The best Help Desk & Customer Support
Every option ranked — open-source, self-hostable, and commercial — by our transparent Sovereignty Score, with honest trade-offs so you choose what fits you, not us.
Shared-inbox and ticketing platforms that turn customer emails, chats, and social messages into tracked support tickets, with routing, macros, SLAs, and a public help center.
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Zammad
Top pickOpen sourceA full-featured, AGPL-licensed help desk with ticketing, a knowledge base, and multi-channel inboxes.
Free to self-host with unlimited agents; optional managed cloud plans start around €19/agent/month and Zammad also sells paid support contracts for self-hosted installs. · in our Freshdesk comparison →
90sovereignty - 2
FreeScout
Open sourceA lightweight, completely free, self-hosted shared mailbox modeled on Help Scout's simplicity.
Core is free forever, unlimited agents and mailboxes. Optional one-time modules (not subscriptions) cost $4-$15 each for extras like knowledge base, reports, or CRM fields. · in our Freshdesk comparison →
86sovereignty - 3
Chatwoot
Open sourceAn open-core omnichannel inbox strongest at live chat, WhatsApp, and social messaging.
Community edition free to self-host, unlimited agents. Self-hosted paid tiers: Premium Support $19/agent/month (Captain AI, voice, branding, roles/permissions) and Enterprise $99/agent/month (adds SSO/SAML, SLA). Cloud-hosted plans start at $19/agent/month (Startups tier). · in our Freshdesk comparison →
84sovereignty - 4
UVdesk
Open sourceA Symfony-based open-source help desk with ticketing, a knowledge base, and e-commerce integrations.
Free to self-host (community edition). UVdesk also sells a separate hosted SaaS plan and paid marketplace add-ons. · in our Freshdesk comparison →
79sovereignty
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Head-to-head comparisons for each popular help desk & customer support product.