HappyFox is a web based customer support ticketing system hosted in the cloud. It helps track and manage all customer support requests across multiple channels like email, chats, social media and phone in a centralized ticket support system. It provides integration with other web apps like CRM, live-chats, voice and bug tracking apps. Community forums feature help customers help each other and connect. Mobile versions of Happyfox provide support on the move.
$29
per user/per month
osTicket
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
osTicket is an open-source help desk / ticketing platform that can create inquiries online, through email, and through phone calls.
Happy Fox works well in companies that want a full look at all of their tickets in one place. It may be better suited to smaller companies who can check or double check their tickets and have the time to spare. For bigger companies, I think there are better, more robust solutions.
For beginning smaller companies that are in need of partially automating their incoming requests this product is easy to set up and will assist in structuring these request[s]. These requests can come in via email/phone or web portal. For companies that are beginning to streamline their support procedures, this tool can be a first step into automating part of these processes. This is also how user[s] should see it. It is merely a tool that can assist in structuring the incoming request flow the rest still has to be fit into business processes.
Smart Rules - Easily create triggers that run based on a variety of criteria. This allows for easily moving tickets through our process. An awesome example is our manager's ability to assign tickets to technicians right from their email simply by responding to the ticket in a certain way. This prevents the opening of a web browser or the mobile app to complete basic functions. Removing one step from the process has already saved us countless hours.
Easy to use and clean interfaces all around. Whether it's the web interface, mobile web interface, or one of the mobile apps, HappyFox is all around intuitive. Plenty of things can be made to be updated in two or fewer clicks (Assigned to, due date, priority).
HappyFox allows our users to easily create tickets on behalf of customers. Any person who has previously contacted the Help Desk is stored as a contact and can be referenced again quickly.
While the portal they provide is basic, it can be quite heavily customized with color schemes and logos. Ours ended up looking better than almost anything else we host both internally and externally. It's clean, simple and provides an easy way for users to input a ticket.
Between the Smart Rules and SLAs it's easy to make sure every ticket gets the attention it deserves. Automatic reminders can be sent to technicians based on criteria. Reports can be run to ensure that service levels are being met. These two things alone have greatly increased the quality of service.
osTicket is extremely user friendly for end users and support agents. It's very easy for new end users to put in a service request. This aspect of simplicity is important because we don't have to train new users on how to put in service requests.
Feature wise osTicket has everything you need without being overly complicated or cluttered. This is important for us because it allows for faster support times and happier end users.
Lightweight and very reliable, osTicket uses PHP and MySQL. Setup is easy and it can be hosted internally or externally web hosed. Also, since it relies on PHP it gives you flexibility to use Apache, Nginx , Lighttpd , IIS, etc.
Thriving community: the community behind osTicket is feature-wise. Which is very helpful if you have any questions.
Best of all, osTicket is completely free and open source. While they do offer pair tier cloud-hosting and enterprise support. The free version offers all the features of the paid tiers (minus hosing and support).
There are a few features that I would hope to be standard that are not yet accessible. For instance, having different time zones isn't a choice, and clients aren't able to create their own reports, only staff can. So, my staff is required to run those reports for our clients.
The way we have our implementation customized has allowed us to tailor the application to exactly how we would like to use it. We didn't have to change our procedures and fear the potential of poor adoption. Instead we customized the application to be used the way we already ran our help desk. From there on out we reaped the benefits of quicker resolutions, increased transparency, and much happier end users. After setting up Smart Rules, HappyFox does a lot of thinking for us. Tickets go where they need to go, close when they are supposed to close and even remind techs of inactivity. This removes the necessity for micromanagement, which is appreciated by our employees and managers alike
I am familiar with osTicket and this allow me to teach all the staff and support them whenever they have any concern regarding the usability and following processes.
HappyFox delivered a more cost effective solution and asset management had no limit. The main problem I saw with the various other services I demoed, was the up charges. The pricing seems manageable until you see that they charge for every 100 or so of this and 100 of that. HappyFox is truly a one-stop shop for us.
osTicket has proven to be a very useful tool for the team to help support the business. Open-source was the right price point and self-hosting as mentioned was quite important (however I believe that osTicket does have a hosting solution available if needed). Jitbit was a close contender but didn't like how it doesn't separate people submitting tickets from users acting as agents. So all in quite happy with the choice.
When we had a hosted version of osTicket, we were saving some time by having them work on our setup, but we were spending a lot. Switching to our own osTicket build from their open sourcing not only saved us money upfront but we actually spent LESS time developing because we knew our ideas and didn't have to explain them to another (unrelated) party.
Creating our own ticketing infrastructure for institutional data requests has been a game changer for us. We have been able to interface with our enterprise email client and create a level of customization that meets our existing informational technology culture.
