Alternatives to Hesk
A lightweight PHP help desk with ticketing and a built-in knowledge base, self-hosted or cloud. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Hesk
A lightweight PHP help desk with ticketing and a built-in knowledge base, self-hosted or cloud.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Hesk.
osTicket
A long-established open source support ticketing system that you host on your own server.
osTicket is an open source, mature self-hosted ticket system, so moving to it gives full source access but no official cloud-hosted version of the same product.
FreeScout
A self-hosted open source help desk and shared inbox, modelled on Help Scout and Zendesk.
FreeScout is open source and runs on ordinary PHP and MySQL hosting with unlimited agents and mailboxes, with extra channels offered as separate modules.
UVdesk Open Source
A free open source PHP help desk built on Symfony, with email piping and a knowledge base.
UVdesk Open Source is an open source Symfony-based PHP help desk that also includes a knowledge base, plus email piping and automated workflows.
Faveo Helpdesk
A self-hosted open source ticketing system for support teams, built on the Laravel PHP framework.
Faveo Helpdesk is an open source self-hosted ticketing system on Laravel, though documentation on its repository page is limited.
Zammad
A web-based open source help desk and ticketing system you install on your own server.
Zammad is an open source help desk with packages and Docker images, but it runs only on Linux servers and is heavier to set up than Hesk.
Trudesk
An open source help desk with real-time tickets, built-in chat and email-to-ticket conversion.
Trudesk is an open source self-hosted help desk adding built-in chat and real-time updates, from a smaller project than older help desks.
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
A hosted IT help desk for tracking, prioritizing and managing user support requests.
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk is hosted only, with a free Core plan and mobile apps, and has no self-hosted install option.
GLPI
An open-source IT service management suite with help desk, asset inventory and CMDB.
GLPI is an open source suite adding asset inventory and a CMDB to the help desk, with a broader feature set that takes longer to configure.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Hesk as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Freshdesk
A cloud customer service help desk with omnichannel ticketing, automated workflows and AI agents.
Hesk is a lightweight PHP help desk with a knowledge base that you can self-host or use in the cloud, but it is not open source.
Help Scout
A hosted shared inbox and help desk service for customer support teams.
Hesk is a simple PHP help desk with a knowledge base that can be self-hosted or used in the cloud, and is not open source.
Jira Service Management
Atlassian's hosted IT service management tool for requests, incidents and change management.
Hesk is a lightweight PHP help desk with a knowledge base that can be self-hosted or used in the cloud, but it is not open source.
Zendesk
A hosted customer and employee service platform for handling support tickets across channels.
Hesk is a lightweight PHP help desk with a knowledge base that can be self-hosted or used in the cloud, though it is not open source.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Znuny
An open-source ticketing and service desk system forked from the OTRS Community Edition.
Freshservice
A cloud IT service management platform for help desk tickets, IT operations and asset management.
iTop
An open-source web application for IT service management and configuration management databases.
