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Show HN: Libredesk – Open-source customer support desk. Single binary app

376 points by avr5500 2y ago

Libredesk is a 100% free and open-source customer support desk, the backend is written in Go and the frontend is in Vue JS with ShadnCN for UI components. Unlike many "open-core" alternatives that lock essential features behind enterprise plans, Libredesk is fully open-source and plans to always stay this way. It's in alpha (v0.1.0) right now, but there’s a working demo available. I built this because I wanted a truly open and self-hosted alternative to platforms like Chatwoot, Intercom, and Zendesk. Would love feedback, suggestions, and thoughts from the community. GitHub: https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk Demo: https://demo.libredesk.io/ https://demo.libredesk.io/

yoeven 2y ago
Are there plans for future integrations into messaging platforms like Whatsapp or Telegram?
mjoin 2y ago
Not in the domain but it looks great :) Congratulations
vishnumohandas 2y ago
Looks amazing, great demo! nit: it'd be nice if we could resize the sections
mofirouz 2y ago
It would be wonderful if it could be used as a ticketing solution where the ticket could have severity. So customers could login to create a ticket as part of their org. Also data sources from either third party in-house database or something HubSpot would be great!
teruakohatu 2y ago
When I last looked, I couldn't find any truely open source solutions that could practically replace even a shared inbox. This looks like it could. Well done to the developer. And the paid options had high costs even on the most basic plans.
Aeolun 2y ago
Haven’t really seen anything else but it certainly loads fast!
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
Cool idea!
d1sxeyes 2y ago
Looks great! Mobile experience is not great but I think it’s sensible not to focus on that yet, the number of users doing customer support from a mobile phone is pretty small, even the big players in this space like ServiceNow etc have suboptimal mobile experiences. Do you have any plans on how to monetise this or is this a labour of love?
- avr5500 2y ago
  Mobile is not the focus, it can be done later as an app or something else. No plans to monetize; yes, it's a labor of love.
  - d1sxeyes 2y ago
    Lack of a monetisation strategy is a concern for folks who might worry that you end up running out of time/motivation to work on it, which might be a roadblock to wide adoption That said, if you're only in it for the joy of creating something amazing, and don't really worry about whether you'll be able to keep maintaining it indefinitely, then keep it up!
techn00 2y ago
I love single binary apps, easy to deploy.
- hamdouni 2y ago
  It still needs postgres and redis
grzaks 2y ago
Excellent! I was looking for a lightweight OSS alternative to Freshdesk/Zendesk and, honestly, didn’t find any worth deploying. Yours looks very promising, and we’ll definitely assess it.
- yorwba 2y ago
  I don't know how lightweight you're looking for, but you might also want to have a look at Zammad: https://github.com/zammad/zammad https://github.com/zammad/zammad I worked with a self-hosted deployment of it before, and it was reasonably low-maintenance.
oever 2y ago
Does it support the scenario where part of the team is only on IMAP?
pentacent_hq 2y ago
Great job, that's looking very nice and polished already! Are you also planning to introduce a SaaS version of it?
- avr5500 2y ago
  No plans, cloud deployment platforms like Railway can take of it
  - nh2 2y ago
    How do you plan to fund the development, if at all? For a project like this, a hosted version might be a nice idea if you eventually want to do something else than putting your free time into support and maintenance. And many users will appreciate that the hosted version takes care of DB migration and backups for them. A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long.
    - avr5500 2y ago
      > A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long. That actually makes sense. Also will apply to FOSS funds like - https://floss.fund https://floss.fund
      - nh2 2y ago
        For an example of how it can go down otherwise: papercups.io – Open-source alternative to Intercom Funded by Y Combinator https://web.archive.org/web/20230404011725/https://papercups.io/blog/papercups-maintenance https://web.archive.org/web/20230404011725/https://papercups... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26527268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26527268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719 I don't know why it shut down (my guess: didn't pan out with the typical revenue growth goals of a startup), but having a hosted version might save your project from such fate, making enough money to fund you, or somebody you hire who's excited about working on Free Software. Some pricing ideas: Free for noncommercial with limited data retention (like the Chatwoot free tier), 3-5 $/month for noncommercial individuals (e.g. users to put it in their website), more $/month for commercial. Add some more expensive enterprise plan that supports Microsoft EntraID groups for externalised permission management and you're good to go :) Add easy DB import/export functionality, so people can switch between hosted and self-hosted. A lot of people will be happy to pay for the convenience of hosted. Host in EU for best data protection (makes it easier for people to sign up). For billing, probably good to use a Merchant-of-Record service such as paddle.com (our startup likes it) to be able to sell internationally without having to deal with international taxes. I wish you and the project lots of success!
