an order or making a booking. You pay for what you buy — and, where a delivery is involved, for the delivery, which is priced by the business doing it and shown to you before you confirm.

If you are a business: there is a permanent free plan

Every business on Ten starts on Basic, free, from the day it is created. It is not a trial: there is no expiry and no downgrade waiting for you. What the paid plans buy is mostly volume — how many orders a day you can take — because walling the basic tools away from a small business would be the wrong trade.

What gets counted depends on your trade: a shop counts orders and appointments, a courier counts deliveries, a guest house counts bookings, and a service business counts invoices and appointments. Whichever it is, that is the only limit the plan actually enforces — every other tool is there on every plan.

Prices are set per country and never converted, so what you pay is a price chosen for your market rather than a dollar figure run through an exchange rate. You pay with mobile money, and the plan activates as soon as the payment clears. See the prices for your country.

What every plan gives you is listed under Ten Business above.

How is Ten different from other platforms?

Four differences, and they compound.

It is both sides, not one

A marketplace brings you customers but leaves you to run the business somewhere else. Business software runs the business but brings you nobody. Ten is one system doing both, which is why an order does not have to be copied from one place to another.

AI is the interface, not a feature

Most tools added an AI box to an existing product. On Ten, asking is how you use it — for a customer and for an owner alike. That is only possible because the assistant reads the same records the rest of the product writes.

It was built for how business actually works here

Four decisions follow from that:

• — Ten works inside the conversation customers already use, rather than asking everyone to move somewhere new.
• — Mobile money is the default way to pay, not an alternative tucked behind a card form.
• — Everything works from a phone, because a business is run standing up, between customers.
• — The network is not always there, and what you are doing should not stop when it drops.

One account, any trade

A shop that also delivers, or a guest house that also runs a restaurant, is one business on Ten rather than three subscriptions to three products that do not talk to each other.

What if I have an issue with Ten?

Tell Juls. You do not need to find a form, open a portal or work out which department it belongs to — say what went wrong in the conversation you are already in, and Juls passes it to our team as a support ticket with the whole thread attached, so nobody asks you to explain it a second time.

You can do that in the Ten app or on WhatsApp. There is also a help centre if you would rather read the answer, and a support page with the direct ways to reach us.

Businesses on the Business plan get priority support; everyone else gets answered as fast as we can.

Is there a referral programme?

Yes — it is called Collab, and anyone on Ten can use it.

You get your own six-character code. Share it with someone who joins Ten — a friend who starts ordering, or a business owner who brings their business on — and they are recorded against you.

It counts when they actually do something, not when they sign up: a customer completing an order or a stay, a business going live. Signing up is not the achievement, it is the start of one, so a code handed round without anybody using Ten earns nothing. One person is only ever referred once however many links they click, and you cannot refer yourself.

Rewards are set per market, and what you have earned is visible to you as it accrues. Ask Juls for your code and it will tell you where you stand.

Bigger than a code

If you want to bring businesses onto Ten at scale, build on the platform, or work with us in a market we are not in yet, that is a partnership rather than a referral and it is a real conversation. Talk to us.

Getting started

If you want things from the businesses around you, get the app and ask it for something. There is nothing to set up and nothing to pay.

If you run a business, create it on Ten and you are on Basic from that moment — free, permanently. Add what you sell, share your Front page, and let Juls do the work with you. Move up a plan when the volume asks you to, not before.

Still deciding? Read why we built Ten, or just ask Juls — it will tell you the same things this page does, and answer whatever this page did not.