Helpdesk Software

404error · October 16, 2018, 4:09pm

Hey guys,

I’ve been looking for a low cost or even open source helpdesk software.
My all time winner till today been LiveZilla, their licensing fees are attractive, so is the software (Beta 8 is looking neat), BUT they are not keen on feature suggestions, they won’t even discuss it, even after I accept paying for the development.

So that got me traveling thru the bits of internet… and I found a few neat alternatives but I’m not yet sold on any of them.

So here they are, maybe some of you will like to hear about these, and maybe other have experience with them. If the later, please share.

(Open Source)

https://osticket.com/

(Community Edition)
https://community.otrs.com/otrs-community-edition-help-desk/

Edit I’ve considered Attlasian too, but … I as per the previous topic I’m kind of afraid to self host it.

Jarland · October 16, 2018, 4:24pm

I found this list to have some interesting entries the last time I looked. Some that I had never heard of before.

404error · October 16, 2018, 4:35pm

I checked all of them. That list was actually my starting point.

Gotta say that my requirements are not present in most of them. It’s SLA related.

imok · October 16, 2018, 5:40pm

Self-hosted Jira is very stable if you have a lot of RAM.

Michael · October 16, 2018, 5:49pm

I like GitHub - ladybirdweb/faveo-helpdesk: Faveo Open source ticketing system build on Laravel framework at the moment. It’s what we’ve been using for a couple of years.

Mason · October 16, 2018, 6:01pm

LET’s new ticket portal is osTicket, so I’ve had some experience with that. Was very straightforward to use and easy to get new accounts set up with the right permissions and such. Never ran into any issues and it was free

404error · October 16, 2018, 6:33pm

Seems good but its not easy on the eyes.
Zammad on the other hand, its shinny but its giving me head-hakes, I’ve set it up twice, and twice it died on me after working flawlessly for a few hours.

sshd · October 16, 2018, 9:56pm

What about request tracker? I think it has SLA features, but not sure

404error · October 17, 2018, 4:40pm

Update

https://otrs.com/ is nice but unfortunately the company behind the project grew so much that they changed their mission.
Major change being that they are now focused on their commercial offer so not only the commercial offer haves a lot more funcionalities, they also decided to have the community version always 3 years behind the commercial offer.

To add to that, their community version is constantly inviting you to upgrade to the commercial version, via cta’s and option that are blocked with a warning that you need th commercial version of to access it.

The only pricing information I was able to find is that for 10 users the license is 5k recurring + a one time 3k. So yeah… Fun.

404error · October 17, 2018, 11:56pm

Update

osTicket promotes a customization service on their website, so I contacted them about a customization, and sat tight waiting for a quote.
…Their reply was that they won’t be taking new customization projects in the next 18 months…

…now that’s some busy working ants!!!..

River · October 21, 2018, 2:44am

I used supportpal back when it was arctic desk.

It’s good but a little bit more expensive than I was willing to pay at the time. Definitely would be worth the money if you could afford it, and I think they have integration modules with different hosting software (WHMCS, etc.)

cubedata · November 20, 2018, 10:59pm

try smartertrack if you have a windows server laying around or possibly mono for apache too if it will run on it.SmarterTrack Help - SmarterTrack Help
sadly the free version is only for one agent.

404error · November 21, 2018, 12:17am

???

I’m probably going with Zammad.

cubedata · November 21, 2018, 1:03am

I am guessing you never heard of the .net framework for linux & mac port called mono
https://www.mono-project.com/

404error · November 21, 2018, 1:09am

Ding ding ding, you guessed right
Thank you!

imok · December 10, 2018, 5:05pm

I want to allow people:

To send me files about 20MB each one.
To process that file in an external service and update (or add again) the original one. So an API will be needed I believe.
To mark the file as validated if everything is fine.

Do you guys think osTicket is a great choice? I like software that has good-looking interfaces and is easy to use.

Jira is not an option because is expensive for around 12 agents.

404error · December 10, 2018, 5:22pm

osTicket is a great system if the current stable version fits your needs. I don’t think it fits your file scenario, then again I’m not sure there’s one that does.

I went for Zammad.

Both have an open source version, so you can customize it. osTicket is really easy on resources, you can pretty much run in even on a low end shared hosting while Zammad is resource hungry (bare minimum 4GB ram, 8GB advised as minimum.)
Neither are prime on community support.

Edit: btw osTicket is still stucl on PHP5, as per a conversation with their sales team, that will change in about an year (when they are due to launch the new version)

imok · December 10, 2018, 6:24pm

Why Zammad and not osTicket? Apart from the visual interface.

404error · December 10, 2018, 6:58pm

Mostly because of the custom triggers.

imok · December 10, 2018, 9:28pm

Installed Zammad to test it.

Good looking interface.

A lot of bugs. No error notifications. Saves incomplete stuff (like users, companies and settings) but then it does not show up anywhere.

Too bad, it seemed a powerful tool.