Self-hosted help desk: Zammad and osTicket
What Zammad and osTicket are, what each is known for, and how to choose a self-hosted ticketing system for support or IT.
A self-hosted help desk turns support emails, chats and forms into organised tickets with history, assignments and SLAs — on your own servers, with your customers' data staying put.
What they are
Zammad — a modern, full-featured help desk (zammad.com). Email, chat, telephony, social channels and a knowledge base in one system, with a polished UI.
osTicket — a long-standing, simpler ticketing system (osticket.com). Email-based tickets, forms, departments and help topics; lighter and more traditional.
What they do
Both convert inbound requests into tickets with a shared queue, assignment, notes, canned responses, and a customer portal. Both support multiple departments, agents, and email piping so a message to support@ becomes a ticket automatically.
What each is known for
Zammad — a modern, all-in-one support platform: beautiful UI, many channels (email, chat, phone, social), a built-in knowledge base, and strong automation. The trade-off is that it is a bigger install (multiple services, Elasticsearch).
osTicket — being simple and battle-tested. It has run help desks for years, is light to host, and does email ticketing reliably without a heavy stack.
Why use them
Own your support data — customer conversations and histories stay in your infrastructure.
No per-agent, per-month pricing — a flat VPS regardless of how many agents you add.
Integrate with your systems — pull tickets from your own apps, push alerts into your chat, wire in your CRM.
Respond properly — shared queues and SLAs beat a shared inbox.
Which to pick
| You want… | Choose |
|---|---|
| A modern multichannel help desk with a knowledge base | Zammad |
| A light, proven email ticketing system | osTicket |
Where and how
Zammad: a 2–4 vCPU, 4 GB+ VPS (it uses PostgreSQL, Redis and Elasticsearch), deployed via Docker Compose or the packages, behind TLS.
osTicket: a 1–2 vCPU, 2 GB VPS with PHP + MySQL, deployed from source or a package.
For either: point a domain at it, configure email piping so incoming support mail becomes tickets, and back up the database. If you would rather we ran the desk for you, our Server Troubleshooting service and Server Management include ticketed support.