Open source Helpdesk & live chat

Zammad

95 · Healthy

Ticketing and helpdesk system with email, chat, phone and social channels in one view.

AGPL-3.0★ 6.0kLast commit 2 days ago

Chatwoot

89 · Healthy

Omnichannel customer support inbox covering website chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels.

Free core, paid extrasMIT★ 38kLast commit yesterday

FreeScout

76 · Stable

Shared-inbox helpdesk in PHP, close in spirit to Help Scout, extended through modules.

AGPL-3.0★ 4.6kLast commit 7 days ago

Helpdesk

76 · Stable

Ticketing system with SLAs, a customer portal, canned responses and a knowledge base, built on the Frappe framework.

AGPL-3.0★ 3.4kLast commit 4 days ago

DeskcommCRM

70 · Stable

Chat-first CRM for teams that sell over WhatsApp, with AI agents, sales pipelines and a shared inbox.

Free to useMIT★ 4.5kLast commit yesterday

osTicket

54 · Caution

Veteran PHP support-ticket system that routes inquiries from email, web forms and phone.

GPL-2.0★ 4.0kLast commit 4 months ago

Papercups

15 · At risk

Live chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.

Free to useMIT★ 6.1kLast commit 4.4 years ago

Source-available and unverified licenses

The code for these is public, but the license is not an OSI open source license, or we have not verified it yet. Check the license notes on each project before relying on it.

erxes

88 · Healthy

Plugin-based business platform that combines CRM, marketing campaigns, a team inbox and a support desk.

Free, no resellingAGPL-3.0 + extra terms★ 4.1kLast commit yesterday

Chaskiq

36 · At risk

Live chat, help center and in-app messaging platform with bots and outbound campaigns.

Free, no resellingAGPL-3.0 with Commons Clause★ 3.6kLast commit 3 months ago

Papercups

Live chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.

GitHub

Alternative to

Intercom Crisp Tidio LiveChat

Will it still be around?

At risk

Score 15/100

Details

Can a business use it freely?

Free to use

MIT · open source (permissive)

Details

Flat Rate Deploy

Monthly cost

Papercups on OpenTools: $15
Intercom: ~~$725~~

You save each month

$710/mo

98% less than today

Saving from month one

You save

Over 3 years: $25,560
In year one: $8,520

List price checked 7 Oct 2026 · Source · Disclaimer

Bespoke

We set up Papercups for you. You pay once.

You pay $725 a month for Intercom. Setup is $1,200, paid once, and after that Papercups runs for about $162 a month (your server, about $12, plus about $150 of maintenance), so it pays for itself in month 3.

Pays for itself: Month 3$5,556 saved in year one
Setup, paid once: $1,200fixed price, agreed up front
Maintenance: $150/houronly when you ask for it

What we do

Data migrationRecords, files and history moved from Intercom, with a test run before the cut-over
ConfigurationWorkflows, custom fields, roles, permissions and SSO set up for your team
IntegrationsConnected to your CRM, Slack, accounting tools and APIs
MaintenanceUpdates, fixes and admin help when you ask, at $150 an hour
Paid editionsThe vendor's paid features, enabled, with the licence at cost
ComplianceData residency, audit logs, data processing agreements, security questionnaires
TrainingAn admin walkthrough, a runbook and sessions for your team

Total spent, month by monthIntercomBespoke Papercups

Show as a table

Month	Intercom	Bespoke	Saved so far
Today	$0	$1,200	–
Month 3	$2,175	$1,686	$489
Month 6	$4,350	$2,172	$2,178
Month 9	$6,525	$2,658	$3,867
Month 12	$8,700	$3,144	$5,556
Month 18	$13,050	$4,116	$8,934
Month 24	$17,400	$5,088	$12,312
Month 30	$21,750	$6,060	$15,690
Month 36	$26,100	$7,032	$19,068

Servers run on your own cloud account, paid to your provider. Running cost counts about 1 hours of maintenance a month; you're billed only for hours you ask for. Migration and the other activities are quoted with the setup.

Get a fixed quote

Health score: 15/100

At risk · activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness, from GitHub

Score v2 · How it works

Activity

45% weight

0/100

Last commit 1613 days ago (0/100).
0 commits in the past 12 months (0/100).
0 releases in the past 12 months (0/100).

Bus factor

30% weight

0/100

No human commits in the past 12 months.

Responsiveness

25% weight

58/100

65% of all issues are closed (160 open, 296 closed) (58/100).
Too few recent issues to measure reply rate.

License

Free to use

MIT · Open source (permissive)

What you need to do

Use, change, host and sell it for any purpose, commercial included, with no license to buy. Keep the copyright notice.

MIT License · Open source (permissive). OSI-approved license with few conditions beyond keeping the copyright notice.

Detected by GitHub as MIT.

GitHub activity

Stars: 6.1k
Forks: 580
Commits, 12 mo: 0; last 4.4 years ago
Releases, 12 mo: 0; last 6.2 years ago
Contributors: 49; 0 in last 0 commits
Open issues: 160; 296 closed

Snapshot from 2026-10-08

Top contributors

No pull requests merged on GitHub since 10 October 2025. Some projects, such as Odoo, merge changes outside GitHub's merge button, so their contributors don't show here yet.

Bespoke · we set it up$1,200once Flat Rate Deploy$15/mo