

Ask HN: Good, cheap hosted customer service ticket management? - MicahWedemeyer

My startup ( http://www.obsidianportal.com ) is actually taking off quite well now, but I'm beginning to get buried in customer support requests.  They all come to a single email address, and I share answering them with my partner.  Our policy is to cc the support address with our response so the other person knows it's being handled.<p>Anyway, that worked fine when we were getting 1-2/week.  Now we're getting 2-3/day, and they're starting to fall through the cracks.<p>We'd like to start using some sort of hosted ticket management, but want to do it on the cheap.  $5-$10/mo is our range.  We've looked at http://tenderapp.com/ and it's pretty much what we want, but $240/yr is just too high.<p>Any other solutions people can recommend?
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RobGR
I recommend RT:

<http://bestpractical.com/rt/>

If you have a linux host, you can download the open source package and install
it yourself. There are directions in the wiki on how to do stuff like have it
handle the support email even when you are using Google Apps.

Another option for installing it is to setup a linux on one of your home cable
modems, and use dyndns to get to it. Since only you and your partner have to
get to the web interface, shut off all ports but https and also throw an http
auth password on the whole thing. This will cost you $0 out of pocket to run,
probably half a day or longer to set up depending on your skills. If you don't
already leave a computer on all the time, you will have to pay for the
additional electricity.

You can email the address in my profile if you run into anything weird setting
it up. The IRC channel on irc.perl.org is polite and helpful.

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ScottWhigham
I've tried Kayako and Cerberus and they are both fine. Kayako is hosted for
$30-$40/mth for unlimited users, I think. Cerberus is about the same. Where
these shine is in their knowledge base - you can have a both public and
private KB.

<http://www.kayako.com/>

<http://www.cerberusweb.com/>

My thoughts are that hosted solutions are an absolute ripoff compared to
buying the software and installing it yourself on a POS box. You can buy
Cerberus for like $350, I think, and that includes everything.

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elviejo
fog bugs is free for startups. they also have a hosted version. Definitively
worth checking, IMO

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MicahWedemeyer
Nice! Just what I was looking for.

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pclark
tried zendesk? it's awesome.

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yrashk
although it is definitely not cheap... :)

