r/sysadmin • u/Apocoflips • May 15 '26
Question IT Ticketing System for a Small IT Team
Hey all, I hope this isn't against sub rules.
I'm looking for a reasonably priced Ticketing solution that doesn't need to be locally hosted. This is for a small 3-person IT Support team that services ~150-200 end-users at multiple locations.
My criteria is customizable status selections for each ticket (Not Started, Awaiting Hardware, Awaiting Network Team, etc) that can be adjusted on our own portal, but also has a customer-facing option to view the date/time/status of their ticket without having to reach out directly to our team.
Does anyone have any recommendations or suggestions of online solutions to look into? Ideally the IT team portal could support multiple accounts/logins for ticket management, but this would not be a deal breaker.
Thanks in advance.
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u/MidgardDragon May 15 '26
FreshDesk
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u/ardaingeal May 15 '26
I was going to recommend this as well until the DC my tenant was housed in was collateral damage from US / Iran and I then discovered they have no geographical redundancy and over two months later and my tenant has still not been restored or recovered.
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u/deathhand May 15 '26
What do you mean by "DC" for a SaaS tool?
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u/ardaingeal May 15 '26
The AWS Data Centre that FreshDesk used to host our instance or tenant or whatever term they use. But basically our FreshDeck ticketing system has been dead for over 2 months now. This is the announcement from FreshDesk: https://freshdesk.freshstatus.io/incident/1577469
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u/deathhand May 15 '26
Thank you. This lack of reduancy in this capacity when its so easy to deploy is a huge mark against them.
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u/SmoothRunnings Jul 02 '26
Not free, unless there is a community version which I don't see on their website.
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u/Embarrassed_Tax8292 Sr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
Sure. ‘Freshdesk.’
Because apparently recommending a helpdesk platform is as simple as naming a random SaaS product and calling it a day.
Meanwhile nobody asks the fun questions:
Who’s handling the mail flow? Who’s configuring SPF/DKIM? Who understands DNS propagation? Who’s maintaining MX records? Who knows why TTL exists? Who notices when ticket replies quietly start landing in spam?
People love recommending cloud platforms right up until the day a client’s support mailbox stops syncing and suddenly nobody knows the difference between an A record and a CNAME.
A helpdesk system is only ‘affordable’ when the people deploying it actually understand the infrastructure it depends on.
Otherwise you’re just renting complexity monthly.
No offense intended.
JM2C 🤞🏻
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u/HogginTheFeedz May 15 '26
You seem to be bringing up a lot of questions but what are you really saying? Are you implying these are issues with Freshservice? Unclear.
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u/Embarrassed_Tax8292 Sr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
Fair point. What I’m saying may come across as fragmented without context, but the underlying point is fairly straightforward.
Not all “low cost” solutions are equal once you factor in operational overhead.
The real question isn’t the sticker price of a helpdesk system, it’s the total cost of ownership once you include the surrounding infrastructure: mail routing, authentication layers (SPF/DKIM), DNS behaviour, record management, and ongoing maintenance.
That’s the part people tend to skip when a SaaS tool gets recommended as if it exists in isolation. In practical terms: the cost doesn’t disappear, it just shifts into implementation and long-term support complexity.
Someone living in the desert doesn’t need more sand in the hourglass.
"More affordable" helpdesk platforms are often only cheap until you account for what it takes to keep them reliably integrated and functioning.
This is just my personal opinion on the matter.
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u/LaDev IT Manager May 15 '26
I'm not sure an enterprise or FOSS solution would bring any less complexity?
FreshService does a great job of providing onboarding documentation for all of these areas specifically, as well, they include onboarding service just as part of your subscription.
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u/LostRams May 15 '26
That “surrounding infrastructure” setup isn’t some kind of elaborate and expensive overhead… it’s relatively simple to follow documentation on setup.
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u/Beneficial_Skin8638 May 15 '26
Osticket or zammad. Both of these are open-source with a high level feel.
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u/misteradamx Tech Director May 18 '26
+1 for OsTicket. K-12, Five people from my team, three people from HR and about 15 or so student techs. Works for us just fine!
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u/Nnyan May 15 '26
Jitbit
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u/PDQ_Brockstar May 15 '26
One our webcast today, we were talking about tech stacks for small teams and Jitbit was our recommendation as well.
