Freescout

Running support on Zendesk or Help Scout leaves your customer conversations on somebody else's server, with a bill that grows alongside the team. FreeScout answers both problems, a free help desk and shared inbox built on Laravel, written from scratch and hosted wherever you like.

Everything arrives in one inbox. Email flows in over SMTP, IMAP or POP3, with modern OAuth authentication for Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace, while WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Slack and live chat feed the same queue.

Day-to-day work is shaped by a handful of behaviors.

• Unlimited everything: agents, tickets and mailboxes are never counted against a license.
• Collision detection: a notice appears when two agents open the same conversation.
• Conversation handling: forwarding, merging, moving, starring, internal notes and auto replies are built in.
• Accessibility: the interface fully supports screen readers and works on mobile.
• Translations: close to thirty languages ship with the application.

Requirements stay modest, Nginx, Apache or IIS, PHP 7.4 through 8.x, and MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, with no stated processor or memory floor, so shared hosting is a realistic target. A web installer and updater handles setup and upgrades, and one-click installs exist for Docker, Cloudron, Softaculous and several managed hosts. Mobile apps mirror the web version, installed modules included.