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Ask HN: Helpdesk/ticketing software for small SaaS company

9 points by alex_suzuki ↗ HN
Dear HN crowd,

I'm evaluating customer-facing helpdesk software for a small B2B SaaS company. Since we are hosting the code on Gitlab and it's included, I gave Gitlab Service Desk a try. It works well but there's some friction when creating a ticket, e.g. it's not possible to integrate it programmatically into a web app ("Submit issue" form). Also I would prefer to have support separated from the development aspects.

So far I've tried Freshdesk, but was immediately turned off by the massively bloated user interface and gazillions of settings.

Front looks polished from gazing at the landing page (haven't tried it yet), but seems to focus more on B2C with an emphasis on omni-channel messaging. Also the smallest plan is 2 seats at 19 USD/mo. which is a bit much for our current usage.

Zendesk feels bloated.

Freescout is OSS and allows self-hosting, but the UI feels dated. Preferably I would like to not self-host it, but if there's a really good option out there... maybe.

What other options would you recommend having a look at?

14 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread
irtefa
We use Intercom and like it.
MissTake
YouTrack.

Free for 10 users, cheap for anyone above that.

Has a real nice integration with git forges, custom fields and workflows up the wazoo.

alex_suzuki
Awesome, I didn’t know JetBraind has a product in this segment. I already use their IDEs and am a big fan. Pricing model is great too!
joshxyz
I effin love their IDEs too.

But I abhor YouTrack.

Id rather go with linear.app myself.

alex_suzuki
What in particular do you not like about YouTrack?
pkrotich
You can try osTicket https://osticket.com

The UI is very dated, but we're working on a rewrite with modern UI.

alex_suzuki
The landing page is a bit weird. I‘d expect stuff to be clickable (e.g. „Install software“) but it’s not and the text is very generic. Not a goof first impression, sorry.
prirun
At a previous company we used RT (open source), self hosted:

https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker

We hooked it into help@company.com emails and also made a web page that allowed customers to ask for support when they were logged in. The web page would add customer details when signed in so the CS staff didn't have to look as much stuff up to answer the question.

They have cloud-hosted plans though I have no experience with that.

warrenm
RT is still around?!

I don't think I've heard of anyone using it in years!

aquark
We use https://www.enchant.com/

It works great for email support, haven't tried their chat features, but is the sweet-spot for us in terms of features and complexity.

They have an API if you want to integrate, though for a web form just feeding it through email works.

SkyPuncher
How big are you? We’ve gotten wayyyyy farther than we expected with simply Google Groups.