# In search of a good helpdesk (self hosted)



## Hxxx (Oct 25, 2014)

In search of a good helpdesk (self hosted)

What do you use? 

Not necessarily hosting oriented.


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## DomainBop (Oct 25, 2014)

osTicket with a bunch of add-ons and in house modifications


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## Hxxx (Oct 25, 2014)

is it secure? I mean it is kind of slowly updated


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## GIANT_CRAB (Oct 25, 2014)

Deskpro or Kayako


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## XFS_Duke (Oct 25, 2014)

Free or paid?

I don't think any free ones are really good. I like Kayako, ArcticDesk is a good one as well or just plain old WHMCS.

What do you need to provide support for? Need Live Chat as well or no?


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## DomainBop (Oct 25, 2014)

Hxxx said:


> is it secure? I mean it is kind of slowly updated


It's secure and frequently updated.  the latest stable v1.93 was released on August 1 and the latest release candidate v1.94-rc5 2 weeks ago.

Depending on your needs there is also OTRS and Request Tracker but the setup curve is steeper for both of them



> just plain old WHMCS.


that one is lacking call integration, agent collision avoidance,  service level agreements, and a whole host (pun intended) of other standard help desk features, the code is obfuscated, and it's security track record has been, umm...


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## Wintereise (Oct 25, 2014)

I heart zendesk <3


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## Hxxx (Oct 26, 2014)

XFS_Duke said:


> Free or paid?
> 
> I don't think any free ones are really good. I like Kayako, ArcticDesk is a good one as well or just plain old WHMCS.
> 
> What do you need to provide support for? Need Live Chat as well or no?


How about ArticDesk? they are kind of inactive? 

Use: General Computer Support. 

Thanks to all the users that replied.


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## KuJoe (Oct 26, 2014)

I liked Trellis when I was looking for a standalone help desk a few years back. Unsure what the status is for them but if I remember they released their 2.0 on GitHub so it's completely open source.


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## mikho (Oct 26, 2014)

we use sysaid at work. Loads of features and not only a support desk.


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## DomainBop (Oct 26, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> I liked Trellis when I was looking for a standalone help desk a few years back. Unsure what the status is for them but if I remember they released their 2.0 on GitHub so it's completely open source.


The 2.0 on GitHub is an early beta.  Development of the 2.0 version appears to have stopped about 2 years ago.  The stable 1.04 version has SQL injection and CSS vulnerabilities.  

tl;dr RIP Trellis project.


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## MannDude (Oct 26, 2014)

I actually really, really like Kayako... though I can only compare it to WHMCS and Hostbill. But Kayako is pretty solid and feature rich.

Favorite features include:


The follow up feature. With this you can auto-schedule a follow up to a ticket, meaning you can schedule it automatically re-open / appear in queue (or any queue) at a certain date/time, can automatically dispatch a follow up message on a particular date, and other neat things. Useful if you need to follow up with a customer and better than sticky notes on your monitor.
Ticket claiming. Can assign a ticket to another staff member or claim it for yourself so someone else processing the queue doesn't start working on it. WHMCS has this feature too but it's horrible.
Live-preview of another staff making a response. Opened a ticket but failed to claim it? Before you start typing a detailed response, if someone else has claimed it after you opened it you'll be able to see their input as it's entered.
Little things like color coded staff notes, ability to edit your internal staff notes on a ticket, etc. In WHMCS they all appear the same and to 'edit' a note if you make a mistake you have to delete it and re-create it.
Adding a note to a ticket can also be set to be visible on that ticket only, or on every ticket submitted by said customer. Good for special cases.
Has decent work flow.


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## jhadley (Oct 26, 2014)

We have an owned licence for Kayako but don't use it because (last time I checked) there were several problems with the API/API wrapper. What we have now is a really neat integration with Zendesk. We use their cheapest plan but customers interact with us via our own web portal that calls their API (or Xero API for billing, or ServerDensity API for monitoring). The API wrapper for Zendesk is really neat and this works extremely well for very little money.

As we grow and Zendesk starts to get very expensive, we'll likely move to a self-hosted install of Sirportly which I think is about £700 once off including apps and VAT. Apart from the price tag, the main downside with this (in my opinion) is it's RoR. It's a great helpdesk though.

Once upon a time we used Deskpro. That was ok, but the interface is really heavy and the apps are fairly poor. Comes with a nice live chat widget though and it's PHP (based on Symfony).

Not personally a fan of ArcticDesk and I don't think it's been well maintained.


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## AlphaNine_Vini (Oct 26, 2014)

Most billing system have their own helpdesk. I believe that more good efficent to keep your client connected and verfify when they contact you.


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## rmlhhd (Oct 26, 2014)

+1 for ArcticDesk


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## Hxxx (Oct 26, 2014)

rmlhhd said:


> +1 for ArcticDesk


Are they updating the product frequently?


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## rmlhhd (Oct 26, 2014)

Hxxx said:


> Are they updating the product frequently?


Yeah, the software is very good and is owned by a very reliable and well known British company called LicensePal.

They have a 30 day trial, try them out. I can assure you you'll like it.

http://www.arcticdesk.com/

They do charge $14.95/m + 20% VAT if your in the EU but it's worth it.


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## Hxxx (Oct 26, 2014)

rmlhhd said:


> Yeah, the software is very good and is owned by a very reliable and well known British company called LicensePal.
> 
> They have a 30 day trial, try them out. I can assure you you'll like it.
> 
> ...


I have used the product, i know who owns it, is just that by judging by their forum is abandoned. Lots of issues, no immediate fixes. No social network interaction since a while... licensepal dont even sell the license... (coming soon)


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## mikho (Oct 26, 2014)

LEB uses articdesk and the parts I can access is lacking in features.


Most annoying thing is there is no easy way to sort tickets.


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## perennate (Oct 26, 2014)

+1 for request-tracker; it's nice and simple, yet highly configurable


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## AMDbuilder (Oct 26, 2014)

ArcticDesk has promise, but looks to be abandon.  As @mikho noted it's lacking in features frontend and backend.


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## Xeepi (Oct 27, 2014)

We use Kayako intergrated with WHMCS, working great and we really love using it.

The UI of Kayako v4 is neat and pretty, It's much better and improvements are made often at least compared to osticket which I think is still outdated.


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## sshgroup (Nov 8, 2014)

definatly kayako  more reliable less headache


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