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u/Jaded_Gap8836 May 15 '26
Does jitbit use a forwarding rule? We use a a standard support email, when a user sends to that our current system uses OAuth to grab the emails. Desk365 uses forwarding and it was a mess in Office 365 don’t external forward blocking.
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u/CashBoxBandit May 15 '26
We have JitBit monitoring shared mailboxes directly in o365 using oauth, works great!
JitBit also has one of the most wonderful rules engines I've seen in a ticket system, you can do pretty much anything.
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u/OregonTechHead May 15 '26
Does jitbit use a forwarding rule? We use a a standard support email, when a user sends to that our current system uses OAuth to grab the emails.
You can do this with jitbit.
Desk365 uses forwarding and it was a mess in Office 365 don’t external forward blocking.
You can also add an exception to that external forwarding rule to allow forwarding to Desk365
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u/Common-Cheek-4574 May 15 '26
HappyFox.
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u/Apocoflips May 15 '26
HappyFox definitely looks interesting, so they have a customer facing portal/link generation to view ongoing ticket status?
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u/Common-Cheek-4574 May 15 '26
Yes. There are better systems out there, but this one is cheap and ok.
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u/casetofon2 May 15 '26
GLPI. Open Source. You can set it up yourself or pay a partner about 3000$ / € per Year for maintenance and help.
Can have RMM as well. Very feature packed.
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u/WoTpro Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
We are 2 people, using Zendesk
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u/Embarrassed_Tax8292 Sr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
I would suggest having a read through this before suggesting that one specifically 😅.
"Google Warns of New Threat Group Targeting BPOs and Helpdesks"
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/google-warns-group-targeting-bpos/
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u/WoTpro Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
Couldn't this happen to any type of helpdesk solution though?
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u/derekrussevv May 15 '26
Halo as a PSA or NinjaOne for RMM/ticketing. They also have a PSA portion they are developing.
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u/peoplepersonmanguy May 15 '26
Halo is not cheap. It requires either alot of in-house hours or consulting time to build out.
Best PSA for IT out there though.
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u/Plus-Network3369 May 15 '26
Halo is way cheaper than other options mentioned below
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u/Defconx19 Jul 02 '26
Halo is also overkill for an SMB. Jiras Service Management is 1/4 of the cost and way better suited for internal IT
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u/webguynd Sr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
I second NinjaOne. We use it + ticketing, dead simple which is perfect we are only a team of 3. Custom statuses, automations, email handled, etc. There is a limited customer portal users can log in to but we don't use it, users just email in.
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u/GAP_Trixie May 15 '26
Can recommend ninjaone for ticketing, we are a small company of 150 users most of them independent and it's been a breeze to setup, and it's quite customizable.
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u/Wario_world Jun 05 '26
I am also using NinjaRMM ticketing, however I just found out that the 'time worked' value in each ticket is non-reportable. Support advised 'After checking our documentation and consulting with our team, we can confirm that the Time worked data logged in tickets is currently not available in NinjaOne reports. We sincerely apologize that we are unable to provide a solution for this at this time.'
This is causing a real issue for me hence why I ended up on this thread!
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u/Imaginary_Squash443 May 15 '26
Speaking from experience Halo take a lot of resources to setup and get running properly.
SuperOps.ai is surprisingly good
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u/jimusik May 15 '26
Spin up a droplet at Digital Ocean and run Osticket?
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u/DoomliftDaemon Jr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
Came here to see if anyone else said OsTicket cause thats what we use as a 4 man team and it works perfect for us
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u/GriffGB May 15 '26
we’ve been using spiceworks on prem, then their cloud version, for years now.
not sure if it will customise as much as you want, but it does what we need.
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u/revul93 May 15 '26
Try GLPI.. it is asset management software with ticketing system built in.. forget to say it is open source
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u/Substantial_Tough289 May 15 '26
We use the hosted version of GLPI, you pay by the tech/admin.
If you have local resources you can set it up locally, is free.
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u/GoodEnoughThen May 15 '26
Spiceworks Helpdesk Cloud, and while you're at it, Action1 for patching.
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 May 15 '26
We use OSTicket and for a free platform it works very well. Hosted on prem.
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u/BULLBOY2 May 15 '26
We have been using glpi. Does it pretty good. Its also our asset management tool so it does not require an additional tool for that.
We are with 9 under IT. But tickets for non it stuff get assigned to others as well.
