Open-source ticketing systems explained

What is an open-source ticketing system?

A ticketing system allows support teams to effortlessly organize and resolve customer queries by converting support requests that arrive at your internal or external help desk into ‘tickets.’ These tickets help teams sort issues with helpful tags, including clear timestamps, priority, status, and type of request. With a help desk ticketing system, you can instantly interact with customers across channels such as email, chat, social media, or web portal from a single interface, driving greater customer satisfaction.

An open-source ticketing system, or an open-source help desk software, has its source code—the building blocks of a software—publicly available to be used, modified, or redistributed as needed.

You can either install the source code for free or purchase a license to reuse and alter the source code to suit your help desk needs. Smaller support teams on a tight budget usually evaluate an open-source help desk system for the lowered costs associated with a functional ticketing tool. Let’s look at the key advantages of an open-source ticketing system for a business.

Benefits of open-source ticketing systems

• Lower purchase costs: Open source help desk free ticketing systems usually have their updated source code with the core help desk features priced nominally or available for free download, without a cap on the number of users or time period. However, the initial costs don’t cover any additional resources you may have to spend on implementing the free ticketing systems, hosting it, training agents, or maintaining the open-source software. 

• Greater customizability: Since businesses have greater control over the code, customer service teams can easily customize and adapt the help desk software as per their industry or business needs—if they have the right staff and software development support in place.

• Community-driven product innovation: When the community associated with the open-source ticketing tool is vast and active, there’s always a set of developers working on enhancing the source code and sharing updated versions with others. Implementing new ticketing features or fixing bugs in existing code happens faster as a result.

Limitations of open-source ticketing software

As attractive as an open-source help desk software sounds given the level of flexibility it offers, an open-source ticketing system comes with its risks and limitations. Understanding these challenges will help you decide if an open-source help desk is suitable for your type of business and team setup.

1. Not easy to use

Open source ticketing systems are designed from a software developer’s perspective. Developers tend to focus primarily on code outputs and feature functionalities, overlooking the aspect of the product’s user-friendliness. On the other hand, a proprietary or closed code software is designed with the end user in mind. It goes through rounds of experience checks by different teams to see if the features, layout, and interface are easy for support agents to use.

2. Difficult to set up and customize

Adapting and setting up an open-source ticketing system according to your customer support team's needs is more tedious and time-consuming. You will either need to hire in-house IT experts or spend money on consultants to set up basic help desk modules and configure add-ons, whereas you can set up the same features in a few clicks—by yourself—with proprietary help desk software.

3. Incurs additional hidden costs

Apart from the software purchase costs, you will most likely have to bear additional charges while using an open-source ticketing system in the long run. You might have to spend more dollars on expert assistance for hosting, customizing, and installing additional plugins for a fully-functional help desk. You may also have to invest in training your agents to understand the complex user interface (UI). Future code enhancements and maintenance activities may require more expenses than you initially expected.

4. Unaddressed security risks

Security is a dangerous case of hit-or-miss with open-source tools. Since the source code is available for all to use, bugs and vulnerabilities can be fixed by anyone who is reviewing the code. However, there’s a looming risk of a critical bug going unnoticed. There is also a greater threat of unauthenticated users accessing the source code and jeopardizing your help desk operations.

5. Limited support

With an open-source ticketing system, you’re almost on your own with only user forums and guides available for quick help. Open source help desk providers do not have dedicated support teams to assist you when you run into trouble.

Advantages of helpdesk software

Help desk software offers several advantages, particularly when you consider the long-term return on investment you expect to get from your ticketing system. Help desk software is easy to use, it’s simple to set up, and there are no hidden costs. You also get access to advanced help desk features, business-class security, and robust technical support. 

Understanding these challenges will help you decide if an open-source help desk is suitable for your type of business and team setup.

1. Easy to use

Unlike an open-source ticketing system, which is often designed from a developer’s perspective, help desk software is usually more intuitive and user-friendly. Help desk features are continually tested and refined, in a series of user experience checks, to make sure they are easy to use. For example, a proprietary help desk solution with a unified workspace helps agents quickly act, focus on the right issues, and deliver personalized support. 

