Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Kustomer

Chatwoot is an open-source customer support platform that centralizes customer conversations into a shared, omnichannel inbox. It combines live chat, email, and popular messaging integrations with tools for team collaboration, automation, and customer context.

Key Features

• Omnichannel inbox for managing conversations across website chat, email, and supported messaging channels
• Website chat widget for real-time customer messaging
• Help center portal to publish FAQs and support articles
• Team collaboration tools such as private notes, mentions, labels, and canned responses
• Workflow automation including auto-assignment, business hours, and autoresponders
• Contact management with customer profiles, history, segmentation, and custom attributes
• Reporting and analytics including agent/inbox performance and CSAT reporting
• Integration options for common support workflows (for example Slack and external tools)

Use Cases

• Customer support teams handling live chat and email in a single shared inbox
• SaaS and e-commerce support desks needing contact context, automation, and CSAT tracking
• Organizations replacing proprietary helpdesk tools while keeping control of customer data

Limitations and Considerations

• Some channel integrations and advanced capabilities depend on configuring external providers and environment variables

Chatwoot is a strong choice for teams that need a modern, scalable support desk with omnichannel communication and built-in productivity features. It works well for both internal support operations and customer-facing support at growing organizations.

osTicket is an open source support ticket system for managing customer and internal help desk requests. It consolidates inquiries from email, web forms, phone, and API into a single multi-user web interface so teams can track, respond, and archive support conversations.

Key Features

• Centralized ticket intake from email, web portal forms, phone/manual entry, and API
• Agent-facing web interface for assigning, replying, and tracking ticket status
• Ticket filters and routing to help triage requests to the right department or queue
• Customer support portal for creating and viewing tickets
• Configurable help topics and categories to standardize request intake
• SLA and business-hours handling for response and resolution tracking
• Basic reporting and dashboard views for help desk metrics
• Ticket archiving to keep historical conversations organized

Use Cases

• Customer support help desk for small to mid-sized organizations
• Internal IT/service desk for employee requests and incident tracking
• Shared support inbox replacement with assignment and auditability

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires a PHP web stack and a MySQL/MariaDB-compatible database
• Advanced enterprise features may require additional customization or plugins

osTicket is a lightweight, widely used ticketing platform designed to be straightforward to deploy and operate. It provides the core workflows needed to manage support requests end-to-end while keeping processes organized for both agents and requesters.

Frappe Helpdesk is a modern, open-source customer service and ticket management application built for handling support requests in an organized, workflow-driven way. It provides dedicated views for support agents and customers, aiming to replace ad-hoc email-based support with a streamlined portal.

Key Features

• Agent and customer portal views for submitting, tracking, and resolving tickets
• Configurable SLAs to define and measure response and resolution targets
• Auto-assignment rules based on criteria such as priority, issue type, or workload
• Built-in knowledge base for publishing help articles and reducing inbound tickets
• Saved replies for faster, more consistent responses to common questions

Use Cases

• Running a customer support desk for SaaS products, agencies, or internal IT teams
• Providing a self-service portal with knowledge base articles to deflect tickets
• Managing support operations with SLA tracking and rule-based ticket assignment

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires the Frappe Framework runtime and its standard operational components (commonly deployed via containers), so it is best suited to teams comfortable operating Frappe-based applications

Frappe Helpdesk is a solid choice for teams that want a customizable, open-source ticketing system with a clean UI and practical automation features. It fits well in organizations already using (or planning to use) the Frappe ecosystem.

Live Helper Chat is an open-source customer communication platform for adding real-time support chat to websites. It provides an operator console, embeddable chat widgets, automation and bot capabilities, and integrations for messaging channels.

Key Features

• Embeddable website live chat widget with operator console and multi-operator handling
• Chatbot/bot workflows with support for integrating third-party AI and REST APIs
• Omnichannel integrations (e.g., Telegram, WhatsApp via providers, Facebook Messenger/Instagram)
• File uploads, chat transcripts, archiving, search, and basic reporting/statistics
• Department routing, transfers, canned responses, and working-hours configuration
• Optional voice/video/screensharing integrations via external providers

Use Cases

• Customer support chat for websites with multiple agents and departmental routing
• Omnichannel messaging inbox bridging web chat with popular chat platforms
• AI-assisted support flows (FAQ-style automation, intent routing, or agent assist)

Limitations and Considerations

• Voice/video/screensharing capabilities rely on external integrations rather than being fully native
• Advanced high-scale analytics/search typically requires optional components (e.g., Elasticsearch)

Live Helper Chat fits organizations that need a self-managed live support system with extensibility and integrations. It is suitable for both small teams and higher-volume deployments when paired with optional scaling components.

Libredesk is a modern customer support desk for managing customer conversations in a unified, real-time shared inbox. It is designed for straightforward self-hosting and can be deployed as a single binary with a web UI.

Key Features

• Multiple shared inboxes to handle conversations across teams
• Role-based access control with granular permissions and custom roles
• Automation rules for auto-tagging, assigning, and routing conversations
• Macros/templates for one-click saved responses and actions
• CSAT surveys and metrics for measuring customer satisfaction
• SLA management with response-time targets and breach notifications
• Tags, custom statuses, snoozing, and fast search for organization
• Webhooks and HTTP/JSON APIs for integrations and custom workflows
• Single sign-on support (including OIDC)
• Attachments with S3-compatible storage

Use Cases

• Running a shared support inbox for a SaaS or internal IT/helpdesk team
• Automating triage and routing of incoming requests using rules and tags
• Collecting CSAT feedback and tracking SLA performance for support teams

Libredesk fits teams that want an open help desk with strong workflow features like automation, macros, and permissions, while keeping deployment and operations simple. Its API and webhooks make it suitable for integrating support workflows into existing systems.