Support tools charge per agent, so costs climb as the team grows. These open-source projects cover live chat, email and ticketing without per-seat fees when self-hosted.
1
chatwoot chatwoot/chatwoot
The leading open-source customer support desk: live chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels in one inbox. It names Intercom and Zendesk as what it replaces.
2
zammad zammad/zammad
A classic ticketing help desk with email, phone and chat channels, SLAs and reporting. AGPL-3.0.
3
libredesk abhinavxd/libredesk
A lightweight support desk shipped as a single binary. Easy to run, newer and smaller than the others.
4
papercups papercups-io/papercups
Open-source live chat that was popular a few years ago. The activity column shows it is no longer actively developed, so treat it as a reference, not a choice.
How to choose
Chat-first support across messaging channels: Chatwoot. Email-heavy ticketing with SLAs: Zammad. A minimal desk you can run in minutes: Libredesk.
How we pick: we start from every public GitHub repository with 1,000+ stars, keep the projects that do the job in the title, and read their descriptions and licenses. Stars show community size, not quality, so we also show maintenance status. Nobody paid to be listed.