2. Simple to set up

Help desk software is easy to set up, and you can usually get the core modules up and running right away. This way, you can start improving your customer support capabilities as soon as possible instead of worrying about why a particular feature isn’t working as expected. And if you run into any questions or challenges, you can reach out for support to get the answers you need in short order. When you select a free open-source ticketing system, however, you will need to invest a lot of time and money to set everything up according to your customer support team’s requirements—and that’s assuming you didn’t have any customizations in mind.  

3. No hidden costs

When you purchase help desk software for your customer support team, you know what you’re paying for and what it will cost. The paid plans are clearly outlined, and you can choose the option that is right for your business. When it’s becoming clear that you need to expand your customer support operations, you can plan for further investments instead of being caught off guard and figuring out how to pay for surprise expenses that throw your budget into disarray. An open-source help desk ticket system usually comes with hidden costs related to hosting, installing, customizing, and maintaining the software—to say nothing of the training you may need to provide your agents.

4. Advanced features

Help desk software with advanced help desk features like AI-powered automations and workflows help your customer support team work smarter than ever. Investing in a best-in-class proprietary help desk solution gives you access to innovative capabilities as soon as they become available, so you can continually deliver an even better customer experience. If you rely on a free open-source ticketing system, though, you will probably find yourself waiting to get such capabilities—and you won’t know how soon to expect them.

5. Business-class security

Your business can’t afford to compromise on security. The best help desk software provides you with state-of-the-art data security, so you can have greater peace of mind and focus on delivering exceptional customer support. Open source software, on the other hand, is prone to security breaches. Because the source code is easily available to anyone and there is a broad base of developers, your business is at greater risk of a security incident if it chooses to implement an open-source helpdesk ticket system. What seemed like an affordable option at first could end up being very costly to your company in the end. 

6. Robust support

Help desk software comes with dedicated support options, so you’re never on your own when you need to ask a question or solve a problem. All you have to do is pick the plan that offers the right amount of support for your needs—for example, 24x7 email support or 24x7 phone support. With a free open-source ticketing system, there is no dedicated support team available, and you can’t count on getting a response in any specific time frame (or perhaps at all). You’ll have to make do with user forums and guides.

Industry use cases for helpdesk software

Not all companies are the same, of course. If your business has industry-specific requirements, you may be wondering how help desk software can help you provide better customer support. Enterprises often have their own unique needs, and so do SMBs. Here’s how the right help desk software can help all of these types of businesses build thriving customer support operations.

Healthcare

Medical help desk software can help healthcare organizations and pharmaceutical companies create better end-to-end patient experiences and support better internal collaboration. For example, help desk software for healthcare can help healthcare organizations engage with patients and staff across multiple channels via a unified view of all conversations. It can also enable personalized patient care by displaying previous conversations, appointments, medical records, and treatment notes at a single glance.

Education

Schools, colleges, and universities can also benefit from help desk software. Although educational institutions don’t have customers like typical businesses do, they do need to provide support to prospective students, enrolled students, and staff. Administrative teams spend a lot of time answering questions and providing logistical assistance at the beginning of the academic year. IT teams also find themselves answering the same questions over and over throughout the semester. Help desk software for education can help them automate repetitive tasks and make their workloads more efficient.

Retail & ecommerce

If you’re in the retail industry or you have an e-commerce business, then you know customers expect top notch support. Help desk software for retail and e-commerce lets you do exactly that by unifying multiple channels into a single view, providing personalized and contextual help, and reducing ticket volume by building comprehensive knowledge bases. It also lets you measure customer satisfaction and team performance, so you can make sure your customers are happy and continually improve the service you offer them.

Enterprises

Large businesses and enterprises often suffer from bloated software that comes jam-packed with features but isn’t particularly nimble and doesn’t age well. An enterprise customer service platform lets you provide enterprise support without the enterprise hassle, delivering a streamlined customer experience across channels with flexible technology that makes customer support a strategic differentiator. Not only that, but it also offers the scale and customizability that supports your continued growth.

SMBs

Customer support software for SMBs takes the chaos out of the customer support process, so you can focus on growing your business instead. It allows you to unify your customer conversations across multiple channels, letting you provide fast, personalized customer experiences that keep your customers satisfied. Smart automations help you accelerate time to resolution, while self-service tools help customers help themselves and reduce the strain on your customer support team.

Compare open-source ticketing system vs helpdesk software

When you’re comparing an open-source ticketing system vs a help desk software solution, you’ll want to keep the following differences in mind.

