Open source by industry / Customer support & helpdesk
Zammad
A web-based helpdesk and ticketing system: email, chat, phone and social media messages all become tickets handled in one interface.
Does it fit your team?
- Consider it if
- Most customers reach you by email, you want every message turned into a ticket in one place, and you can give the server about 10 GB of RAM including Elasticsearch.
- Look elsewhere if
- You only have a small server: the minimum is 6 GB of RAM, and without Elasticsearch search is very limited. Also skip it if you plan to modify the code and serve it to others without publishing your changes; it is AGPL-3.0.
- Can you use it commercially?
- With conditions
AGPL-3.0. Running it unmodified adds no obligations. If you change the code and let customers or staff use it over a network, you must offer those users your modified source. The README states that the code is owned by the Zammad Foundation, which is independent of the commercial provider Zammad GmbH.
- Is it still maintained?
- Active
Last push on 2026-10-13. The repository is not archived.
- How hard is it to deploy?
- Moderate
You can install from packages (CentOS / RHEL 9 and 10, Debian 11 to 13, Ubuntu 22.04 to 26.04, openSUSE Leap / SLES 15 and 16), or use Docker Compose or Kubernetes. It needs PostgreSQL 15 or newer and Redis 7 or newer; the package install sets both up automatically. Docker Compose needs at least 4 GB of RAM, and you first raise the host’s vm.max_map_count to 262144 so Elasticsearch runs properly.
- What does it cost?
- Moderate
The software is free. The stated minimum is 2 cores and 6 GB of RAM, plus 4 GB if Elasticsearch runs on the same server; the example for up to 40 agents is 6 cores and 6 GB, plus 6 GB for Elasticsearch. The docs make no disk recommendation. If you would rather not self-host, the hosted plans in October 2026, billed annually and excluding VAT, are €7 per agent a month (up to 5 agents), €16 (up to 35) and €25 (unlimited).
- What to watch out for
- Search and reports depend on Elasticsearch
The docs call Elasticsearch “optional but strongly recommended”: Zammad runs without it, but search is slower and very limited, and features such as reports and searching inside email attachments rely on it. When you self-host, updates, backups and availability are yours; official support contracts for self-hosted installs start at €2,999 a year excluding VAT. If you deploy with Docker, support covers only the Zammad application, not Docker itself.
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