Ticking software for small (3/4 IT people)??? What do you use?

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BrilliantVacation590@reddit

BoldDesk! It’s not a free solution, but they offer a 1‑year free startup program. It’s simple and great for small teams. If you’re a startup, you can give it a try.

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mattberan@reddit

Well - I mean - we're built for small teams as well as big ones?

Check us out: InvGate

We're a different kind of ticketing vendor than most.

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HorseShedShingle@reddit

Freshservice (IT focussed branch of Freshdesk) works good too and has a free tier.

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ArmyCommander6948@reddit

Freshservice doesn't have a free tier.

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HorseShedShingle@reddit

right you are - I swear they used to but i'll edit the previous comment

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ArmyCommander6948@reddit

Yeah. I wish they did. We have a 2 man IT MSP.

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panopticon31@reddit

I use fresh desk everyday and hate it.

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DeifniteProfessional@reddit

I've tried Freshservice multiple times and honestly it just sucks. Everyone says "yeah try it, it's good" and then you find out they actually use something else more expensive lol

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panopticon31@reddit

Fresh service itself is really fuckin expensive.

They charge us over $100/month per user and we don't even have all the modules unlocked.

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All of them have limitations and pain points. For free software its pretty solid. I had issues with our freshdesk instance once we scaled and started getting a lot of tickets (~50K/yr). In that case the sorting started to become a real issue since they had some weird SLA auto-sorting stuff that was impossible to turn off - even on their top plan with devs trying to troubleshoot the issues. Basically if a ticket exceeded SLA it would be hidden behind other tickets that had not yet exceeded; which caused the really behind tickets to fall further behind.

This doesn't matter at all for a small team that probably has a few dozen tickets and is on top of things but something to keep in mind for larger teams that are dealing with 1000's of tickets.

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jetlagged-bee@reddit

Interesting. I wonder if this had anything to do with the recent change in their SLA configuration.

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HorseShedShingle@reddit

Maybe they made some improvements. We ended up moving to a different solution due to the sorting issues.

While we were still trying to troubleshoot we resorted to a 1 month SLA on everything in order to keep the “waiting longest” sort. That kind of worked but also made all of our metrics be way off.

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DreadPirateAnton@reddit

I've been very happy with fresh service lately. Spiceworks is also a good alternative.

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slayermcb@reddit

Yup. I rather liked fresh service.

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lectricx@reddit

This.

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New-Alfalfa-2989@reddit

Zammad is good option for open source and self hosted. More customer focused.

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Apprehensive_Bat_980@reddit

We’ve had this since last year. It’s ok, few things it’s lacks but works!

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Flying-T@reddit

What do you think its missing?

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Accurate-Ad6361@reddit

The crapping pile of public aid school educated supported people they run for 800 eur a day lacking basic understanding of software is hard to swallow. I think zammad as software is decent, but far from perfect, service is shit.

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Joshuancsu@reddit

OSTicket

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LimeyRat@reddit

We used Spiceworks on-premises for 18 years but are now on osTicket and very happy with it. We’re eagerly waiting for the new version!

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ithium@reddit

Don't hold your breath. It's been coming for like 5 years lol

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LimeyRat@reddit

More than that, and that was a concern last year when we evaluated and switched.

There’s now a section of their website that has info and screenshots and in relative terms it means the release is imminent!

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Heasterian001@reddit

Its really bad if team get's bigger or you will want to automate anything. Reporting is also too simple. Its good only in tiny orgs.

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miteycasey@reddit

The title is for 3-4 people

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ithium@reddit

Been using this for 7 years. Solid free option.

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HoustonBOFH@reddit

Also a vote for OSticket. Easy to set up and works very well.

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princesss_pet@reddit

RangerMSP

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GullibleDetective@reddit

Zoho

Not jira

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quasimodoca@reddit

Absolutely not Jira. It’s a steaming pile of shit I have to work with every day.

