Open-source alternatives to Zendesk

At a glance

Open-source alternatives to Zendesk compared
Tool	Licence	Self-hosting difficulty	Who it suits	Strengths
FreeScout	AGPL-3.0	Easy: a PHP app with MySQL or PostgreSQL, light to run	Small teams answering customer email together, who want it simple	Familiar shared inbox, unlimited agents and mailboxes, phone apps, low running costs
Zammad	AGPL-3.0	Harder: needs PostgreSQL, Redis and ideally Elasticsearch, with 6 GB of memory or more	Busier teams that need several channels, SLAs and reporting	Email, chat, phone and WhatsApp in one place, SLAs, knowledge base, official Zendesk importer, all features free when self-hosted

FreeScout: AGPL-3.0. The core is free; extras such as reports, workflows and a knowledge base are paid modules, bought once. Licence checked 4 October 2026.
Zammad: AGPL-3.0. Licence checked 4 October 2026.

Zendesk is a good product with a painful price. Suite Team is £45 per agent a month on an annual plan. A support team of five pays £2,700 a year; a team of ten, £5,400. Every new starter adds another £540 a year, forever.

For a small team that mostly answers customer emails together, that is a lot of money for a shared inbox. The two open-source helpdesks below do the core job well, with no per-agent fees.

Hands-on: FreeScout

FreeScout is a self-hosted shared inbox, modelled closely on Help Scout. If your team's day is "customer emails come in, we answer them, nothing gets missed", it does exactly that.

A shared inbox that feels familiar. Emails become conversations, you assign them to someone, reply, add private notes for colleagues, and see at a glance what is waiting.
Unlimited agents and mailboxes, in the free core. Add support@, sales@ and accounts@ without paying per person.
Phone apps for Android and iPhone, and the interface in over 30 languages.
Light to run. It is a PHP app with a MySQL or PostgreSQL database and needs no separate search server.
Very actively maintained, with new releases most weeks.

The catch is that a lot of features you might expect as standard are paid modules: tags, saved replies, two-step login, reports, workflows (automations), a knowledge base, live chat and the API all cost a few dollars to around $20 each. They are bought once, not per agent or per month, so kitting out a Zendesk-like setup typically comes to around $100 to $150 in total. Still a tiny fraction of a year of Zendesk.

Hands-on: Zammad

Zammad is the heavyweight: a full helpdesk that can do most of what Zendesk does.

Every channel in one place: email, website chat, phone systems, WhatsApp, Telegram and social media.
SLAs and escalations, so urgent customers don't wait, plus triggers and scheduled actions for automating the routine.
Knowledge base for self-service help articles.
An official Zendesk importer, which brings your tickets, customers and history across.
Everything is free when you self-host. There are no paid feature tiers, only optional support contracts.

The trade-off is that it is much heavier to run. Zammad needs PostgreSQL, Redis and, ideally, Elasticsearch for search, and the official guidance is at least 6 GB of memory, plus more for Elasticsearch. There are no official native phone apps, only a mobile web version you can add to your home screen.

For a five-person team, I'd put FreeScout in front of them. It looks and works like the shared inbox they already know, it runs happily on a small server, and the paid modules are one-off and cheap. Zammad is the better tool if you need SLAs and proper reporting, but most small teams don't, and it costs more to run.

Which one?

Mostly email, small team, want it simple: FreeScout.
Several channels, SLAs matter, lots of history to bring from Zendesk: Zammad.

What it costs

Zendesk

Zendesk Suite Team: £45 per user a month, billed annually. Checked 4 October 2026 (source).

Self-hosted, run by me

No per-user fees. Adding people doesn't add licence costs.
Setup: a one-off fee to set it up and move your data across.
Hosting and care: a fixed monthly fee covering every app on your server.
I'll quote once I know what you need.

Paid tool prices exclude VAT unless stated.

The UK angle

Customer conversations stay in the UK. Support inboxes are full of personal data: names, addresses, order details, sometimes worse. Self-hosting keeps them on a UK server you control.
Clear answers for customers and auditors about where their data is and who can see it.
No per-agent creep. Adding a seasonal temp or a part-timer costs nothing extra.

Honest drawbacks

Reporting is simpler than Zendesk's. Both tools report on the basics; neither matches Zendesk's analytics out of the box.
FreeScout's extras add up a little. The core is free, but most teams buy a handful of modules. Budget for them.
Zammad needs a proper server. It is not something to squeeze onto a small, cheap one.
Moving from Zendesk takes planning. Zammad has an official importer. FreeScout relies on a paid third-party migration service.
No vendor on the end of the phone, unless you buy Zammad's support contract. Support comes from whoever runs it.