Best Free Help Desk Software in 2025

One could imagine that all accessible help desk solutions are the same in terms of features, functionalities, and pricing structures. However, they are not necessarily the same. If you’re in the market for an online solution for your organization, no matter how large or little, be sure to read this buyer’s guide on the leading free help desk software platforms to acquaint yourself with the various elements to consider prior to deciding which tool to select.

As the first step in your search, even if you are eyeing a free subscription, consider taking advantage of the free trials and demos provided by the most prominent help desk software manufacturers. In doing so, you will obtain a better understanding of help desk software and save time by evaluating the main features of each package before fully committing to one. Our current help desk software reviews recommend Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, HubSpot Service Hub, and ManageEngine ServiceDesk due to their outstanding SmartScore and Customer Satisfaction Rating. Check out our list of the 10 Best Best Help Desk Software Tools to learn more about these market leaders.

• Small firms leverage free help desk software for technical assistance and customer service.
• Startup IT organizations use this software to streamline their customer service processes.

• Freshdesk – a cloud-hosted help desk with top-notch customer support features. Users can start multi-channel support, automate operations, boost productivity with gamification, and improve customer service with self-service portals.
• Zendesk – turns customer service agents into lead generators and customer retainers. Upgradable modules include those for a help desk, customer support, chat, call center, and knowledge base. Its plans include chat, call center, and knowledge base.
• Zoho Desk – a support desk platform that helps businesses provide high-quality customer support by increasing agent productivity and providing analytics and reports. It helps managers identify performance issues and make smart business decisions and helps customers quickly find relevant support.
• HubSpot Service Hub – along with HubSpot CRM, Marketing, and Sales, provides a complete suite of tools to engage, guide, and grow customers. Customer service teams can provide the best customer experience with its comprehensive features.
• ManageEngine ServiceDesk – an IT help desk software that integrates asset management and help desk functions. It helps users see all workplace IT issues and manage them efficiently. It has features for ticket management, data archiving, and more.
• ConnectWise Control – allows for fast remote support and access to repair, update, and manage computers to help technicians work faster. It lets them hold online seminars and prepare presentations for remote meetings.
• BotPenguin – an AI-powered chatbot maker that lets businesses create their own chatbot to interact with customers on their website or Facebook. A drag-and-drop chatbot builder lets non-coders create bots.
• Jira Service Desk – a full-featured ITSM and customer service platform that allows IT teams to provide end-to-end services. Support, operations, and development teams collaborate seamlessly, thus improving strategic approaches to meet business goals.
• Kayako – a cloud-hosted help desk software that consolidates all customer service channels for better and faster resolution. It supports live chat, tickets, web, email, calls, and self-service to help businesses help customers.
• Spiceworks – a free IT help desk and ticket management tool connecting IT professionals to help each other solve problems. It has an unlimited ticket service with no admin limit and a social element letting agents collaborate to solve clients’ issues.
• ProProfs Help Desk – a cloud-based customer support software that gives teams everything they need to solve any issue faster. It is a simple, intuitive, and reliable business tool with powerful reporting and unique features.
• Gmelius – a solution that turns Gmail into an office. It lets teams manage clients and projects in their inboxes without adding another tool. It connects internal and external communications by helping teams collaborate, communicate, and automate.
• UVdesk Helpdesk – a cloud-hosted support application with mailboxes, knowledge bases, form builders, and many customization options. The software simplifies product support to build a strong business-customer relationship.
• Frontman (Makerobos) – a multi-industry, multi-scale customer engagement platform. It is a help desk bot that can engage and build rapport with customers and leads before passing it on to your team.
• ZupportDesk – provides companies with feature-rich live chat and email ticketing. The software simplifies and streamlines customer support with powerful features. It lets users provide high-quality support to clients, visitors, and prospects.
• Casengo – a SaaS help desk that allows established companies, small businesses, and startup/expanding enterprises to easily and reliably manage customers and their concerns. It also enables them to respond quickly to queries and collaborate.
• DeskXpand – helps support teams and staff handle customer inquiries. It streamlines support and improves customer experiences. Help desk agents can communicate with customers via email, social media, and customizable feedback forms.
• osTicket – a support ticket system created to improve customer service and experience. It works with any operating system and offers custom fields, queues, columns, ticket filters, help topics, agent collision avoidance, and more.
• CustomerICare – an ecommerce live video chat SaaS app for small and large businesses. Copy and paste a line of code to embed the text and audio chat app on your website.
• eStreamDesk – a simple but powerful customer request management service for your business. eStreamDesk is a hosted helpdesk and ticket tracking service that saves time and money while providing excellent customer service.

