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Show HN: Libredesk – Open-source customer support desk. Single binary app (github.com)

376 points by avr5500 ↗ HN
Libredesk is a 100% free and open-source customer support desk, the backend is written in Go and the frontend is in Vue JS with ShadnCN for UI components.

Unlike many "open-core" alternatives that lock essential features behind enterprise plans, Libredesk is fully open-source and plans to always stay this way.

It's in alpha (v0.1.0) right now, but there’s a working demo available. I built this because I wanted a truly open and self-hosted alternative to platforms like Chatwoot, Intercom, and Zendesk.

Would love feedback, suggestions, and thoughts from the community.

GitHub: https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk

Demo: https://demo.libredesk.io/

78 comments

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vishnumohandas
Looks amazing, great demo!

nit: it'd be nice if we could resize the sections

mjoin
Not in the domain but it looks great :) Congratulations
mofirouz
It would be wonderful if it could be used as a ticketing solution where the ticket could have severity. So customers could login to create a ticket as part of their org.

Also data sources from either third party in-house database or something HubSpot would be great!

teruakohatu
When I last looked, I couldn't find any truely open source solutions that could practically replace even a shared inbox. This looks like it could. Well done to the developer.

And the paid options had high costs even on the most basic plans.

Aeolun
Haven’t really seen anything else but it certainly loads fast!
d1sxeyes
Looks great!

Mobile experience is not great but I think it’s sensible not to focus on that yet, the number of users doing customer support from a mobile phone is pretty small, even the big players in this space like ServiceNow etc have suboptimal mobile experiences.

Do you have any plans on how to monetise this or is this a labour of love?

avr5500
Mobile is not the focus, it can be done later as an app or something else. No plans to monetize; yes, it's a labor of love.
d1sxeyes
Lack of a monetisation strategy is a concern for folks who might worry that you end up running out of time/motivation to work on it, which might be a roadblock to wide adoption

That said, if you're only in it for the joy of creating something amazing, and don't really worry about whether you'll be able to keep maintaining it indefinitely, then keep it up!

techn00
I love single binary apps, easy to deploy.
hamdouni
It still needs postgres and redis
grzaks
Excellent! I was looking for a lightweight OSS alternative to Freshdesk/Zendesk and, honestly, didn’t find any worth deploying. Yours looks very promising, and we’ll definitely assess it.
yorwba
I don't know how lightweight you're looking for, but you might also want to have a look at Zammad: https://github.com/zammad/zammad I worked with a self-hosted deployment of it before, and it was reasonably low-maintenance.
oever
Does it support the scenario where part of the team is only on IMAP?
pentacent_hq
Great job, that's looking very nice and polished already! Are you also planning to introduce a SaaS version of it?
avr5500
No plans, cloud deployment platforms like Railway can take of it
nh2
How do you plan to fund the development, if at all?

For a project like this, a hosted version might be a nice idea if you eventually want to do something else than putting your free time into support and maintenance. And many users will appreciate that the hosted version takes care of DB migration and backups for them.

A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long.

avr5500
> A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long.

That actually makes sense.

Also will apply to FOSS funds like - https://floss.fund

nh2
For an example of how it can go down otherwise:

papercups.io – Open-source alternative to Intercom

Funded by Y Combinator

https://web.archive.org/web/20230404011725/https://papercups...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26527268

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719

I don't know why it shut down (my guess: didn't pan out with the typical revenue growth goals of a startup), but having a hosted version might save your project from such fate, making enough money to fund you, or somebody you hire who's excited about working on Free Software.

Some pricing ideas: Free for noncommercial with limited data retention (like the Chatwoot free tier), 3-5 $/month for noncommercial individuals (e.g. users to put it in their website), more $/month for commercial. Add some more expensive enterprise plan that supports Microsoft EntraID groups for externalised permission management and you're good to go :) Add easy DB import/export functionality, so people can switch between hosted and self-hosted. A lot of people will be happy to pay for the convenience of hosted. Host in EU for best data protection (makes it easier for people to sign up).

For billing, probably good to use a Merchant-of-Record service such as paddle.com (our startup likes it) to be able to sell internationally without having to deal with international taxes.

I wish you and the project lots of success!

Jolter
Would hosting in Europe really help?

I’m under the impression that current EU case law makes it impossible for EU-based government entities to store personal data in services owned by US entities, no matter where they are hosted.

Maybe I misunderstood this?

Someone has told me that all the EU governments using Office 365 are basically violating the GDPR and getting away with it (for now). Any truth to that?

rancar2
Chatwoot’s free hosted tier has limited data retention and only offers US-based data centers. However, its core functionality can be self-hosted anywhere under its MIT license.

For the OP: nh2’s advice above is worth considering. Additionally, I’m not sure Libredesk is mature enough to be a strong open-source alternative to Chatwoot yet—unless the user only needs email support. Chatwoot’s base installation, licensed under MIT, includes most of the features non-corporate users would want, such as multi-channel support, and generally offers more functionality than Libredesk under its AGPL license.

potamic
Who are your target users? Why not use an embedded db like sqlite and make it truly "single binary"?
truepath_app
I might be missing something obvious, but how does a customer file a ticket/request?
avr5500
Right now the only way to create a ticket/request is by adding an inbox, and sending an email to your configured email address.
nh2
Looks great!

It seems to be email only so far. Do you plan to add chat, like Intercom and Chatwoot have it?

avr5500
yes, once Libredesk is stable.
duckb
Looks beautiful. How difficult would it be if I want to develop a plugin - Mood detection, Chat Helper (LLM linked), ...
ketan-10
Looks awesome, Congratulations :)
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darkwater
The demo looks really really good! And by looking at commit history, looks like you are a solo developer behind this. Kudos to you! Out of curiosity, do you have plans to make it a business or just keep it as a "hobby project"? Something like this is going basically to be used only by companies, no hobby users (unless someone wants to maintain a support desk for family & friend about something they are an expert...)
chrismorgan
From the screenshot, in an AI assistance dropdown on a reply form: “Add Empathy”. Ouch.
ddtaylor
Abolish corporate communication apathy, but don't point the finger at a dictionary as the reason it exists.
fguerraz
This is great.

Sadly, apart from “looking good”, there seems to be no documentation, or visible roadmap. So I can’t evaluate if it’s worth looking into or not.

Keep up the good work!

avr5500
Thank you! Adding a roadmap to v1.
mattsimpson
Damn impressive start. Kudos! I am sure that if you posted a to-do list and roadmap to 1.0 you would get traction from the community to help finish it off, if you want. Hell, at a solid 1.0 I might be able to justify a switch from a popular commercial app and use that budget to fund a bit of development towards the project.
avr5500
Thank you! Adding a todo and a roadmap to v1.
robertlagrant
Potential roadmap item: bidirectional sync with Jira (and others) so support requests can create/be linked to Jira (etc) tickets, and see updates from them.
phrotoma
While we're thinking about it, something I always wanted when I was working support. The abilitiy to "upvote" a bug from within a support case. That way a PM can sort open issues by number of users who are griping about it.
robertlagrant
Yeah! Or at least have a count of the number of customer requests linked to the same ticket.
rsyring
We looked years ago for simple helpdesk that would link to GitHub issues so that CS was working in the helpdesk tool but could easily create issues when a dev is involved.
ddtaylor
What method do we have to fund this or ensure it can work for our needs.
revskill
Single app meanz j bundle all asset and code in a binary?