Free Help Desk

[Matthew Sherborne]

Get a free help desk script to limit your online work load. Why, if you have an online business then there's no doubt you get a lot of email.

A customer service ticket system can drastically cut down on the amount of frivolous emails, random questions that could be answered from a
good FAQ and of course stop spam. Not to mention it gives your online business a look of professionalism and higher level of customer service.



During my search for a free customer support script, I came a cross a huge amount of premium support ticket platforms that ranged from
less then a hundred bucks to a couple hundred, as well as monthly fee offers.

However, I didn't want to break the bank and believed that their had to be some really good free ticket systems to choose from. Here's what
I found...

OSTicket

osTicket:: Open Source Support Ticket System

osTicket is a really popular support ticket system that seems to have a pretty good following and a development team that is still actively
improving on the code.

From their site the OSTicket system integrates via email and web-based forms into an easy to use website interface. They say you can organize
and manage your requests for support from a single place. Sounds good to me.

However, upon closer examination it looked like there was recently an exploit found in their script which could divulge some of your sensitive
server data to prying eyes. With that revelotion I decided to continue looking.

According to recent reports this exploit has since been fixed with a recent update. One of the great things about using osTicket is it has an easy
install through c-panel, which is available for free from many hosting accounts. (Including Hostgator, the hosting company I recommend)

Trellis Desk

ACCORD5 | Trellis Desk

User friendly, robust, easy to use, very complete and free, is how the Trellis Desk support script could be defined. The Trellis Desk software
features a customer support solution that allows you your customers to quickly and easily submit support tickets.

with Trellis Desk you can have customers register, submit support tickets, get canned responses to frequently asked questions, escalate tickets
based on priority status and get email notifications.

They have a built in knowledgebase to answer the questions that are commonly asked. All you have to do is create articles based on the most
common queries and post them to the help desk. then your customers can search by keyword for the answers to their problems, eliminating
un-necessary replies and giving quick customer support.

This is the support desk I decided to use for my Paid Insider site and internet marketing related products and am so far quite happy.

Maian Support Script

A free support center script that I recommend can be downloaded at:Maian Script World - Free PHP scripts for personal or commercial use!

PHP Support Tickets

PHP Support Tickets

didn't spend a lot of time with this one due to my success with the previous support script. however, they appear to have two flavors here. Free
or premium at $9.99. Take a look at the free demo on their site to find out if PHP Support Tickets may be right for you.

Help Center Live

Help Center Live Community | Helping serve YOUR sites visitors

This ones free but it looks like the developer is throwing in the towel on further updates and development.


(Not Free)

Perl Desk

Help Desk Software by PerlDesk | Customer Support and Email Management Solutions

The support script from Perl Desk looks like a winner and features a complete customer support system that organizes and streamlines your
helpdesk and emails, enabling your team to deliver quick and accurate support help.

Perl desk seems to be widely used and at an affordable price. They offer hosted solutions if you prefer to pay monthly and host through the
Perl Desk site.

Kayako Support Suite

Kayako SupportSuite » Support desk software (ticket, e-mail, live chat, self-help)

This one seems to be the big daddy of support software with a very robust amount of features and capabilities. If you somehow find the other
scripts lacking in depth and features, than Kayako might be a good place to look.

They offer a free 7 day trial as well as hosted option, leased or owned packages.

Hope this information helped you in selecting a customer support ticket system for your online business. Let me know if you know of any other
support ticket scripts that you recommend and I'll add them to the list.

[NoTrouble]

Here's another free support script that looks interesting. I haven't tried it but it might be a good addition to your list -
Free Help Desk Software

They say it has no ads or time limit and it lets customers get support from online forms.

[Bart Lines]

You can also add BridgeTrak Suite to this list of helpdesk solutions.

It works perfect for us with a rich feature set and is high flexibility for powerful trouble tickets tracking.
We updated to a new version a while ago that brought even more of great enhancements like, for example, customizable dashboard, screen layouts with drag and drop field placements, more advanced acive directory integration with single sign on.

The solution is suitable for the helpdesk departments as well as online business web portals.

By the way, If I'm not wrong, scriptlogic, the developer of this solution is still giving away a chance to win a trip to TechEd 2008 for everybody who download any of their software.