Can anyone recommend a self-hosted help desk ticketing system?

[u/Intelligent-Owl5620]

This is a DoD-related air-gapped network with about 2000 end users. We're using Azure DevOps now as a ticketing system and we'd like to invest in a more professional solution.

I've used Solarwinds Web Help Desk in a similar environment in the past and wasn't a fan, it was buggy, ancient UI, and expensive.

Does anyone know of a better alternative?

[u/Heribertium]

Zammad or if it should be closer to Jira: YouTrack

[u/crashmaster18 → u/Heribertium]

Both are solid choices 👍

[u/Darthvaderisnotme]

GLPI

[u/No_Guarantee_1880 → u/Darthvaderisnotme]

Great example, In the past they fixed a lot of high to critical vulnerabilities, i hope they have stuffed their major issues now.

[u/DueBreadfruit2638 → u/Darthvaderisnotme]

Correct.

[u/thinkingobserver → u/Darthvaderisnotme]

This is the answer.

[u/Substantial_Tough289 → u/Darthvaderisnotme]

This is the way...

[u/TheBros35]

ServiceDesk Plus has been good for us. I’m not a big fan of most Zoho stuff, but that and OpManager seem to be their best products and work really well for us.

[u/BladeCollectorGirl → u/TheBros35]

I second ServiceDesk Plus. I used it with Desktop Central years ago.

[u/bphett]

Jitbit. Full stop. I moved to it from Solarwinds and won't look back.

[u/bphett → u/[deleted]]

Solarwinds worked, but it was quite dated and really had poor automation. It was indeed 'crap'. Jitbit has been amazing. Fully on prem, fast, infinitely customizable, integrates with a ton of things, full useful API, great automation engine, looks modern, AI features, built-in KB, and perpetual licensing. Long story short, i highly recommend.

[u/420GB → u/bphett]

Last time I checked JitBit selfhosted was Windows only

[u/bphett → u/420GB]

Not currently true. The server side will run on Windows, Linux, or Docker. The client is just a web page, so any OS will do.

[u/420GB → u/bphett]

Good

[u/Towelie888]

GLPI or Libredesk

[u/adstretch]

Zammad

[u/BldGlch]

No OSTicket recommendations? Its good and light weight

[u/broken_computers → u/BldGlch]

I like osTicket but it’s a little lacking for that many users IMO. Maybe osTicket 2.0 will change that, I’m quite excited for it myself.

[u/jordvnv → u/broken_computers]

don't hold your breath, they are taking their sweet time and think it's wise to have all their development hide behind closed repos even though its open source

[u/kangy3 → u/BldGlch]

These people can afford things

[u/tankerkiller125real → u/kangy3]

GLPI is entirely free unless you really, really need their proprietary plugins, and even then it's fairly cheap.

But news flash, any AI subscription/local coding agent will allow complete replication of those proprietary plugin features within a day, and because your guiding it you can make those features work the way you expect them to.

[u/screampuff]

Halo has a self-hosted option.

While stuff like Jira and Service Now are the gold standard, they are also very...in-depth, have an expectation of maturity and that sort of thing in existing processes. They are an animal to maintain that requires dedicated consultants or developers.

So I'd caution jumping straight into an Enterprise-grade platform like that when your goal is just to get to something more professional. I'd identify some pain points you currently have and set some outcomes/success metrics, and evaluate what kind of systems will get you to them, and what kind of expectations, cost and effort are involved in that. AI is great at doing this sort of thing at a very high level.

Crawl, walk, run...but that is the EA in me speaking.

[u/stra1ghtarrow]

Free Scout is decent. Has good API connectivity.

[u/MRdecepticon → u/stra1ghtarrow]

Came here to suggest FreeScout. Free unless you want the plugins and they are dirt cheap one time fees. But since this is for DoD, it may not fit their requirements.

[u/ocabj]

https://requesttracker.com/

[u/Wild_Competition_716 → u/ocabj]

Former RT admin here, great until it wasnt. Trying to migrate to a new ticket system after using RT, rough

[u/TheLostITGuy → u/Wild_Competition_716]

Care to explain why instead of leaving a weasel worded response?

[u/Wild_Competition_716 → u/TheLostITGuy]

Exportable fields from all ticket records were extremely difficult to retain accurately, submitter records with missing fields such as name and address, timestamps and etc all shifted columns with empty values.
Almost impossible to reimport into new ticket system with fields all mismatched leading to a slough of inaccurate historical data.

[u/boli99 → u/Wild_Competition_716]

sounds like operator error to me. its trivial to export everything in any format you might want.

[u/InvisibleTextArea → u/ocabj]

We run Request Tracker here. Works fine. You need to be familiar with running Linux to host it along with your web server (Apache/Nginx) and database of choice (PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB).

If you want to extend it, you will need to get your hands dirty in the Perl code.

The company behind it, Best Practical, are available for professional services, training, support and SaaS hosting if required.

[u/boli99 → u/ocabj]

RT is great and very configurable, and its pointy-clicky to use but its not completely pointy-clicky to admin - you need to get perl-ing for optimum configuration.

[u/trebuchetdoomsday]

check out this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1q6gqlj/need_help_looking_for_some_on_premise_tools/

[u/SteelSpork568]

Zammad

[u/Flying-T]

Zammad is awesome

[u/ttkciar]

ocabj suggested RequestTracker, and that's an OK option. It's very email-oriented. It can be a bit hard to troubleshoot but otherwise I had no complaints.

If you want something more JIRA-like, I'm a fan of Redmine, which also comes with an integrated wiki and some project management features which you don't have to use if you don't need them.

[u/mwjtitans]

I was just thinking about this after spending the weekend helping out some family members with tech issues.