potamic 2y ago
Who are your target users? Why not use an embedded db like sqlite and make it truly "single binary"?
- codazoda 2y ago
  I would dig this
truepath_app 2y ago
I might be missing something obvious, but how does a customer file a ticket/request?
- avr5500 2y ago
  Right now the only way to create a ticket/request is by adding an inbox, and sending an email to your configured email address.
nh2 2y ago
Looks great! It seems to be email only so far. Do you plan to add chat, like Intercom and Chatwoot have it?
- avr5500 2y ago
  yes, once Libredesk is stable.
duckb 2y ago
Looks beautiful. How difficult would it be if I want to develop a plugin - Mood detection, Chat Helper (LLM linked), ...
ketan-10 2y ago
Looks awesome, Congratulations :)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
darkwater 2y ago
The demo looks really really good! And by looking at commit history, looks like you are a solo developer behind this. Kudos to you! Out of curiosity, do you have plans to make it a business or just keep it as a "hobby project"? Something like this is going basically to be used only by companies, no hobby users (unless someone wants to maintain a support desk for family & friend about something they are an expert...)
chrismorgan 2y ago
From the screenshot, in an AI assistance dropdown on a reply form: “Add Empathy”. Ouch.
- ddtaylor 2y ago
  Abolish corporate communication apathy, but don't point the finger at a dictionary as the reason it exists.
fguerraz 2y ago
This is great. Sadly, apart from “looking good”, there seems to be no documentation, or visible roadmap. So I can’t evaluate if it’s worth looking into or not. Keep up the good work!
- avr5500 2y ago
  Thank you! Adding a roadmap to v1.
mattsimpson 2y ago
Damn impressive start. Kudos! I am sure that if you posted a to-do list and roadmap to 1.0 you would get traction from the community to help finish it off, if you want. Hell, at a solid 1.0 I might be able to justify a switch from a popular commercial app and use that budget to fund a bit of development towards the project.
- avr5500 2y ago
  Thank you! Adding a todo and a roadmap to v1.
robertlagrant 2y ago
Potential roadmap item: bidirectional sync with Jira (and others) so support requests can create/be linked to Jira (etc) tickets, and see updates from them.
- phrotoma 2y ago
  While we're thinking about it, something I always wanted when I was working support. The abilitiy to "upvote" a bug from within a support case. That way a PM can sort open issues by number of users who are griping about it.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Yeah! Or at least have a count of the number of customer requests linked to the same ticket.
- rsyring 2y ago
  We looked years ago for simple helpdesk that would link to GitHub issues so that CS was working in the helpdesk tool but could easily create issues when a dev is involved.
srameshc 2y ago
Nice name , looks great and very useful !! How you built a single binary of Go and Vue is very neat, I never thought about doing something like this.
- KingOfCoders 2y ago
  This is also something I love about Go, https://www.inkmi.com/blog/simplicity-of-golang-systemd-deployments https://www.inkmi.com/blog/simplicity-of-golang-systemd-depl...
  - srameshc 2y ago
    thanks for sharing, there is always something to learn
ddtaylor 2y ago
What method do we have to fund this or ensure it can work for our needs.
revskill 2y ago
Single app meanz j bundle all asset and code in a binary?
dinu99 2y ago
Looks nice, congratulations. Can you add knowledgebase section? I'm looking for an alternative to freshdesk/zendesk. I would recommend monetizing this via hosted service like https://frappe.io/ https://frappe.io/ does with ERPNext project.
- rushabh 2y ago
  checkout https://frappe.io/helpdesk https://frappe.io/helpdesk
yashasolutions 2y ago
Nice work. I cannot test the demo as it is down now but just wanted to share I have been using open source solution Zammad and I am pretty happy about it. It's fully open source (it's a ruby app - so different stack.) and pretty robust. The frontend is a bit oldish, but it has a lot of nice features. The single binary, easy deploy + fresh UI is interesting thought. Are you planning multilingual features?
