Zammad
94 · HealthyTicketing and helpdesk system with email, chat, phone and social channels in one view.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat
Open source Helpdesk & live chat
Chatwoot
89 · HealthyOmnichannel customer support inbox covering website chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels.
FreeScout
76 · StableShared-inbox helpdesk in PHP, close in spirit to Help Scout, extended through modules.
osTicket
54 · CautionVeteran PHP support-ticket system that routes inquiries from email, web forms and phone.
Papercups
15 · At riskLive chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat / FreeScout
FreeScout
Shared-inbox helpdesk in PHP, close in spirit to Help Scout, extended through modules.
Will it still be around?
Health 76/100 · Stable
Activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness. Breakdown
Alternative to
Savings proposal
A 25-user team on Help Scout Plus pays about $1,125 a month. Self-hosting FreeScout costs about $132 a month to run plus $480 to set up, so it pays for itself in month 1 and saves about $35,268 over three years.
List price: Help Scout Plus, billed monthly. Marked popular. Annual billing is about 16% less. Standard is $25 per user. Source, checked 2026-10-07.
Saved over 3 years
$35,268
Pays for itself
Month 1
Saved in year one
$11,436
Each month
$1,125 → $132
Show as a table
| Month | Help Scout | Self-hosted | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $0 | $480 | −$480 |
| Month 3 | $3,375 | $876 | $2,499 |
| Month 6 | $6,750 | $1,272 | $5,478 |
| Month 9 | $10,125 | $1,668 | $8,457 |
| Month 12 | $13,500 | $2,064 | $11,436 |
| Month 18 | $20,250 | $2,856 | $17,394 |
| Month 24 | $27,000 | $3,648 | $23,352 |
| Month 30 | $33,750 | $4,440 | $29,310 |
| Month 36 | $40,500 | $5,232 | $35,268 |
Assumptions you can change
Self-hosting FreeScout usually means one small container and a database. Hours are for one engineer; the server cost is a typical cloud VPS with backups and grows with the number of people using it.
Not included: paid editions or features of FreeScout (see What's free?), large data migrations, and compliance work. All amounts in US dollars at list price; your negotiated price may differ.
Health score: 76/100
Activity45% weight
100/100
- Last commit 5 days ago (100/100).
- 738 commits in the past 12 months (100/100).
- 50+ releases in the past 12 months (100/100).
Bus factor30% weight
21/100
- Top contributor wrote 84% of the last 100 commits (past 12 months).
- 4 people authored those commits.
Responsiveness25% weight
98/100
- 100% of all issues are closed (17 open, 5173 closed) (100/100).
- 29 of 30 recent issues got a reply or were closed (97/100).
Score v2. How the health score works.
License
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 · Open source (copyleft)
OSI-approved license that requires sharing changes under the same license when you distribute (AGPL: also when you offer it over a network).
Detected by GitHub as AGPL-3.0.
What's free?
Enterprise features many open-core projects keep for paid plans.
| Feature | Self-hosted, free? |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | Unknown |
| SSO (OIDC) | Unknown |
| SCIM provisioning | Unknown |
| Audit logs | Unknown |
| Role-based access control | Unknown |
| Multi-tenancy | Unknown |
We haven't verified which of these features are free for this project yet.
GitHub metrics
| Stars | 4.6k | Forks | 727 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last commit | 5 days ago | Commits, 12 months | 738 |
| Releases, 12 months | 50+ | Last release | 5 days ago |
| Contributors | 92 | Active authors | 4 in last 100 commits |
| Open issues | 17 | Closed issues | 5.2k |
Snapshot from 2026-10-08.