You can get info on other popular open source help desk software and do informed comparisons by perusing our article on the top 15 help desk solutions.

With help desk open source software, you can take care of the needs of both internal and external clients free of charge. The two types of free help desk software are as follows:

• External help desk software solutions are mostly about people who buy your products or use your services, as well as other businesses you do business with. With these tools, you can solve basic customer service and IT-related issues. Due to the wide variety of businesses, firms, and industries that use external help desk software platforms, buyers may put a high value on a solution that perfectly combines call center software, sales force automation, and marketing automation.
• Internal help desk software, most of the time, helps both the company’s employees and its clients. Such a program helps customers with their IT problems. Human resources management is sometimes given this kind of help desk solution in order to handle problems with employee benefits.

People often get the wrong idea about support desk software. A help desk can be an internal software management solution for employees or internal customers, or it can be an external software platform for customers. As well, there’s a difference between help desk software open source and free ones.

Most help desk software has a system for organizing and managing both internal and external client data called a “ticketing system.” Help desk software puts all the information about customers in one place to make the business more productive.

Most help desk software also has the following features:

Self-service: With this feature, customers no longer have to call a representative every time they need help. Help desk software of today has self-service options, such as pages that explain how to use your company’s services or products, patches that can be downloaded, community forums, and frequently asked questions (FAQs) that explain how to do things, which call all be searched. If these self-service options don’t work, customers can use help desk software to write and send in tickets.

Knowledge management system: This is a place to store information about your product’s most common problems and how they can be fixed. This information hub can be used as a self-service portal by your customers. Technicians and customer service reps can also use the repository. Help desk software gives employees, team members, and customers a lot of ways to search for answers to their questions.

Asset management system/IT network management system: Good help desk software can keep track of changes to how software and hardware are set up. Network management systems, on the other hand, can check your servers and other network parts. IT service management solutions may be built into help desk software to provide these features.

Reporting: Help desk software can keep track of how well agents work and how well the service desk is doing. Performance indicators often include the number of open tickets, the average amount of time it takes to solve a complaint, how happy the customer is, how many tickets have been solved by shift, date, agent, and so on.

Tablet or smartphone support: Many help desk programs today have versions for smartphones, tablets, and the web. In short, customers and employees can access the help desk software’s knowledge base, customer data, tickets, reports, and other features anytime, anywhere, using smartphones, tablets, or the Internet.

Service level agreement (SLA): Many vendors offer SLAs and other guarantees of service right away. This tool lets your support desk team use quick and automatic escalations, triggers for prioritization, and other custom criteria to make sure that the tickets your organization gets are handled in accordance with SLAs and are given top priority.

Remote control: Your company’s technicians can manage, access, and run a customer’s computer without the customer being there. They can also diagnose and fix problems without the customer’s help.

Security: Most help desk software solutions have strong security to keep your data safe. Most enterprise-level help desk platforms offer custom SSL certificates and limit access by IP and network. SSO lets users use the same set of login credentials for a number of support desk apps. These safety features for the help desk are helpful.

ITIL compliance: Some help desk software stands out because it is compliant with ITIL. IT service management companies use ITIL. Support desk software that follows this framework is useful for people who run data centers and for big companies that use SLAs.

Integrations: This makes it easy for help desk tools and other company tools to share information. So, many help desk solutions have connections to CRM, tracking issues, and project management. This makes sure that everyone in the company is on the same page, which encourages teamwork, especially among people who work with customers.

The best free help desk software solutions will make it easy for your company, no matter how big or small it is, to evaluate IT crises. Also, businesses can be more productive if they handle issues with information technology better. It means you will save more money for your business because you will be using tools like automation, self-service, and other features that make your workflow more efficient.

When used right, these help desk software platforms can improve the way your business or organization works in five key ways:

• Self-service tools can help cut down on labor costs.
• Find problems that keep coming up and solve them quickly.
• Stop your employees from falling behind on their work because of unresolved IT problems.
• Give your customers more information and better communication about their service requests from the time they open a ticket until they are resolved.
• Automate how problems are escalated, triaged, and ranked.
• Allow quick ticket assignment to a specific agent, so tickets don’t get lost in crowded inboxes and requests are handled by agents who know how to address the problem.
• Increase the level of customer service, which will help your business’s reputation and encourage customers to stick with you and keep coming back.
• Help teams and departments share information more effectively and ensure that documentation for questions and problems is accurate and up-to-date.