- avr5500 2y ago
  It's up now, yes planning to support multiple languages.
calvinmorrison 2y ago
Anyone using RT still here? My idea tracking system is one that exists in email, but doesnt send a billion obnoxious "your ticket has been created" emails and butcher the contents. So far I've got it kind of working with RT as a no reply listener. We watch all comms but it doesnt reply to anything.
mathfailure 2y ago
[flagged]
- xena 2y ago
  How so?
  - mathfailure 2y ago
    [flagged]
curtisszmania 2y ago
We all know open-source customer support tools are still the wild west, and Libredesk might just be the sheriff in town. Libredesk's single binary app approach is refreshing - simplicity can be beautiful when done right. As someone who's been around the block a few times, I'm intrigued by the potential for self-hosted support desks to disrupt traditional SaaS models. In fact, I remember when our own company was small and struggled with customer support. We ended up building something similar to Libredesk, but it took us months of trial and error - not exactly scalable. So kudos to you, abhinavxd, for creating a tool that could potentially make all our lives easier (or harder, depending on how we choose to use it).
- fifticon 2y ago
  this curtismania comment should be flagged as spam, but I can't do so from the interface. I don't know what he is eating, but it is not carbon-based. Possibly he has been eating marketing-copy, directly.
mouse_ 2y ago
If the AI response feature promises something I cannot deliver, who is liable?
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  You are.
snvzz 2y ago
Mandatory Affero GPL warning. Ensure you understand the license before deploying.
- rancar2 2y ago
  Chatwoot has a lot more features with its MIT license.
- mr-karan 2y ago
  I'm curious to understand the implications of the AGPL-3.0 license in the context of this project. It sounds like the author doesn't want big corps to offer a hosted version of this tool (because doing that would require them to release the source code of any modifications they make to the software, which many companies are reluctant to do) and it's also an OSI approved license (unlike the recently famous SSPL or BSL). What's so wrong about AGPL-3.0 then? The intention is often to prevent companies from building proprietary services on top of open source software and I feel AGPL 3.0 is a sensible choice here.
firefoxd 2y ago
Kudos! We've encountered several customers that hated their help desk but couldn't move away. We've even considered building our own since we were in the business. But here comes the hard and most important part that Zendesk and the like do that makes all the difference: Integration. You need support integration with all the popular tools people use their help desk with. Shopify, ebay, whatsapp, woocommerce and all the seemingly unrelated software people use to support their e-commerce business. That's where we gave up, but I hope you find a solution for it.
aarreedd 2y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned FreeScout. It's a solid open-source helpdesk: https://freescout.net/ https://freescout.net/. They have cheap, one-time purchase plugins. Happy to pay a bit to keep the project sustainable. I'd love to see an open-source Trello alternative that as well. There are a few out there, but nothing that seems actively maintained.
- alchemist1e9 2y ago
  https://github.com/RotherOSS/otobo https://github.com/RotherOSS/otobo Otobo might be a good other option. It’s a refreshed and expanded version of the classic OTRS. Yes perl, but in this space has an extensive track record.
qwertox 2y ago
This looks very promising. Does it have an API?
- avr5500 2y ago
  Thanks, Yes I will adding an API user support, you will be able to interact with Libredesk with APIs.
registeredcorn 2y ago
It's a neat idea and I'd like to see how this evolves over time! Keep up the great work!! :) I do have notes/feedback based off of what I see in the demo site: # SLA The SLA stuff under the Admin panel needs to be way, way more robust if I were to ever use it. Many of the clients I work with have different SLA expectations based on the severity of an issue. They also might work in different time zones from Support staff, so calendars may need to be set to "countdown" in relation to either client local time, or support local time, depending on what is decided in the contract. In addition to time zone stuff, there's also issues with what constitutes a holiday; we may have holidays that they don't, or vice versa. Unless something is covered under a niche 24/7/365 contract and is marked as Critical, we wouldn't want the "countdown" to trigger until the next business day. This matters a lot, because many US holidays are on Friday, so tickets will go unanswered for 3 full days. Here's an example of multiple, different SLA requirements for one client: * A Critical should have a response within 1 hour (24/7 coverage), and a resolution within 12 hours (24/7 