Free supportticket software

Question

I am searching for a better alternative to osTicket. Can you give any advise?

[Update] I would want it not to be overfilled with features, since I want to be able to use it without having to get into it alot

Answer 1

Have you tried the Open Ticket Request System?

It provides

• custom queue view and queue view of all requests
• Ticket locking
• Ticket replies (standard responses)
• Ticket autoresponders per queue
• Ticket history, evolution of ticket status and actions taken on ticket
• abaility to add notes (with different note types) to a ticket
• Ticket zoom feature
• Tickets can be bounced or forwarded to other email addresses
• Ticket can be moved to a different queue (this is helpful if emails are for a specific subject)
• Ticket priority
• Ticket time accounting
• Ticket print view (PDF)
• Ticket pending feature
• Ticket responsible feature
• Ticket bulk feature
• Ticket hook divider
• Ticket event module layer
• Generic agent to do automatically actions on tickets (based on scheduled jobs)
• content fulltext search
• Ticket ACL support
• Ticket workflow feature

EDIT: @Thomasschaaf, just saw your edit: Then OTRS might not fit 100% your needs. It has indeed a lot of features. But perhaps you can give a little more information what is wrong with eTicket?

Answer 2

OTRS - Open Ticket Request System

Answer 3

The world's at your fingertips! Comparison of issue tracking systems

Answer 4

Another free and simple solution would be sharing an IMAP account. Most MUAs (Mail user Agent, such as Outlook, Thunderbird, ...) support threads, so you could even have them organize replies, etc.. In some way. The advantage of IMAP would be that multiple people could share it and it would synchronize replies, etc. with no extra software needed but the MUA.

Or if you use Google Apps For Your Domain, then I guess this is done in their conversation tabs, etc. (if you are using the webmail).

Another solution might be a FogBugz or lighthouseapp account. They are free (e.g. FogBugz for up to two people) and generally painless because they are hosted, etc. and you can concentrate on your email. Both of them allow you to auto-create cases/tickets from incoming email.

Answer 5

OTRS is Perl-based, well-supported. RT is old. Bugzilla is very powerful. Trac also includings tickets, but probably not advanced enough for what you want.

See this WP category for more

You probably want to be more specific in your request.

Answer 6

Here's a nice comparison of various systems at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems

Answer 7

At work we use Request Tracker and i have almost only good experiences with using it. It's written in Perl and easy to set up with Apache/Lighttpd (the only web servers i've tried it with). Its easy to integrate with email both using local redirects of email and external/local POP email servers.

Its fairly easy to setup and use, and its not in your face when your using it on a day to day basis. But it's also easily hackable.

Answer 8

What don't you like about http://stackoverflow.uservoice.com/? How about http://getsatisfaction.com/ edit See http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else for details of the way they do business - not pretty. /edit

For self-hosted, I'm a Mantis Bug Tracker fan. The Wikipedia page already mentioned is a good starting point.

Answer 9

I've looked into this quite a bit, and here are some of the best options I found. For reference, my choice was HelpSpot for the overall, but SupportTrio has an excellent offering, and there's a completely free version (limited number of users).

Free Software

SupportTrio (free or paid versions available)

• Demo here
• Nice web interface
• Knowledgebase included
• direct email to email communication, decent interface, free version available
• Nice reports available if management reports are desired (see demo)
• Couple things I didn't like in the interface, e.g. no way to expand all ticket correspondence to read all which can be frustrating.
• Encoded PHP pages; can't be modified to include or change features if desired
• Support seems decent enough, with regular releases (check out their forum and you can see the posted releases), but they release updates as individual files that need to be replaced, which isn't optimal.

Request Tracker (a.k.a. RT)

• Long standing history as a solid open source project
• Lots of features and flexibility, doubly so since the source is open. Comprehensive API provides opportunities to modify and extend.
• Direct mail communication and ticket handling can be a major plus for small orgs.
• Available as packages for most Linux distributions
• Documentation is ranges from mediocre to very poor for certain topics, can be difficult to decipher
• Web interface not very attractive compared to other options, and does not take advantage of dynamic javascript etc. for a smoother webapp experience.

Paid Software

HelpSpot

• Solid feature set, all in one nice package with good support
• email communication available
• Simple web interface, as uncluttered as possible while still maintaining features
• good reporting tools
• flexible interface and filters
• API available for extending and integrating with other systems
• "Knowledge books" documentation built-in
• dynamic web interface with good usage of javascript to make it smoother to use
• encoded pages prevent updating or modifying pages yourself

Kayako eSupport

• Demo here
• Very slick interface
• lots of features, very extensive
• Windows mobile version, live chat, other similar tools available
• Uses forum style for posts/replies, which is a pro or con based on your preference ;)
• pages are encoded to prevent updating/modifying yourself
• support for this product is reported as being very poor, including users who did not even receive a license after paying for the product - this was enough for us to stay clear of this product.

Hope that helps!

Answer 10

Gemini is very easy to set-up and use. It's free for 5 users.

Answer 11

http://www.cerberusweb.com/

Answer 12

There's also the open source help desk list.

Answer 13

When osTicket move to propriety software, a side group took the last of the open source versions and now continue it under the name aTicket.

They do a very good job and it includes all the features that osTicket had before they turned to the dark side. I use aTicket for all my web host support tickets and I have not had any trouble with it.