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Eggslaws@reddit

Isn't Jira (Redmine and the likes) oriented more towards project management than ITSM? Software development, sure yes but I don't understand how sprints works for IT service delivery.

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techypunk@reddit

They have JIRA Service Management (I used the cloud version,idk about on-prem) which is more for a ticketing system.

Its pretty basic and works fine… but can be customized.

JIRA is also amazing for PM if its set up right. And if you have decent PM's or management. Also only used the cloud version, so I'm not sure about on prem.

I'm not sure of the hate for Atlassian, besides it being pricey. Its a good set of SaaS/PaaS/IaaS tools.

Confluence in king for documentation.

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Eggslaws@reddit

To be fair, most of the applications are pretty neat for what they are designed for, if planned, implemented and maintained correctly. All the hate is because their companies probably dropped the ball in one of those three phases (except when a good product is overly milked by the developers and subsequent non-maintenance because of high costs. Why not just migrate to something else instead of earning the hatred of your users)

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miteycasey@reddit

This is the correct answer

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miteycasey@reddit

Oh yea it’s is, but management is sold on its ability do everything.

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nytel@reddit

We use Jira very extensively for a lot of things. New client checklists, dashboards for new hires, our quote/approval management. Inventory. We even got Accounting using it. As much as I have my minor gripes with it, it's pretty bangin once you leverage it.

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Sudden_Office8710@reddit

🤣 a 3 or 5 person shop could never afford it.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

agreed, Jira is a piece of shit. Small teams I'd probably rec freshdesk

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Morkai@reddit

You've never worked with Monday.com I assume. We just moved off that to Jira and my life is so much easier now.

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sleepmaster91@reddit

Yeah fuck Jira

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UrethraFrankl1n@reddit

We use Zoho. I fucking hate it. However that’s probably because instead of actually building it out properly we continue to just put in bandaid after bandaid to make it work how we want.

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hectoralpha@reddit

A small comapny I knew used hubspot and emails a few years ago

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Far-Bug8297@reddit

osticket if u want free spiceworks if u want easy literally doesnt matter when ur entire team fits in a group chat

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dawglb17@reddit

TrackIT

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mexicans_gotonboots@reddit

Jitbit it’s been awesome

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SnooSprouts4358@reddit

Agreed, we have been using Fitbit for almost 15 years. It works remarkably well.

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Hyperion_Silenus@reddit

Spiceworks?

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The_NorthernLight@reddit

Happyfox

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xCDOGx@reddit

We use FreeScout, super easy to use and spin up via docker.

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34YellowHouses@reddit

Odoo - It Is Great!

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TxTechnician@reddit

https://github.com/Peppermint-Lab/peppermint

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Nice_Improvement_493@reddit

I loaded this up about a year and a half ago and absolutely loved it for a minimal helpdesk. Ended up in GLPI land, but really wanted to go all in on peppermint.

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GenericRedditor12345@reddit

Their domain has expired?

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TxTechnician@reddit

Oh dang, slip up lol.

https://github.com/Peppermint-Lab/peppermint/issues/520

here: https://web.archive.org/web/20260314015200/https://peppermint.sh/

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Sudden_Office8710@reddit

Request Tracker works great it’s open source but you could purchase support if you want/need.

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sashalav@reddit

Youtrack from JetBrains. Free up to 10 people. There are exactly 10 in our team so I increased it to 11 and paid tier because it made our life so much easier.

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trobotics@reddit

Spiceworks. Free up to 5 seats on their cloud version.

Everything free if on-prem, but not sure if they are still doing on prem versions anymore.

Pre-covid when everything on-prem (servers workstations and users) spiceworks was the poor mama best toolkit

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jphoeke@reddit

Thanks for that tidbit of info. I'm going to look into it.

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

Go for it but it is garbage where as the on prem was great. Also 3 or 4 IT people usually has hundreds or even 1,000's of users I would not call that small. If you are willing to self host i would go for https://osticket.com/ it has a lot of bang for the zero bucks and with the Docker image spinning it up is a no brainer also there is no limit to number of agents on the free version and that is rare

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pointandclickit@reddit

It looks like the Docker image was last updated 5 years ago. Am I missing something?