coverage). * A Low should have a response within 5 business days, and a resolution within 30 business days. Now imagine that, but multiplied by many, many clients. Instead of having however many SLAs for each situation per client, we like to have "compact" SLAs where there are clauses for different severity ratings of a ticket, and factoring in a bunch of other stuff, for individual clients. Client 1 paid for 24/7 for criticals, but not other stuff, so Client 1 SLA is (this). Client 2 paid for 24/7 for all things, so Client 2 SLA is (that). Client 3 paid for the most basic coverage, so Client 3 SLA is (the other). We would need an SLA system that accounts for various factors and verbiage within a ticket received. Sometimes it also depends on who files the ticket with us. Is it the "problem child", or is the CEO? # Time zone (as it relates to SLAs) In the contract, it is usually formally agreed that if no support staff lives in the clients local time zone, then the SLA response time will not start counting until it applies to the support staffs local time zone. Exceptions are made if they pay for 24/7/365 coverage. So, even if support receives two different "important" tickets from two different clients, one may take priority over the other because the service coverage they have paid for. ## Example(s): * Client 1 files a ticket at 2PM their time; no 24/7 coverage. It's 4AM for local Support. Support's response time doesn't "start the countdown" until 8AM in Support's time zone. * Client 2 files a ticket at 11AM and is supposed to have a response time within 4 hours; no 24/7 coverage. The ticket is filed on July 4th (Independence Day in the US) for the Support staff. The 4 hour "countdown" doesn't start until 8AM on July 7th. (3 day weekend) * Client 3 files a ticket at 2PM on July 4th; have 24/7 coverage. It's 4AM for local Support on July 4th. The "countdown" has started. # Holiday It would also be nice if the option for "New Holiday" adjusted automatically each year. We have a fair number of clients, and manually updating Holiday's consistently (and accurately) is not something I see people doing particularly well at the start of each year. It's kind of one of those things you end up catching around September, and realize all of your metrics for the last few quarters have been off. # FRD and RD text? In the conversation with Felix Morin, I see warning labels for "FRD Overdue" and "RD Overdue". What are those triggered by? I didn't see anything in the admin area that seemed to point to it. It would be good if, on hover, it would give a brief explanation of what the trigger is. Or is it something that the person who filed the ticket did, somehow?
crazymoka 2y ago
When it turns to beta, I'll be using this.
gregoriol 2y ago
Interesting project! However, installation documentation is quite strange: it says "requires postgres and redis to run" but there is zero other information. Is there any version requirements? any configuration file to set the hosts/auth for them? Hope this helps, keep the good work!
- avr5500 2y ago
  The Docker file specifies versions: https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk/blob/main/docker-compose.yml https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk/blob/main/docker-comp... I will include the versions in the installation docs for binary installations. Thanks for the feedback.
wiradikusuma 2y ago
The UI looks good! I can't seem to find the channels it supports. Email? X? Instagram (IG) comments? A support desk is all about channel integrations, for example: - replying IG comments from the app - replying Telegram chats from the app - replying support@myco.com from the app (SMTP & IMAP integration) - basic CRM so that we that the customer doing all 3 above are the same, so the agent has "context" - integration with external CRM I hope I'm not offending anyone, but if any integrations are supported, you should emphasize this.
OldMatey 2y ago
Fantastic. This is far overdue and looks like a solid start. I have been particularly surprised by how few options there are in the CS space that are open source and options like Zendesk are SO expensive and the pricing tiers and cost structures are prohibitive for many small organizations.
remram 2y ago
Looks good! I'm currently using OsTicket (PHP) with a small team. Pretty happy with it but could use more automation. What I like best about OsTicket is that I was able to configure it completely transparent, there are no auto-messages sent to users and no reference numbers of boilerplate in outbound messages. Happy to see more opensource options in this space, especially with a focus on customizable automation.
rgbrgb 2y ago
This is so cool, thanks for sharing. Can you talk about why you made it and why you made it free / open?
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Nicely done. Canned responses (the ability to create/manage/insert them) would be helpful. Does it support email? That would be key. The demo looks more focused on chat.

