Open Source Help Desk and Live Chat: 4 Zendesk and Intercom Alternatives

Zendesk and Intercom are hosted services, and both price their help desk per agent seat (as of October 2026, see the Zendesk and Intercom pricing pages). An open source help desk runs as your own instance instead: customer conversations stay in a database you control, the open source editions charge no seat fees, and you pay for the resources the instance uses.

"Help desk" covers different jobs, though. Some tools are built around a live chat widget on your website, some around a shared email inbox, and some around IT tickets inside a company. Here are four from the Nodion one-click catalog, one or more for each job.

At a glance

Tool	Best for	License	Runs with
Chatwoot	Live chat plus email and messaging channels, closest to Intercom	MIT, enterprise parts separate	PostgreSQL with pgvector, Valkey, volume, email zone
Libredesk	Email, live chat and WhatsApp with a small footprint	AGPL-3.0	PostgreSQL, Valkey, object storage
FreeScout	Email ticketing in a shared inbox	AGPL-3.0	PostgreSQL, volume, email zone
GLPI	IT service desk with asset management	GPL-3.0	MySQL, volume

How we picked

• Replaces a core part of Zendesk or Intercom: a shared inbox, tickets or live chat.
• Runs as your own instance from a container image with a standard database.
• OSI open source license for the core, checked against each project's LICENSE file.
• Actively maintained with regular releases.

1. Chatwoot

Chatwoot is the closest open source match for Intercom. A chat widget on your website, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, SMS and other channels land in one inbox. Agents work with private notes, labels and canned responses, a built-in help center publishes articles and FAQs, and reports cover conversations, agents and customer satisfaction (CSAT).

License: MIT for everything outside the enterprise/ directory. That directory, which holds features such as the Captain AI agent, SLA policies and custom roles, has its own license. License file, project site.

On Nodion: the preset runs a web and a Sidekiq worker process with PostgreSQL (pgvector), Valkey, a 10 GB volume for uploads and an email zone for outgoing mail. Chatwoot needs at least 4 GB of memory. On first open, Chatwoot walks you through creating the administrator account; there is no default password.

Deploy Chatwoot

2. Libredesk

Libredesk covers the same ground with a leaner stack: a shared inbox for email, live chat and WhatsApp, shipped as a single Go binary. Teams, tags, custom statuses, macros, automation rules, auto-assignment, SLA targets with breach warnings and CSAT are all in the open source code (see its repository). It also has a multilingual help center and an AI assistant that answers live chat questions from it and hands over to an agent when needed.

License: AGPL-3.0. License file, project site.

On Nodion: one web process with PostgreSQL, Valkey and an object storage bucket for uploads. You sign in with the email System and the password Nodion generates as LIBREDESK_SYSTEM_USER_PASSWORD on the app's Environment tab.

Deploy Libredesk

3. FreeScout

FreeScout is an email-first help desk in the style of Help Scout, built with PHP and Laravel. You connect the mailbox your customers write to, and every email becomes a conversation with internal notes, auto replies, forwarding, merging and collision detection when two agents open the same thread. Agents, mailboxes and tickets are unlimited. Live chat is available as a paid module from the FreeScout module store.

License: AGPL-3.0. License file, project site.

On Nodion: one web process with PostgreSQL, a 10 GB volume and an email zone for outgoing mail. Sign in with the admin email and the generated ADMIN_PASS from the Environment tab, change the password, then connect your support mailbox. The first start can take a few minutes while the database is prepared.

Deploy FreeScout

4. GLPI

GLPI comes from IT, not customer support. It is an ITIL service desk for incidents, problems, changes and service requests, combined with an inventory of computers, peripherals, software licenses and contracts. That makes it the right pick for an internal IT team that wants every ticket linked to the device or license it is about, plus a knowledge base and FAQ for employees.

License: GPL-3.0. License file, project site.

On Nodion: one web process with MySQL and a 10 GB volume. GLPI installs itself once the database is ready. Sign in as glpi with the password glpi. These defaults are public, so do this right after the first deploy and before you share the URL: whoever logs in first controls the instance.

Deploy GLPI

Also worth a look

• Apache Answer (Apache 2.0) is a Q&A platform that works as a public help center or community, where customers find answers before they open a ticket. It is in the one-click catalog too.
• Zammad (AGPL-3.0) is a web-based help desk for email, chat, telephone and social media channels.

Before you switch

A hosted help desk handles a few things for you that you now set up once:

• Your own domain: add a name like support.example.com on the app's Domains tab. Then point the app's URL setting on the Environment tab to it (for Chatwoot that is FRONTEND_URL), so the chat widget and links in emails use it.
• Outgoing mail: the Chatwoot and FreeScout presets attach an email zone and fill in its SMTP settings. To send from your own domain, add it to the zone and verify it with the DNS records the dashboard shows (see email docs).
• Backups: conversations and tickets live in the database, and database backups are opt-in, so turn them on right after the first deploy (see database docs). Attachments live on the app's volume or in object storage, which database backups do not cover: back those up separately and test a restore of both.

How to choose

• You want a chat widget on your website plus email and messaging apps in one inbox: Chatwoot.
• You want the same channels with a smaller footprint and a strict copyleft license: Libredesk.
• Your support runs on email: FreeScout.
• You support employees, not customers, and track their hardware and software: GLPI.

Each of them runs on Nodion as your own instance in the region you pick, EU Central (Frankfurt), US East or US West, with the database and storage created for you. Browse all apps in the one-click catalog.