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

Could be not sure. I know there is a new version coming soon (was on there site). But think abut it for a minute would you rather use email and whatever you throw together to make it work or a ticketing system that works. I have used Spiceworks cloud and I would rather use any other system.

It is funny when people complain about open source being old or missing paid features. Dude it is free software that people have spent a lot of time devolving refining and fixing. Correct it is old but it works you open, close and document tickets assign them to people etc. All for free right.

You can write a document, mail merge and tons of things with LibreOffice.

It is old but it works.

https://next.osticket.com/?ssd=1

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pointandclickit@reddit

I mean, I'm not sure how you got that I was complaining. I was simply asking if there was another image that I missed. If anything I was questioning why you would use a docker image that's missing 5 years worth of feature and security updates rather than put in a little effort to set up the standard install.

Sure, something is better than nothing. But it's not a binary choice.

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Lazy-Psychology5@reddit

I really don't recommend spiceworks anymore. They were great back in like 2015-2020. They stopped updating on prem to focus on cloud, and then started charging. And maybe back in 2015 i would've paid for it, but not what it became.

We went with glpi and couldn't be better off.

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3tek@reddit

Shit just left a job post covid, everything was hosted on-prem lol.

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BronnOP@reddit

Sliceworks or Zoho will do

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FLAlex111@reddit

Atera has been great!

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n-Ultima@reddit

Spiceworks

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hellofairygodmotha@reddit

You can build an internal ticketing list using Microsoft lists

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Thyg0d@reddit

Kixdesk is free or very cheap.

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Arudinne@reddit

If you can get the budget it for it, we use Deskpro. Very flexible with a lot of options.

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whatdoido8383@reddit

If you have the Microsoft ecosystem, I've used a SharePoint list with a Form for intake. Works good for small environments, I'd never do that at scale though.

You could even create some simple flows for email notifications and ticket closures etc.

Other than that I've also used Zoho, Solarwinds and manage Engine's solution. Just depends on budget and your needs.

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Elensea@reddit

I used lansweeper back in the day. It was a great tool and simple internal hosted help desk not sure on pricing now but it was cheap then.

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brianinca@reddit

The ticketing system is not being developed / has not been improved in over five years. They spent all their new revenue on the cloud platform, we now just use it for on-prem asset management. It's FAR more expensive than it used to be, I went from wondering if they charged enough to stay in business, to wondering if it was worth it to keep it. My team says yes, so there it is.

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LukeShootsThings@reddit

I would second this. There's lots of options but if you would take advantage of Lansweeper's other features, their built in ticketing is "good enough."

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Elensea@reddit

Their main selling point to me the was like 500 assets for 500 a year. Helpdesk was 10 bucks a month per agent and the reporting using sql was amazing. They got private equity and all the sudden the cost increases became substantial. Not sure where it’s at now but I did love the program.

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vivnsam@reddit

ticks carry Lyme disease

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Bryman85@reddit

We use Teamwork Desk our our 5-man team. Works pretty well for our needs with the free version.

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Frequent_Cow_1312@reddit

osTicket is open source and simple to setup

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AccomplishedRobot@reddit

OSTicket

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monstaface@reddit

Hesk is real basic and real cheap.

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Vichingo455@reddit

The good old paper and pen

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t3hnp@reddit

Make a powerapps automate flow....job done

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Generic_Specialist73@reddit

Spiceworks

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tylerwatt12@reddit

Ehhh, wasn’t their email notification system down for a whole week recently? with no explanation or accountability?

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ContributionOdd9110@reddit

Been using this for quite a while, does everything the two of us needed.

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antiprodukt@reddit

I also use this. Free is the best price. Liked it more when it was hosted on prem before they moved to cloud, but still free is nice.

