What is the best helpdesk software for a small team?

Posted by RunningThroughSC@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 29 comments

Good morning! I just took a new job as an IT Manager for a county Parks department. Their current helpdesk software (AssetPanda) is terrible (they hate it as well). I've worked for the past several years in an environment that used a system that one of the developers made. So, I've been out of the game for a while. So...My question: Tell me your favorite helpdesk software. It can be cloud based, or an on-prem solution. Bonus points if I can track assets and tie them to the users as well.

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29 Comments

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avomir@reddit

Have used [Help Scout](https://efficient.link/r/help-scout) for 5-6 years as a team of 2 and have nothing but good things to say about it! Companies that tend to use Help Scout are very "customer centric" aka care about their customers vs treating them as just a number. Would say they are your best bet [amongst the others](https://efficient.yt/help-desk) out there.

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Character-Hornet-945@reddit

For a small team, Desk365 is an excellent choice—it’s cloud-based, easy to set up, and affordable, offering ticketing, automation, and a lot more features.

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anuriya07@reddit

For a small team like yours, I highly recommend [**BoldDesk**](https://www.bolddesk.com/). It’s a cost-effective solution that’s great for small teams and startups. BoldDesk is well-known as a [Zendesk alternative](https://www.bolddesk.com/alternative/zendesk), offering similar features at a more affordable price. Plus, it has a free tier for startups, which could be a great way to get started without any initial investment. Check out here: [https://www.bolddesk.com/startups](https://www.bolddesk.com/startups) BoldDesk also allows you to track assets and tie them to users, which should help streamline your operations and improve efficiency. Given your team size and needs, it sounds like a perfect fit!

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ample_space@reddit

LanSweeper does a good job - it has Helpdesk, asset tracking and software deployment capabilities.

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spenc119@reddit

I love LanSweeper and have used it in several orgs for asset management and helpdesk, but I'm pretty certain the Helpdesk module is going to be deprecated in the near future. They haven't really made any improvements to it in the past 3-4 years and they are solely focused on moving everything to their cloud and introducing new products there. I've been told a few times that the Helpdesk module won't ever be moved to their cloud offering and I'm just assuming that they will kill the on-premise version eventually like everyone else. It's a bummer because it's simple and effective, but watching them slowly shift strategy has been disappointing.

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Gangz777gangz@reddit

We are using Zammad Community Edition for our small team. Self-hosted, easy to use.

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Primary-Survey-5913@reddit

+1 for Zammad

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InformalSearch455@reddit

Incident IQ. Great for ticketing/resource mgmt. And yes, you can tie any asset to users and track them. It's fantastic.

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RunningThroughSC@reddit (OP)

Would this be a good fit for non-K12 businesses? Or, is it designed specifically for them?

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InformalSearch455@reddit

I think it would be a good fit for any organization. We had Asset Panda, too...hated it. Incident IQ is light years beyond AP. I work in K-12, but would use this in a heartbeat outside of it.

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mattberan@reddit

Full disclosure that I work for InvGate. I recommend getting something that your team can manage themselves with little to no work. The last thing you want to be doing is working with JavaScript in your ticketing system when you could be doing the real work. You'll find a lot of great solutions out there that fit your needs, but my advice is to keep it simple and find a vendor that will PARTNER with you instead of just sending you a bill. Good luck and let us know what you end up going with!

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RunningThroughSC@reddit (OP)

I have a demo scheduled for tomorrow morning.

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Hamping@reddit

I met Matt in a conference some time ago, he's a seasoned pro in ITSM, and even working for InvGate, he's always very open and transparent in his suggestion. As he said, look for tools that let you work at low cost and let you automate as much as possible. Open Source is possible, but I'd recommend a vendor like his company that will team up with you.

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ComfortableBag605@reddit

I just helped setup invgate at my last employer and I liked it.

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mattberan@reddit

Wow - thanks for posting this, made my day :)

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ComfortableBag605@reddit

It kind of got 'dumped,' in my lap during a layoff spree, so I had to learn it on the fly. Honestly, I had never heard of it before, but I could fumble around and figure it out.

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mattberan@reddit

That's the goal. Complex enough to fit 90% of needs, easy enough that you need 10% the effort of most systems.

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SysadminN0ob@reddit

All the helpdesks softwares I see have so much bloat. I wonder what the absolute minimum is for one. Imagine that a company makes it and says ok thats it - we will never add more crap to it. We will ensure that the crap we have made gets progressively faster and cheaper overtime. That's it. What would be your minimum required features for such a theoretical software? or, let's say - capabilities?

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PingZ_01@reddit

OTRS or Zammad

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Educational_Fox1231@reddit

osTicket is what we use. 3 of us in the department looking after a school and it does what we need. I know other colleagues I know at other schools rave about Freshdesk.

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Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit

For really small teams and businesses, I always recommend Spiceworks. It does the jobs. I don't like it necessarily, but it is cheap, and has just about everything. We used to use it, but moved on to BossDesk.io . Like it a lot more.

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ComfortableBag605@reddit

Their latest version seems to be garbage.

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Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit

We were on the very old, self-hosted version before they started pushing their cloud offering. I don't have any experience with anything newer.

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ComfortableBag605@reddit

I loved the self hosted version and ran it for years, they depreciated that this year (or last year) I tried their cloud version . . . nope.

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chuckinhoutex@reddit

consider Zoho. It's inexpensive and surprisingly full featured.

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Naclox@reddit

If you want basic ticketing, I like FreshDesk. For my team of 3, the free version works well. We used Spiceworks when I first started here, but we all hated it.

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BitteringAgent@reddit

Depends on the needs and the budget. As others have stated, if there is no money in the budget, spiceworks is great. It's simple, easy to use, and does most of everything you'd want/need. Tickets, tracking assets, scanning your networks if you want, etc. With that said, if there is money in the budget I prefer Atlassian products. Confluence for documentation, Jira Software for projects, and Jira Service Management for tickets. If you want to spend the extra money on Jira Service Management Premium, you can also use that for your inventory. It is a sandbox, so you'll need to spend some time building out how you want things to work together and what data you want to track. I prefer Atlassian because I can create easier automation and more easily link items/documentation/tickets together.

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BWMerlin@reddit

GLPI is free and open source, self host yourself or pay them to.

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khobbits@reddit

It really depends on what you 'need', and if you can combine things. I generally like JIRA as a ticket and project tool, especially integrated into confluence. It can get very complicated, but it can also trigger tasks. For example we have workflows that would allow people to request to be added to a AD group, or get a license assigned, that requires approval. Best thing about JIRA is when it's also used to track other things, for example internal IT projects, software development, and it is also used for things like our facilities, travel and procurement teams. Tickets can be moved between helpdesks, and broken into sub tasks. When I needed something simplier, but user friendly, zendesk did a good job.