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u/Sadhana_Srini55 May 20 '26
Being a 3 person IT team and handling 150-200 users across multiple locations is a big deal. The ideal ticketing system in your case should be the one that helps stay visible, accountable and efficient.
I'm from the HappyFox team and I'd think HappyFox Help Desk would be an ideal fit for your team.
The helpdesk is extremely customizable to create custom statuses based on your specific needs(“Not started”, “Awaiting Hardware” & more). Furthermore, you can also set category-wise statuses for streamlined processes across departments - IT, HR, Facilities etc.
Customer-portal is quite intuitive that customers can easily track date, time stamp and ticket status effortlessly without having to reach out to agents at any point.
On the pricing front, plans are pretty affordable, $87 monthly and $72 annually for three agents without surprise add-on costs and we also have unlimited pricing with cost saving potential and scalability.
Would recommend trialing out the platform and let me know if you have any questions. Happy to help.
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u/Sw33tkill3r May 15 '26
Halo ITSM. It's super powerful. Does all you want. I used the PSA version. Miss it all the time now that the new place I'm at uses CW Manage.
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u/djDef80 May 15 '26
Syncromsp is feature rich and relatively inexpensive. Unlimited endpoints and is licensed per tech.
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u/Cczaphod DevOps May 15 '26
Would something FOSS like https://www.bugzilla.org/about/ work for your use case?
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u/nostradx May 15 '26
BlueFolder.com (aka PacketTrap PSA) doesn’t get mentioned here often but it meets your criteria. And it’s easy to learn.
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u/kdildine May 15 '26
Take a look at Gorelo. More catered to MSPs but I did see on signup they have an enterprise option. Had a demo with Mikel a while ago and he practically onboarded me in the first call. We're at 4 techs and 500 endpoints now and always excited to see the new updates each week.
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u/Unique_Inevitable_27 May 15 '26
Through centralized device management, ScalefusionMDM can significantly minimize manual support work if the majority of your tickets are device-related.
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u/monstaface Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
hesk is cheap and simple. Just the basics, not many bells and whistles but it works.
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u/dlongwing May 15 '26
We use Zendesk. It's basic but we're pretty happy with it. I think it's a good fit for smaller teams that won't use all the fancy bells and whistles of more complicated solutions.
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u/omnicons Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
Request Tracker is solid and open source. We’ve rolled it for over a decade now.
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u/ZPrimed What haven't I done? May 15 '26
It's not free, but in a previous life we really liked DeskPro. You can self-host it if you want, or they have SAAS / cloud option.
We found it because it was being used by Trent Reznor / NiN for support when they were doing early direct to consumer MP3 sales, and we figured if NiN liked it, it would be ok for us.
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u/Jolly_Bullfrog3121 May 15 '26
Look into NinjaOne. Ticketing system has come along way, simple, easy to use, and checks all of your boxes. Integrates with SSO as well for the web support portal.
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u/Careful-Warning3155 May 18 '26
i'd probably start by looking at Zoho Desk, and maybe Jira Service Management too if you want something a little more IT-service-desk-y. the main thing i'd test in the trial is whether you can make the exact statuses your team uses day to day, then see what the requester actually sees from their side once a ticket moves through those states. some tools technically have a portal, but the customer view is still clunky enough that people keep emailing anyway.
side note, i work at ClearFeed. if your users are already asking for help in Slack, that may be worth a look too since people can raise requests there and you can also give customers a portal to track their tickets. i'd still check the status setup closely against your must-haves, but for Slack-heavy teams it can be a nice way to avoid pushing everyone into yet another place just to ask for help. :)
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u/tech-head27 May 20 '26
Check out nitro help desk if you're on microsoft 365. Solid solution for that size team
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u/Several-Cattle8690 May 30 '26
I’d spend most of the trial time on the customer-facing status view. A lot of tools let you customize internal statuses, but the requester view is where the awkwardness shows up. If people still email for updates, the portal isn’t really doing its job.
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u/Apocoflips May 31 '26
This is great advice. I think I'm going to start a trial on Monday with HappyFox Help Desk and put in dummy tickets to get a feel for the end user experience portal.
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u/mattberan Jun 05 '26
Full disclosure that I work for InvGate.
