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I want to run a small business website which features helpdesk / customer support software, which includes ticket management, and possibly a knowledge base.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

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6 Answers

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Kayako offers a hosted or self hosted solutions. There is also some open source solutions but I've never used them. I have used Kayako and it's not bad.

  • OTRS - http://otrs.org/
  • osTicket - http://osticket.com/

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    Kayako is the one used by most webhosters – Marco Demaio Mar 3 '11 at 17:56
    Kayako is a bit expernsive for my needs. Cheers. – Steve Mar 4 '11 at 3:01
    @Steve, that's why I also provided open source solutions also. osTicket has email piping which is a concern based off your comment about Hesk. – kel Mar 4 '11 at 5:49
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    Hesk is free (very small licence fee if you want to remove the powered by tag $40) very feature rich, sold and gets both thumbs up from me.

    http://www.hesk.com/

    I love it and it ticks all of your requirement boxes

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    Very interesting app, thanks for sharing. The only thing that makes me thing it might be not a good option is it's missing support for email piping (automatically creating ticket from e-mails) [ref. hesk.com/knowledgebase/?article=48] Customers are usually more willing to send ticket via email rather than getting frustarted logging in a ticket system. – Marco Demaio Mar 3 '11 at 18:05
    Good point, although it is available as a Public beta. Might be worth testing? – Digital Essence Mar 5 '11 at 19:31
    up vote 0 down vote

    I have done some research on this topic and a well recommended service is provided by: kampyle.com. Its sleek, very professional, easy to integrate and so on. However their rates are rather steep and therefore possible a no-go for smaller businesses (its the reason I didn't opt for them).

    Why not opt for a forum / discussion section (possibly password protected). Its easy to setup and you can follow all questions and answer them if needed. Check: vbulletin.com and discussions.zoho.com

    Vbulletin has an addition package that might improve your performance: crawlability.com/vbseo/

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    up vote 0 down vote accepted

    Thanks for your answers folks. After some consideration, I don't think I really need help desk software. I will just arrange a contact form, so I can later contact them back and arrange service.

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    up vote 0 down vote

    http://accord5.com/ have a decent free help desk software, although its future is somewhat questionable.

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    up vote 0 down vote

    BMC Remedy is probably the most widely used CSR software. http://www.bmc.com/

    It also offers reporting, monitoring, call routing, ticketing, knowledge base, and a slew of other features. It has both fat client availability and web hosting - and can be synced with Active Directory.

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