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mcinte7a@reddit

I liked Spiceworks but my manager moved us over to a Teams dashboard type thing. It's not great. Honestly the new dashboard is a pain in the ass, no real notification when a new ticket comes in and we have a first response metric to hit...

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Sideshow-Bob-Ross@reddit

Spiceworks

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Temporary_Werewolf17@reddit

https://gogenuity.com/

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joghurt_mit_der_ecke@reddit

Take a look a YouTrack (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/server/youtrack-docker-installation.html)

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Ornery-Swan4037@reddit

For free solutions, I’d say BoldDesk’s startup program is a good option. It’s very simple to manage, making it suitable for small teams. If you’re a startup, you can give it a try.

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marshall1727@reddit

Redmine

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KrisBoutilier@reddit

The community edition of Request Tracker: https://requesttracker.com/

If you only have 3 or 4 people you probably don't have enough capacity to handle all the business process overheads that are needed for much larger teams - you need simplicity and flexibility.

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HoustonBOFH@reddit

RT is good, but simple it ain't. I tried it but whet with OSticket.

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jondaley@reddit

Yeah, took a while to get setup, but I've been using it for close to 20 years and it works fine for my wife and I. I use it for ticketing, and also have a invoices queue that has some customized scripts for customers interacting with invoices.

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whitoreo@reddit (OP)

Correct. Simplicity would be best. I need the ability for end users to generate tickets, and for those to be assignable to on of a few people. Including all routers and switches we have less than 100 devices.

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yaahboyy@reddit

a lot of this stuff can be self hosted very securely for nearly free in azure but its deff more work if you dont have any people with dev experience.

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Smile4menow84@reddit

Fresh service

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Morkai@reddit

We are two people currently, and we've just moved off Monday.com to Jira and it's like night and day.

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d0nd@reddit

A cheap mechanical clock should do.

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ARandomGuy_OnTheWeb@reddit

That's hardware, he said software.

That being said, I think you can model that in Unity

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vogelke@reddit

I misread the title and thought "This guy has something ticking in his office? Call the fucking cops!"

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Eggslaws@reddit

BYOC

Bring Your Own Clock!

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whitoreo@reddit (OP)

I respect this comment.

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adsarelies@reddit

Would give me anxiety about a time bomb about to go off

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Einherjar07@reddit

Avoid Tiktok

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trobotics@reddit

Angryupdoot

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Think-Issue1521@reddit

Desk365 easy to setup and use, suits well for small teams.

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Main-ITops77@reddit

+1

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maevian@reddit

We use zammad as a two person team, used to be a pain to setup, but these days they have an official docker image.

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GoodEnoughThen@reddit

Spiceworks Cloud along with Action1 for patching and remote support. Both are set up and free-ish for small companies..

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EdmondVDantes@reddit

Redmine, Glpi, Manage engine service desk. Personal favourite Redmine cause being open source you can also write stuff in ruby and has good community

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casetofon2@reddit

Glpi ! Super powerfull. Extremely cheap even if you buy it . Licences cost around 3000€ / Year for "premium" bug fix on prem support etc etc. Not so difficult to setup either. I set it up for myself as a test with AD intergration, Mail notifications and asset management in about 1 hour a day for a week ....GLPI doesn't get enough credit for how powerfull it is ...

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Zenith2012@reddit

We use SupportPal, works well but self hosted.

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mahsab@reddit

Just vibe code one

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ZPrimed@reddit

We used DeskPro for this size team in the past, we self-hosted it though. Something like 10k-ish end users. I really liked it.

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moanos@reddit

Nextcloud Decks, tickets are created via API from E-Mail or service website.

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LogicalUpset@reddit

Is Spiceworks any good?

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Heasterian001@reddit

Take a look on frappe helpdesk. OSTicket sucks at reporting and is completly pain in the ass if you want to automatem things/have more ticket categories or better sla system.

