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.
Zoho Desk is a great customer service tool. It is very easy to track the ability to receive tickets and send responses in Zoho Desk. There are lots of options for customization. The knowledge base feature is very extensive and powerful. It makes creating internal and external FAQs easy.
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).
The biggest drawback that I am facing while using the platform is that their ticketing system is not that great [in my opinion]. It does not give us the option to add sales tax and other charges in the invoices which leads to a big problem for us.
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.
I give [Zoho Desk] [an] overall usability score of 9. This is partly due to the search functionality needs improvement. There are several times where I am left unable to find a ticket and have to generate a new one. I am hoping in the future that they will make some changes!
As Zoho Support is based in a different timezone to ours it can be an issue that we cannot get an immediate response to an issue. But I will say that once their Support is in the office they are fairly good to respond. they have resolved almost all issues I have told them about, but Zoho have also made system changes and not communicated these beforehand which means we are faced with something new and cannot get support on this until their support team is in the office
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.
We selected Zoho Desk as we needed a platform that was going to allow the business to grow through both usage and staffing numbers. We wanted something cost-effective but still offered standard features in an effective cloud-delivered solution but would still allow customization by our internal dev team, to derive better value from the service where it natively didn't do what we needed it to. FreeAgent was okay for a while, but Zoho Desk has allowed a vast improvement in our service offering to end customers.
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.
Zoho Desk has created an organised sytem of support which alows me to help my customers more efficiently.
By saving resolutions as articles, Zoho Desk has provided a training resource for current customers and support staff as part of solving problems.
All new customers become part of a database of customers who continue to receive support and education from forums created by the articles and customer questions.