How to choose the right ticketing solution for your business

When seriously considering which ticketing solution is best for your business, you might be ready to go beyond such preliminary questions as, “What ticketing systems do most companies use?” You might want to evaluate your options based on more granular criteria at this stage. 

For starters, you may want to ask yourself, “What are my unique business needs?” Do you have specific business requirements that help desk software must support? Do you plan on growing quickly in the near future? In that case, you will want to make sure that the ticketing system you pick will scale for growth.

Also, consider the size of your company. Are you an enterprise, an SMB, or a startup? Then, you may want to consider your choices using that lens, as well. An enterprise will probably require 24x7 technical support, for example. At the same time, a tech startup with a bootstrap budget might be more open to the idea of troubleshooting problems with an open-source helpdesk ticket system on its own.

Then, look at the industry you’re in. Are you in a regulated sector like healthcare that has to take special precautions concerning the handling of patient data? In that case, security issues will probably be top of mind—and an open-source software ticketing system may not be the way to go. 

What about your team collaboration? Do your support agents need to be able to easily get input from other internal teams as they’re resolving issues? Will they need to be able to see the progress made by the other team so they don’t waste time with back-and-forth communications? That’s also something to keep in mind when assessing your options.

Top 5 open-source ticketing systems

osTicket

• Key features

  • Ticket filtering system

  • Service level agreement (SLA) management

  • Auto responders for tickets

  • Customer support portal

  • Help desk dashboards and reports

• Pricing

  • Available for free download

• Pros

  • Ease of integration

  • Ticket tracking is simple

• Cons

  • Customers consider the UI to be outdated

  • Can be difficult to set up

Zammad

• Key features

  • Real-time ticketing dashboard

  • Ticket history

  • Multilingual support

  • Out-of-office schedulers

• Pricing

  • Free (not available for Windows OS)

  • Hosted starter pack is priced at $5.25/ month per agent for up to 5 agents

  • 30-day free trial available

• Pros

  • Can be easily integrated with Github or Gitlab, as well as messaging channels like Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, etc.

  • Dashboard views

• Cons

  • Lacks the polished UI and can feel clunky

  • Requires internet connection to use

FreeScout

• Key features

  • Custom fields

  • Real-time reports

  • Facebook, JIRA, Slack integrations

  • SMS notifications

• Pricing

  • Free, no cloud-hosted services provided

• Pros

  • All email communication run in single platform

  • Active Community available for added support

• Cons

  • Difficult to deploy and no paid support

  • Lacks embedded features that other market competitors have

Faveo Help Desk

• Key features

  • Email integration

  • API support

  • Knowledge base

  • Mobile app

• Pricing

  • Free community version

  • Self-hosted free version with limited features is available for 2 agents

• Pros

  • Workflows are customizable and enable different matrices

  • Responsive support team

• Cons

  • Need a third party to integrate WhatsApp

  • New feature launches can be buggy

UVdesk

• Key features

  • Mailbox integration

  • Ticket management

  • Workflow automation

  • Knowledge base

• Pricing

  • Free open-source version available.

  • Paid versions begin at $22/month for a minimum of 2 agents. 

• Pros

  • Clean UI

  • Easy dashboard use

• Cons

  • Initial configuration can be complex

  • Managing consistent deployment time of canned responses

Why should you choose cloud-based ticketing software?

If you’re looking for a cost-effective ticketing software that is intuitive, secure, and easy to customize, then take a look at what the Freshdesk free plan offers.

Effortless support across channels

Your team can offer faster responses and accurate resolutions when they can view and manage customer interactions across email, website, or Facebook from a single interface without losing context. Freshdesk’s ticket management system helps agents get an overview of the support request, including source channel, priority, and SLA escalations, at a glance.

Intelligent automation and productivity features

Create simple workflows to automate the creation, prioritization, and routing of support tickets. You can also auto-trigger personalized email notifications to agents and customers whenever there’s an update on a ticket.

Advanced self-service capabilities

Allow your customers to find quick help on their own by building a comprehensive knowledge base with FAQs, in-depth guides, and tutorials. With Freshdesk, you can also directly convert agent responses into solution articles and embed help docs within your website chat or contact form.

Robust help desk analytics

The Freshdesk free plan also comes with a basic ticketing dashboard and help desk reports that allow you to monitor help desk activities. Knowing the number of tickets created and resolved, along with the ticket backlog at your help desk, enables you to reallocate support agents as needed.