Continuous Popularity of Social Media Integration

Surveys show that a lot of people use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to ask for help with customer service. Because of this, businesses need apps to handle problems and requests that come through these channels. Vendors like Zendesk and Desk.com offer solutions that integrate with social channels so that customer service requests can be prioritized and sent to the right place.

Gamification Motivates Agents to Work

Jobs in customer service and IT are hard and time-consuming. Companies are using gamification to help keep their agents interested and motivated. Badgeville is a company that tries to make its ticketing agents more productive by giving them rewards like points they can use. When employees see their scores go up and move up the leaderboard, it motivates them to do a better job.

Chatbots Help Boost Help Desk Efficiency

More providers of help desk software are starting to offer chatbots, which can automatically sort tickets into categories, give self-service options, and send tickets to the right agents. This lets agents concentrate on solving hard problems. Most of the time, these chatbots can also make workflows easier by giving answers that are based on a process and answering frequently asked questions. All of these features suggest that help desk software will soon be able to increase productivity even more.

Proactive Customer Service 

Aside from chatbots, AI will also have different effects on the future of help desk software in other ways. For example, machine learning algorithms that look at customer data and service tickets can be used to predict what customers want and improve customer service as a whole. With AI technology, you’ll be able to fix problems before your customers even know they exist.

• Lack of business knowledge: If you hire a third party to run your help desk, make sure the vendor can provide knowledgeable customer service. If the vendor’s agents don’t know what they’re doing or don’t have the right skills, it could hurt your company’s customer satisfaction rating in a big way. In this case, it would be better to use in-house customer service agents who can give knowledgeable answers and ensure that customers are happy.
• A lack of training for agents: Call centers and help desks have a high turnover rate because agents may not be serious about their jobs and see them as temporary. Companies should offer thorough training that can improve the skills and stability of staff in order to get agents to stay longer. Help your agents learn a wide range of skills so they can do their jobs better.
• Ticket miscommunication: This happens most often when a ticket doesn’t give enough or clear information about the problem that an agent has to follow up on. In some situations, agents can also misunderstand the information on tickets, which can make customers unhappy and cause more time to pass before the problem is solved.

Is it time for your company to start using software for a help desk? You know you need to switch to help desk software, open source and free when you experience the following:

• You can’t remember what’s in your email. Email inboxes can get full, especially for support teams that get a lot of emails every day (nearly 100 per day on average). A support system based on email is also confusing because agents don’t know who fixed which problems. Help desk software’s ticketing system helps to avoid these problems by making it easy for agents to access tickets and by using tags to organize them. In this way, all problems get the attention they need, and nothing gets lost.
• It takes too long to solve problems. Most of the time, the delay in solving an issue is caused by support agents who are too busy and tools that don’t work well. It often takes too much time and effort to search through spreadsheets and email inboxes. Help desk software makes it easier for agents to find the information they need because it organizes and stores information about each ticket. Everything is kept in one place, which makes it easier for agents to find tickets and solve them.
• You don’t know how well your customer service team works. You can only do so much with a shared email inbox to keep track of how many problems your support team solves in a day. Help desk solutions make it easy to give tickets to specific agents and mark them as solved when they’re done. This makes everyone on your team more responsible and shows you if there might be a delay in solving an issue. There are also analytics and reporting tools in a lot of help desk software that give accurate numbers on things like response times.

Help desk software solutions are very flexible programs that can be used by a wide range of teams and people. Here are a few common ways help desk solutions are used today:

• IT management. A lot of people who use help desk software are IT professionals. Help desk software makes it easy for IT teams to keep track of problems that users have with the technology used by the company. For example, these apps can help IT professionals handle requests from other departments for hardware or software.
• Building software. Software development settings also often use help desk solutions. This is especially true for bug tracking since end users can easily let developers know about problems they run into. The software also lets developers keep track of bug reports and problems that haven’t been fixed.
• Helping customers. Help desk software is a must-have if you want to help customers quickly and well. Customers can solve problems on their own with the help of the software. Customers can fill out tickets with information about what they need, which makes it easier for agents to help them.
• HR and hiring new people. HR and recruitment teams get a lot of questions about interview schedules, employee training, and more information about salary and benefits. Based on the information given, help desk software can give pre-written answers and send more complicated questions to the right team member so they can be answered quickly.