376 points by avr5500 2y ago

yoeven 2y ago

Are there plans for future integrations into messaging platforms like Whatsapp or Telegram?

mjoin 2y ago

Not in the domain but it looks great :) Congratulations

vishnumohandas 2y ago

Looks amazing, great demo! nit: it'd be nice if we could resize the sections

mofirouz 2y ago

It would be wonderful if it could be used as a ticketing solution where the ticket could have severity. So customers could login to create a ticket as part of their org. Also data sources from either third party in-house database or something HubSpot would be great!

teruakohatu 2y ago

When I last looked, I couldn't find any truely open source solutions that could practically replace even a shared inbox. This looks like it could. Well done to the developer. And the paid options had high costs even on the most basic plans.

Aeolun 2y ago

Haven’t really seen anything else but it certainly loads fast!

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

Cool idea!

d1sxeyes 2y ago

Looks great! Mobile experience is not great but I think it’s sensible not to focus on that yet, the number of users doing customer support from a mobile phone is pretty small, even the big players in this space like ServiceNow etc have suboptimal mobile experiences. Do you have any plans on how to monetise this or is this a labour of love?

avr5500 2y ago
Mobile is not the focus, it can be done later as an app or something else. No plans to monetize; yes, it's a labor of love.
- d1sxeyes 2y ago
  Lack of a monetisation strategy is a concern for folks who might worry that you end up running out of time/motivation to work on it, which might be a roadblock to wide adoption That said, if you're only in it for the joy of creating something amazing, and don't really worry about whether you'll be able to keep maintaining it indefinitely, then keep it up!

techn00 2y ago

I love single binary apps, easy to deploy.

hamdouni 2y ago
It still needs postgres and redis

grzaks 2y ago

Excellent! I was looking for a lightweight OSS alternative to Freshdesk/Zendesk and, honestly, didn’t find any worth deploying. Yours looks very promising, and we’ll definitely assess it.

yorwba 2y ago
I don't know how lightweight you're looking for, but you might also want to have a look at Zammad: https://github.com/zammad/zammad https://github.com/zammad/zammad I worked with a self-hosted deployment of it before, and it was reasonably low-maintenance.

oever 2y ago

Does it support the scenario where part of the team is only on IMAP?

pentacent_hq 2y ago

Great job, that's looking very nice and polished already! Are you also planning to introduce a SaaS version of it?

avr5500 2y ago
No plans, cloud deployment platforms like Railway can take of it
- nh2 2y ago
  How do you plan to fund the development, if at all? For a project like this, a hosted version might be a nice idea if you eventually want to do something else than putting your free time into support and maintenance. And many users will appreciate that the hosted version takes care of DB migration and backups for them. A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long.
  - avr5500 2y ago
    > A hosted version need not necessarily target maximum money making. You could run it as a nonprofit whose goal is to ensure that the open-source project works well and lives long. That actually makes sense. Also will apply to FOSS funds like - https://floss.fund https://floss.fund
    - nh2 2y ago
      For an example of how it can go down otherwise: papercups.io – Open-source alternative to Intercom Funded by Y Combinator https://web.archive.org/web/20230404011725/https://papercups.io/blog/papercups-maintenance https://web.archive.org/web/20230404011725/https://papercups... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26527268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26527268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719 I don't know why it shut down (my guess: didn't pan out with the typical revenue growth goals of a startup), but having a hosted version might save your project from such fate, making enough money to fund you, or somebody you hire who's excited about working on Free Software. Some pricing ideas: Free for noncommercial with limited data retention (like the Chatwoot free tier), 3-5 $/month for noncommercial individuals (e.g. users to put it in their website), more $/month for commercial. Add some more expensive enterprise plan that supports Microsoft EntraID groups for externalised permission management and you're good to go :) Add easy DB import/export functionality, so people can switch between hosted and self-hosted. A lot of people will be happy to pay for the convenience of hosted. Host in EU for best data protection (makes it easier for people to sign up). For billing, probably good to use a Merchant-of-Record service such as paddle.com (our startup likes it) to be able to sell internationally without having to deal with international taxes. I wish you and the project lots of success!