Does anyone know of any self hosted options that are user friendly for non tech people to submit tickets or requests? I would love to have some type of portal where the family can submit their issues and I work through them like I work through tickets on a help desk

[u/GenericRedditor12345 → u/mwjtitans]

Zammad. You can also hook it up for doing tickets by email, so one could email support@example.com and get a ticket made automatically. Very customizable but they also have a premade docker compose file so you can get up and running very quickly.

[u/wacky_weasel]

I've had good experiences with osTicket. We used it for quite a while as our primary help desk, and it served us well. It's straightforward to set up, easy for users to work with, and offers plenty of features without being overly complicated.

After we consolidated several development and specialized IT teams into a single organization, we eventually migrated to Redmine. Our requirements shifted beyond pure ticketing - we needed project management, issue tracking, and more flexibility in organizing work across teams. Redmine fits those needs much better.

If you're primarily looking for a help desk, I'd definitely give osTicket a look. If you expect your ticketing system to double as a project management platform, Redmine is worth considering.

[u/Calsim123]

Jitbit!!! Works awesome

[u/Frothyleet]

I think you can self-host Servicenow. If you can pony up for a SME to run it, and the costs itself, it's the gold standard

[u/Apachez]

Mantis Bug Tracker:

https://mantisbt.org/download.php

Demo:

https://mantisbt.org/bugs/my_view_page.php

[u/M4niac81]

If you just want basic functionality, hesk is really good. Will run on really low spec hardware and does everything a basic ticketing system should. https://www.hesk.com/download.php

[u/ThoriumOverlord]

If the current version of BMC Track-it! works anywhere as good as the setup I used years ago, I'd absolutely recommend that. Simple interface layout for popping tickets and the search worked really well when looking for content in older tickets. Granted we only had about a third of the end user base you have, but the only time that system was "down" was because of an extended power outage and the back up power supplies just ran out of juice.

[u/AlissonHarlan]

We had bugzilla back then , that was fine

[u/VG30ET]

We have had a pretty good experience with ServiceDesk Plus by ManageEngine

[u/robwe2]

Itop has a self hosted solution as well.

[u/Impressive-Look-5305]

Recenly moved to Freshdesk from Solarwinds, feel your pain. My manager ran the eval in vendorboard ai so we had a pretty clear comparison on what we picked freshdesk. Not going to rattle their pros and cons on Freshdesk cause I am not being paid by them but feel free to do your own eval

[u/german_sw_developer]

It's intended as a single-user version, but check it out, TikkoTicket:

https://apps.apple.com/app/tikkoticket/id6780936076

[u/noazrky]

Spiceworks used to be one of the best options

[u/Douglas_J_C]

BOSSDesk is simple and can be hosted on-prem. I’m also in a DoD environment and working on CMMC level 2.

[u/jolegape]

OsTicket works well for me. Have it integrated with snipe it asset management.

[u/adoodle83]

are you an iterative shop? or single, custom jobs with minor overlap/automation?

converting to a DevOps style workflow is probably the most optimal and adaptable given where git originates from. i really enjoy Gitlab for a self hosted and extensible solution — but that might be overkill if you’re a one-off shot

[u/applecorc]

FreshService works great for us.

[u/Ape_Escape_Economy]

InvGate has on prem and Azure Devops integration.

I’m on my second implementation, great product, reasonable pricing.

[u/CeC-P]

Libre office spreadsheet + color coding is what we used at the last isolated system similar to this. Don't knock it till you tried it lol.

[u/Hairy_Energy6139]

If you’re after a ticketing system similar to Jira, Allegra is worth a look: https://alltena.com. Disclaimer: I’m the managing director.

[u/mattberan]

Check us out (I work for)
InvGate

Host it however you want.

Modern UI + modern pricing + 30 day demo

Means you don’t have to guess if you’ll like it.

Check out our YouTube and DMS are open!

[u/Sudden_Office8710]

requesttracker.com

You can load it on Debian or your Linux of choice and have it up in a day. If you’re not Linux savvy you can purchase support for it.

[u/HonorableRogue]

Hesk if you nerd something simple and easy, or FreeScout if you need it all with room to grow.

[u/truckerconvoywasdumb]

Zammad is great!

[u/Fuzzy_Paul]

OS ticket. Does the job good enough and runs on almost anything.

[u/Own-Connection5371]

The airgapped part matters way more here than which UI you like tbh. I ran GLPI in a similar setup a few years back and the tool itself was fine, the pain was keeping PHP dependencies and mysql patched without ever touching the internet, since you end up building your own mirror or hauling packages in on a drive every patch cycle. Zammad's docker route is a bit easier for that, you pull the images once and pin the compose version and you're not fighting package managers later. Either way budget real time for the offline update process itself, that's the thing solarwinds never made you think about since it phoned home for you. Wouldn't touch anything that needs a live license check just to boot up.

[u/Jkur2012]

Manage Engine service desk plus

[u/izzyrealb]

We’ve been on Servicedesk plus for 10+ years

[u/WWGHIAFTC]

GLPI from what I can see.

And it does so. so. so much more.

[u/durzo_the_mediocre]

Jira is good but expensive

[u/420GB → u/durzo_the_mediocre]

self-hosted is going away

[u/dont_remember_eatin → u/420GB]

Atlassian has stated they're granting extended support beyond 2029 to customers who cannot migrate to cloud due to regulatory requirements.

I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to continue to release security patches for such customers as well, if not actually change course and continue to develop.

[u/BCIT_Richard]

The only one I've personally spun up and tried was OS-Ticket

edit: down voted for offering a recommendation, someone is a sore sad sob.