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Commercial-Fun2767@reddit

Please redditers, can you read other people answers and not repeat things for nothing? They built a hierarchical system and some folks still can’t use it or just don’t care and just want to share their awesome knowledge that has already been said ten times.

Just a tought but I don’t want to sound like a dick, do what you want and live young wild and free and respect hierarchy!

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huenix@reddit

Request tracker.

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KervyN@reddit

RT is really simple. I second this.

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BWMerlin@reddit

GLPI is free and open source. It will do your helpdesk and asset management plus a whole heap more.

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Commercial-Fun2767@reddit

Everything is a basic form, a bit raw, but the ticketing is great, inventory awesome. Project management etc. And it’s open source. Their “community manager” makes great content too.

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dxps7098@reddit

With GLPI you can start with wickets and add asset management and many other things if you want later. It's quite powerful but doesn't have to be too complicated.

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kernpanic@reddit

This.

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ORA2J@reddit

Glpi.

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Apprehensive_Bat_980@reddit

Zammad

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Hairy-Marzipan6740@reddit

i'd start with manageengine servicedesk plus if free matters most. their standard edition is still free up to 5 technicians, which is one of the few options that still fits a 4-person IT team without weird workarounds. if you're already deep in atlassian, jira service management is solid too, but the free plan tops out at 3 agents, so a 4th person pushes you into paid. zoho desk is another decent cheap/simple one, but the free tier is 3 users. freshdesk gets mentioned a lot, but their current free program looks more like 1-2 agents for 6 months, so i wouldn't build around that for a 3-4 person IT shop.

beyond price, i'd pick based on what you need in month one. if it's mainly email-to-ticket, basic routing, and a simple portal, keep it boring. if you need asset tracking, approvals, or more internal IT workflow stuff, manageengine or jira make more sense. if your team already lives in slack, i work at clearfeed and that's the lane we built for, but for a normal small internal IT desk i'd probably test manageengine first.

are you trying to keep this dead simple, or do you need asset tracking/change stuff too?

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Vogete@reddit

While not free, Jitbit worked really well for us. It's simple and very intuitive to use for both IT and end users.

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AntutuBenchmark@reddit

zammad is absolutely fine, we are 5 and have been using it self hosted for atleast 6 years.

Its Free, open source and can be self hosted.

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goth__potato@reddit

We're using Genuity. It's not the most robust in terms of features but it's easy to set up, customizable, has a clean interface, and allows for form submission and email submissions. It's also a flat fee (we're paying around $400/year) and not based on the number of service technicians or users.

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Computer_Panda@reddit

How many end users are you supporting?

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helloadam@reddit

Huge fan of Cerb.ai been around for 20 years. Fully open source and highly customizable.

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hexaGonzo@reddit

ticketos

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BuddyLlght@reddit

OTRS

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Monsterology@reddit

Jitbit

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notdedicated@reddit

What is it for? Like development ticketing, IT support teams, or external ticket support?

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4zc0b42@reddit

OSTicket for free, JitBit for paid.

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SyntaxErrorGuru@reddit

I was a big fan of Hesk and ostickets.

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ddixonr@reddit

N8n and Claude Code- make your own. It's easier than you may think.

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Over-Abbreviations55@reddit

Action1 has been solid , you 200free endpoints and has been rock solid

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DocJones43@reddit

I just built my own solution one day using Power Automate with a shared mailbox and a SharePoint list. Emails come in, goes into the SharePoint list and replies with a ticket number. Built the whole thing in a few days over the holidays when it was slow and it worked so we kept using it. Feed the List into BI and generate reports on activity as well.

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NicolaeEast@reddit

I use haloitsm. It's been great for my needs.

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Miserable_Pear_6940@reddit

Osticket, my guy

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Ill-Mail-1210@reddit

Rangermsp, it’s simple and not overly complicated. We tried other solutions, this for us is the best

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StatementNext682@reddit

We had an engineering team who used linear so I just hopped on theirs as well. So I guess my recommendation would just be whatever they already have that can be retrofitted.

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