potamic 2y ago

Who are your target users? Why not use an embedded db like sqlite and make it truly "single binary"?

codazoda 2y ago
I would dig this

truepath_app 2y ago

I might be missing something obvious, but how does a customer file a ticket/request?

avr5500 2y ago
Right now the only way to create a ticket/request is by adding an inbox, and sending an email to your configured email address.

nh2 2y ago

Looks great! It seems to be email only so far. Do you plan to add chat, like Intercom and Chatwoot have it?

avr5500 2y ago
yes, once Libredesk is stable.

duckb 2y ago

Looks beautiful. How difficult would it be if I want to develop a plugin - Mood detection, Chat Helper (LLM linked), ...

ketan-10 2y ago

Looks awesome, Congratulations :)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

darkwater 2y ago

The demo looks really really good! And by looking at commit history, looks like you are a solo developer behind this. Kudos to you! Out of curiosity, do you have plans to make it a business or just keep it as a "hobby project"? Something like this is going basically to be used only by companies, no hobby users (unless someone wants to maintain a support desk for family & friend about something they are an expert...)

chrismorgan 2y ago

From the screenshot, in an AI assistance dropdown on a reply form: “Add Empathy”. Ouch.

ddtaylor 2y ago
Abolish corporate communication apathy, but don't point the finger at a dictionary as the reason it exists.

fguerraz 2y ago

This is great. Sadly, apart from “looking good”, there seems to be no documentation, or visible roadmap. So I can’t evaluate if it’s worth looking into or not. Keep up the good work!

avr5500 2y ago
Thank you! Adding a roadmap to v1.

mattsimpson 2y ago

Damn impressive start. Kudos! I am sure that if you posted a to-do list and roadmap to 1.0 you would get traction from the community to help finish it off, if you want. Hell, at a solid 1.0 I might be able to justify a switch from a popular commercial app and use that budget to fund a bit of development towards the project.

avr5500 2y ago
Thank you! Adding a todo and a roadmap to v1.

robertlagrant 2y ago

Potential roadmap item: bidirectional sync with Jira (and others) so support requests can create/be linked to Jira (etc) tickets, and see updates from them.

phrotoma 2y ago
While we're thinking about it, something I always wanted when I was working support. The abilitiy to "upvote" a bug from within a support case. That way a PM can sort open issues by number of users who are griping about it.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Yeah! Or at least have a count of the number of customer requests linked to the same ticket.
rsyring 2y ago
We looked years ago for simple helpdesk that would link to GitHub issues so that CS was working in the helpdesk tool but could easily create issues when a dev is involved.

srameshc 2y ago

Nice name , looks great and very useful !! How you built a single binary of Go and Vue is very neat, I never thought about doing something like this.

KingOfCoders 2y ago
This is also something I love about Go, https://www.inkmi.com/blog/simplicity-of-golang-systemd-deployments https://www.inkmi.com/blog/simplicity-of-golang-systemd-depl...
- srameshc 2y ago
  thanks for sharing, there is always something to learn

ddtaylor 2y ago

What method do we have to fund this or ensure it can work for our needs.

revskill 2y ago

Single app meanz j bundle all asset and code in a binary?

dinu99 2y ago

Looks nice, congratulations. Can you add knowledgebase section? I'm looking for an alternative to freshdesk/zendesk. I would recommend monetizing this via hosted service like https://frappe.io/ https://frappe.io/ does with ERPNext project.

rushabh 2y ago
checkout https://frappe.io/helpdesk https://frappe.io/helpdesk

yashasolutions 2y ago

Nice work. I cannot test the demo as it is down now but just wanted to share I have been using open source solution Zammad and I am pretty happy about it. It's fully open source (it's a ruby app - so different stack.) and pretty robust. The frontend is a bit oldish, but it has a lot of nice features. The single binary, easy deploy + fresh UI is interesting thought. Are you planning multilingual features?

