Customer Experience 
Many contact centers turn to open-source help desk software systems to manage customer inquiries effectively and provide timely assistance. These solutions are typically cheaper than fully managed support desks, but they have significant drawbacks.
In this article, we will explore the pros and cons of top open-source help desk software systems and explain why Nextiva is a better option for businesses looking for a more comprehensive support desk solution.
The Benefits of Using Open-Source Help Desk Software
Here’s why some businesses opt for open-source help desk software:
- Cost-effectiveness: Open-source software is typically free to use. You don’t need to pay subscription fees and don’t incur deployment or ongoing maintenance costs. This makes it a decent option for smaller teams who don’t have the budget to invest in full-service customer service solutions.
- Community support: While many open-source help desk providers lack dedicated support teams and channels, they do have user communities where users can ask questions, learn from others’ firsthand experiences, and gather insights to resolve issues. For example, UVdesk has a GitHub discussion forum where users post questions and receive feedback from other people.
- Customizability: Open-source software allows businesses to modify the source code to fit their specific needs. As the company grows, the software can be adapted and expanded with new features, integrations, and custom workflows.
- Scalability: As your customer service needs scale, you can optimize and fine-tune the software’s source code to handle increased traffic, users, and data. This ensures that the help desk software remains performant and reliable.
Drawbacks of Open-Source Software
Here are some potential risks and drawbacks of using open-source help desk tools in your contact center:
- Known vulnerabilities: The source code for open-source software is publicly available. This means everyone can see what works well but also the weaknesses that can be potential security risks. If care isn’t taken, hackers can use this information to compromise your help desk software.
- Longer set-up times: Open-source help desk software often requires manual installation from the ground up, which takes a lot of time. There’s no deployment support except for the information in the communities, meaning you must do things independently. If you lack advanced technical knowledge, you might struggle with deploying and integrating the software into your customer support workflow.
- Ongoing maintenance: Open-source software is highly customizable, and businesses often tailor it to their specific needs. However, maintaining these customizations can require ongoing effort, especially when updates or changes to the core software necessitate adjustments to custom features or configurations.
- Hidden fees: Some open-source help desk software is free to use but requires payment to access more advanced help desk features like ongoing implementation and customer support. Take UVdesk, for example. Its open-source software only has basic features, and you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan for more specialized features like unlimited inboxes and multichannel integration.
The Best Open-Source Help Desk Software
Here are the top four open-source solutions for help desks and contact centers.
| Best For | Top Features | Pros & Cons | |
|---|---|---|---|
| osTicket | Managing support tickets | Custom fields Custom ticket queues Ticket filters Email auto-responders | ✅ Web Compatibility ✅ 100% free ❌ No support for custom workflows ❌ Unintuitive user interface |
| UVdesk | Multichannel customer support | Auto-responders Mailbox configuration Agent performance reports | ✅ Omnichannel support ticket management ✅ Easy-to-use interface ✅ Fully customizable ❌ Unclear documentation ❌ Limited features |
| FreeScout | Creating shared inboxes for your support team | CRM Integration SMS tickets via Twilio Live chat | ✅ Unlimited support agents, tickets, mailboxes ✅ Multilingual support ✅ 100% mobile-friendly ❌ Poor customer support ❌ Difficult to deploy |
| Zammad | Flexible customer support | Multichannel customer support Multilingual support (up to 40 languages) Third-party integrations | ✅ Omnichannel customer support ✅ Simple data migration ❌ Limited ticket management capabilities ❌ Poor user experience |
1. osTicket: Best for managing support tickets
osTicket is an open-source ticketing system for support teams. It pulls support tickets created via email, phone, or your website into a central, multi-user web interface. From there, you can assign tickets to agents and monitor their progress until resolution.
Top features
- Custom fields for organizing support tickets
- Custom ticket queues for creating personal ticket views
- Ticket filters for automatic routing
- Email auto-responders for sending out automatic replies when customers create a ticket
Pros
- It’s 100% free
- It has a detailed knowledge base where agents can find answers to questions and troubleshoot issues independently
- It’s compatible with any web browser
Cons
- There is no support for custom workflows
- The user interface is unintuitive, so it might be difficult for agents to read and understand messages
- Agents might struggle with setting up automation like email auto-responders
2. UVdesk: Best for multichannel customer support
UVdesk is an open-source help desk platform for e-commerce businesses. As an e-commerce store, you’re likely interacting with customers on multiple channels, such as your website, social media, and marketplaces like Amazon. Keeping up with these channels manually gets overwhelming; that’s why you need help desk software like UVdesk.