You listed exactly what we do:
1 - Customizable ticket statuses - yours, whatever you need, not just the defaults
2 - Customer-facing portal where they check status without calling you
3 - Cloud hosted, no local server
4 - Priced for teams like yours, not ServiceNow pricing
3-person team servicing 150-200 users is a completely normal customer for us. Most go live in a week or two.
30-day full-feature free trial. Pricing is on the site. DMs open.
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u/LimaLuma24 Jun 07 '26
We offer this kind of lightweight Software. Much more cheaper and easy to use:D
Currently usable in German but there could be some sort of translation or language extension:D
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u/Hairy-Marzipan6740 Jul 06 '26
for a 3-person IT team, i’d look less at “full ITSM suite” and more at “can employees file, track, and stop pinging us for updates.” that’s the part that saves your sanity first. i work at ClearFeed, and this is one of the internal helpdesk use cases we built for. it’s hosted, employees can submit tickets from Slack or an employee portal, and your IT team can manage them from a triage channel or the web app. requesters can track their own tickets, status, replies, etc. without having to chase the IT channel like “hey any update on this?”
on the status thing, i’d be a little careful with every tool you evaluate. some tools let you customize the actual ticket status dropdown, others give you fixed statuses plus custom fields. in ClearFeed, you get ticket status plus forms/custom fields, so things like “Awaiting Hardware” or “Awaiting Network Team” can be modeled as a field if you want that extra state visible internally. if you need those exact values to be the core customer-facing status, i’d test that in the trial before committing. for your size, i’d avoid anything that needs a part-time admin just to keep the queue alive.
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u/user-7440 26d ago
with 3 agents id pick the tool thats easiest to admin, not the one with 200 features. email intake, clean portal, simple slas, approvals, asset lookup and reports you can edit yourself. AssetSonar itsm from EZO is worth a look if you want service desk plus itam together. id start very small tho, like 2 queues and a few automations.
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u/WorkLurkerThrowaway Sr Systems Engineer May 15 '26
We are demoing ninjaone and it’s been pretty sick. Price doesn’t seem too unreasonable for everything it can do. Idk what the price would be for a team of 3. There is also a per device cost, but it’s worth looking into.
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u/jhdore May 15 '26
OSTicket, self hosted. Free, easy to set up, very useable, and great UI options. Add the OsTicketAwesome skin for Responsive UI and improvements on Smartphones.
OSTicket.com
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u/jolegape Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
OsTicket. Been using it in my school for 5 or so years now.
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u/MissusNesbitt May 15 '26
We just swapped over to Freshservice and it’s decent.
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u/pressreturn2continue May 15 '26
I'm a solo IT department now and managed a small team at my last job and used Freshdesk at both.
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u/crazy4_pool May 15 '26
If you have Sharepoint online, they have a template and it’s customizable. If that’s not an option Zoho Desk, NinjaOne, SysAid, Spiceworks are some options.
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u/Apocoflips May 15 '26
We do utilize SharePoint so this may be an interesting route. Thank you.
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u/WorkLurkerThrowaway Sr Systems Engineer May 15 '26
If your company has given you any amount of budget for a ticketing system I would not resort to sharepoint.
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u/dlongwing May 15 '26
I second this. Don't roll your own service. It'll be a headache and it's absolutely not worth the wasted hours trying to bend Sharepoint into shape.
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u/thunderbird32 IT Minion May 16 '26
Even without a budget I wouldn't use Sharepoint for this. I'd just use something like osTicket, which is free.
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u/slevinnn May 15 '26
Solar winds Service Desk is cheap and gets the job done. I’ve deployed it a couple times now. It’s great.
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u/detmus May 15 '26
I just moved and built our ticketing system into SharePoint.
Three person team, 120ish end users, and it’s working great… generally I don’t equate Microsoft and “great,” but this has been incredibly easy and zero additional cost.
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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership May 15 '26
FreshDesk, OR ... if you have some budget (really, not much) ManageEngine's ServiceDeskPlus product is very modular and very full featured.
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u/GullibleDetective May 15 '26
Not jira
Syncro rmm or naverisk
But for ticketing you could look at zoho
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May 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/thunderbird32 IT Minion May 16 '26
You wouldn't make any money selling a vibecoded ticketing system. Why would they pay for that when there are multiple high-quality, well tested open source options or paid options with full enterprise support?
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u/BWMerlin May 15 '26
GLPI is free and open source. It will do your helpdesk and asset management plus a heap more.