Customer Support

zammad5.6k★

Zammad is a web-based helpdesk and ticketing system. Email, chat, social media, and phone calls all land in one unified inbox. Agents can see conversation history, leave internal notes, and escalate tickets through SLA-aware workflows. GPL-licensed, free to self-host. Rails app with Elasticsearch for full-text search. Docker-based deployment is the recommended path. You need Elasticsearch running alongside it, which adds to the resource footprint. Plan for a dedicated server with 4GB+ RAM for any real usage. Active development with regular releases. Support teams canceling Zendesk or Freshdesk can land most of the core workflows here. The interface is not quite as polished but it is genuinely functional. Covers ticket queues, SLAs, customer history, and basic automation rules. The catch: no native live chat widget. You can integrate third-party chat but it is not seamless. And the mobile app is an afterthought compared to Zendesk's.

freescout4.3k★

FreeScout is a self-hosted help desk and shared inbox that directly replaces Zendesk or Help Scout. The core gives you unlimited users, unlimited tickets, unlimited mailboxes, email integration, collision detection, auto-reply, internal notes, and a mobile-friendly interface. All free. Runs on PHP 7.1+ with a standard web server. Lightweight by design, so it works on cheap VPS instances. Updates are handled through a built-in web updater. The base install is simple, but advanced features come through paid modules (lifetime licenses, not subscriptions). Solo support reps and small teams get a complete help desk for free. Paid modules add things like Slack integration, knowledge base, tags, and LDAP. Each module is a one-time purchase, which keeps long-term costs low compared to per-seat SaaS pricing. The catch: the module ecosystem is where they make money. The free core is genuinely useful, but you will likely want 3-5 paid modules to match what Zendesk includes by default. Budget $200-400 one-time for a fully equipped instance.