avr5500 2y ago
It's up now, yes planning to support multiple languages.

calvinmorrison 2y ago

Anyone using RT still here? My idea tracking system is one that exists in email, but doesnt send a billion obnoxious "your ticket has been created" emails and butcher the contents. So far I've got it kind of working with RT as a no reply listener. We watch all comms but it doesnt reply to anything.

mathfailure 2y ago

[flagged]

xena 2y ago
How so?
- mathfailure 2y ago
  [flagged]

curtisszmania 2y ago

We all know open-source customer support tools are still the wild west, and Libredesk might just be the sheriff in town. Libredesk's single binary app approach is refreshing - simplicity can be beautiful when done right. As someone who's been around the block a few times, I'm intrigued by the potential for self-hosted support desks to disrupt traditional SaaS models. In fact, I remember when our own company was small and struggled with customer support. We ended up building something similar to Libredesk, but it took us months of trial and error - not exactly scalable. So kudos to you, abhinavxd, for creating a tool that could potentially make all our lives easier (or harder, depending on how we choose to use it).

fifticon 2y ago
this curtismania comment should be flagged as spam, but I can't do so from the interface. I don't know what he is eating, but it is not carbon-based. Possibly he has been eating marketing-copy, directly.

mouse_ 2y ago

If the AI response feature promises something I cannot deliver, who is liable?

rad_gruchalski 2y ago
You are.

snvzz 2y ago

Mandatory Affero GPL warning. Ensure you understand the license before deploying.

rancar2 2y ago
Chatwoot has a lot more features with its MIT license.
mr-karan 2y ago
I'm curious to understand the implications of the AGPL-3.0 license in the context of this project. It sounds like the author doesn't want big corps to offer a hosted version of this tool (because doing that would require them to release the source code of any modifications they make to the software, which many companies are reluctant to do) and it's also an OSI approved license (unlike the recently famous SSPL or BSL). What's so wrong about AGPL-3.0 then? The intention is often to prevent companies from building proprietary services on top of open source software and I feel AGPL 3.0 is a sensible choice here.

firefoxd 2y ago

Kudos! We've encountered several customers that hated their help desk but couldn't move away. We've even considered building our own since we were in the business. But here comes the hard and most important part that Zendesk and the like do that makes all the difference: Integration. You need support integration with all the popular tools people use their help desk with. Shopify, ebay, whatsapp, woocommerce and all the seemingly unrelated software people use to support their e-commerce business. That's where we gave up, but I hope you find a solution for it.

aarreedd 2y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned FreeScout. It's a solid open-source helpdesk: https://freescout.net/ https://freescout.net/. They have cheap, one-time purchase plugins. Happy to pay a bit to keep the project sustainable. I'd love to see an open-source Trello alternative that as well. There are a few out there, but nothing that seems actively maintained.

alchemist1e9 2y ago
https://github.com/RotherOSS/otobo https://github.com/RotherOSS/otobo Otobo might be a good other option. It’s a refreshed and expanded version of the classic OTRS. Yes perl, but in this space has an extensive track record.

qwertox 2y ago

This looks very promising. Does it have an API?

avr5500 2y ago
Thanks, Yes I will adding an API user support, you will be able to interact with Libredesk with APIs.