UVdesk integrates with all your customer channels and e-commerce marketplaces, allowing you to collect and manage all your support requests on a single platform. It converts customer queries into support tickets and pulls them into your help desk software for resolution.
That way, you don’t need to log into different e-commerce channels to read and respond to customer messages. Instead, you can do it all from your UVdesk dashboard.
Top features
- Auto-responders
- Mailbox configuration
- Agent performance reports
- Integration with e-commerce marketplaces like Shopify and OpenCart
Pros
- Omnichannel support ticket management
- Easy-to-use interface
- Fully customizable
Cons
- The implementation documentation is unclear, making it harder to deploy the software
- The platform has limited features; for example, it doesn’t include a chatbot/live chat
- It can be challenging to configure specific settings like email routing
3. FreeScout: Best for creating shared inboxes for your support team
FreeScout is a self-hosted help desk alternative to Zendesk and Help Scout. Its main feature is a shared inbox, which improves collaboration among support agents and makes it easier to track, manage, and resolve conversations efficiently. It also integrates with Zapier, allowing you to build custom workflows and connect your help desk software to other apps you use in your contact center.
Top features
- Live chat and knowledge base
- Custom workflows and service level agreements
- CRM Integration
- SMS tickets via Twilio
Pros
- Unlimited support agents, tickets, and mailboxes
- Multilingual support
- 100% mobile-friendly
Cons
- Poor customer support
- Difficult to deploy (especially if you lack advanced technical knowledge)
- Buggy software
4. Zammad: Best for flexible customer support
Zammad is an open-source help desk and support ticketing system designed to manage customer communication through various channels, such as email, chat, social media, and phone. It offers a range of features, including ticket management, reporting, customer support, and integration with other tools and services.
Zammad is popular for its flexibility and scalability. It is free under an open-source license, with paid options available if you require additional features and support.
Top features
- Multichannel customer support
- Multilingual support (up to 40 languages)
- Third-party integrations with instant messaging apps like Telegram and social platforms like Twitter
- Branding and customization
Pros
- Omnichannel customer support
- Simple data migration
- Full-text searching and scanning (for attachments)
Cons
- Official support is limited to paid plans; the free version relies on community support
- It has limited ticket management capabilities
- The platform has a poor user experience
Nextiva: A Better Alternative for Open-Source Support Software
Open-source help desk software offers decent support center features. But if you don’t want to be held back by complex technical requirements, limited features, and security vulnerabilities, consider switching to a fully managed help desk solution like Nextiva.
With Nextiva, you don’t have to worry about complex support desk software setups or maintenance. Our contact center software is easy to deploy, and the implementation team is always on hand to answer questions if you get stuck. Plus, there are zero maintenance or updates to worry about.
Nextiva is super affordable, too — plans cost as little as $20 per month or $60 for all features.
Learn more about Nextiva’s customer service solutions and pricing to see if they fit your business. 👇
True end-to-end omnichannel platform for customer service.
Connect with customers on their preferred channels anywhere and anytime so you can solve their problems the first time.
Open-Source Help Desk Software FAQs
Find answers to common questions about choosing open-source software for customer support.
Efficient ticket management and integrations are the most important features to consider when shopping for open-source help desk software. At the very least, it should be able to centralize all your support tickets and integrate with core business tools like your CRM.
Yes, you will generally need some technical skills to use open-source help desk software. While many open-source solutions offer user-friendly interfaces, you might need technical expertise to install the software on a server, configure it to suit your needs, integrate it with other tools, and handle updates or troubleshooting.
Open-source help desk software systems are generally cheaper than fully managed support desks. However, they might have limited features or require technical expertise for deployment and maintenance. On the other hand, commercial solutions like Nextiva offer comprehensive support desk features, customer support, and easier deployment — making them a better choice for businesses.
Yes, open-source help desk software can often integrate with other tools. Many open-source help desk solutions come with built-in integrations or support plugins and APIs that allow them to connect with a wide range of third-party applications, such as CRMs, communication platforms, and project management tools like Jira.
Open-source help desk software is a type of customer support system that allows anyone to access, modify, and customize its source code. It’s like a DIY customer support solution that can be adapted to fit a business’s specific needs. These software systems are usually free to use and are maintained and improved by a community of developers.