registeredcorn 2y ago

It's a neat idea and I'd like to see how this evolves over time! Keep up the great work!! :) I do have notes/feedback based off of what I see in the demo site: # SLA The SLA stuff under the Admin panel needs to be way, way more robust if I were to ever use it. Many of the clients I work with have different SLA expectations based on the severity of an issue. They also might work in different time zones from Support staff, so calendars may need to be set to "countdown" in relation to either client local time, or support local time, depending on what is decided in the contract. In addition to time zone stuff, there's also issues with what constitutes a holiday; we may have holidays that they don't, or vice versa. Unless something is covered under a niche 24/7/365 contract and is marked as Critical, we wouldn't want the "countdown" to trigger until the next business day. This matters a lot, because many US holidays are on Friday, so tickets will go unanswered for 3 full days. Here's an example of multiple, different SLA requirements for one client: * A Critical should have a response within 1 hour (24/7 coverage), and a resolution within 12 hours (24/7 coverage). * A Low should have a response within 5 business days, and a resolution within 30 business days. Now imagine that, but multiplied by many, many clients. Instead of having however many SLAs for each situation per client, we like to have "compact" SLAs where there are clauses for different severity ratings of a ticket, and factoring in a bunch of other stuff, for individual clients. Client 1 paid for 24/7 for criticals, but not other stuff, so Client 1 SLA is (this). Client 2 paid for 24/7 for all things, so Client 2 SLA is (that). Client 3 paid for the most basic coverage, so Client 3 SLA is (the other). We would need an SLA system that accounts for various factors and verbiage within a ticket received. Sometimes it also depends on who files the ticket with us. Is it the "problem child", or is the CEO? # Time zone (as it relates to SLAs) In the contract, it is usually formally agreed that if no support staff lives in the clients local time zone, then the SLA response time will not start counting until it applies to the support staffs local time zone. Exceptions are made if they pay for 24/7/365 coverage. So, even if support receives two different "important" tickets from two different clients, one may take priority over the other because the service coverage they have paid for. ## Example(s): * Client 1 files a ticket at 2PM their time; no 24/7 coverage. It's 4AM for local Support. Support's response time doesn't "start the countdown" until 8AM in Support's time zone. * Client 2 files a ticket at 11AM and is supposed to have a response time within 4 hours; no 24/7 coverage. The ticket is filed on July 4th (Independence Day in the US) for the Support staff. The 4 hour "countdown" doesn't start until 8AM on July 7th. (3 day weekend) * Client 3 files a ticket at 2PM on July 4th; have 24/7 coverage. It's 4AM for local Support on July 4th. The "countdown" has started. # Holiday It would also be nice if the option for "New Holiday" adjusted automatically each year. We have a fair number of clients, and manually updating Holiday's consistently (and accurately) is not something I see people doing particularly well at the start of each year. It's kind of one of those things you end up catching around September, and realize all of your metrics for the last few quarters have been off. # FRD and RD text? In the conversation with Felix Morin, I see warning labels for "FRD Overdue" and "RD Overdue". What are those triggered by? I didn't see anything in the admin area that seemed to point to it. It would be good if, on hover, it would give a brief explanation of what the trigger is. Or is it something that the person who filed the ticket did, somehow?

crazymoka 2y ago

When it turns to beta, I'll be using this.

gregoriol 2y ago

Interesting project! However, installation documentation is quite strange: it says "requires postgres and redis to run" but there is zero other information. Is there any version requirements? any configuration file to set the hosts/auth for them? Hope this helps, keep the good work!

avr5500 2y ago
The Docker file specifies versions: https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk/blob/main/docker-compose.yml https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk/blob/main/docker-comp... I will include the versions in the installation docs for binary installations. Thanks for the feedback.

wiradikusuma 2y ago

The UI looks good! I can't seem to find the channels it supports. Email? X? Instagram (IG) comments? A support desk is all about channel integrations, for example: - replying IG comments from the app - replying Telegram chats from the app - replying support@myco.com from the app (SMTP & IMAP integration) - basic CRM so that we that the customer doing all 3 above are the same, so the agent has "context" - integration with external CRM I hope I'm not offending anyone, but if any integrations are supported, you should emphasize this.

OldMatey 2y ago

Fantastic. This is far overdue and looks like a solid start. I have been particularly surprised by how few options there are in the CS space that are open source and options like Zendesk are SO expensive and the pricing tiers and cost structures are prohibitive for many small organizations.

remram 2y ago

Looks good! I'm currently using OsTicket (PHP) with a small team. Pretty happy with it but could use more automation. What I like best about OsTicket is that I was able to configure it completely transparent, there are no auto-messages sent to users and no reference numbers of boilerplate in outbound messages. Happy to see more opensource options in this space, especially with a focus on customizable automation.

rgbrgb 2y ago

This is so cool, thanks for sharing. Can you talk about why you made it and why you made it free / open?

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Nicely done. Canned responses (the ability to create/manage/insert them) would be helpful. Does it support email? That would be key. The demo looks more focused on chat.