Show HN: Open-source email helpdesk

by frenkel • 13 years ago

42 16 13 years ago

We've tried systems like OSTicket, OTRS etc, but never found anything to our liking. Most systems were cluttered, slow or too advanced. Brimir is simple but usefull.

ericcholis• 13 years ago

I've been comparing services in this space for a bit, and I've always felt unsure of inserting this into our CS workflow.

One immediate question that comes to mind is, how well does this support something like eBay's email support system? I know that Zen Desk was inconsistent with these emails: https://support.zendesk.com/entries/21305048-eBay-integratio...

frenkel4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the reply! Clean and simple is what we aim for. Maybe we will add plugin support, but the base system should work stand-alone.

joshcrowder• 13 years ago

I like the idea - Would be good to see integration with Google Apps. I'd be interested in helping out!

frenkel4• 13 years ago

Great idea! What kind of integration do you mean?

silasb• 13 years ago

Google Apps Login integration is one.

Daviey• 13 years ago

For comparrsion, I've been using django-helpdesk which has been pretty solid since deployed end of 2008.

https://github.com/RossP/django-helpdesk/

redox_• 13 years ago

Any chance you could setup a demo or provide some screenshots ?

frenkel4• 13 years ago

Our site is still in development, we'll be sure to add screenshots! Thanks.

w0rd-driven• 13 years ago

This is my request as well. A demo or screenshots go a long way to promote something like this. A lot of helpdesk apps are alike so showing your uniqueness is key at this stage.

danecjensen• 13 years ago

I've wanted to build something like this for a while. Kudos.

zaroth• 13 years ago

Self hosting is a huge benefit I think for these systems. I'd love to see you charging for the self-hosted version. Just because it's open source doesn't mean you can't charge for it.

Will some people dig into the source and find a way to pay you nothing? Certainly. But how many people will pay if your default setup screens ask them to and makes it dead simple? Hosting the service is basically free for the resources this is going to consume. Most of your costs are probably development and bugfixing, right? So aren't you giving away the farm?

Making it ridiculously easy to set this up while self hosting shouldn't decimate your bottom line. Adding some monthly or annual license for the self-hosted version shouldn't dissuade strangers from submitting pull requests. The world would be a better place if more SaaS companies could demonstrate it's possible to drive revenue even in a self-hosted and open source model.

I don't really know if it would work, but it would fun to see you try, and write-up the experience so we can follow along!

Without seeing screenshots it's hard to know the right price, but I would guess at least $49 - $79/year. Or just put a slider with a recommended default payment based on the number of support tickets in the DB and see what happens.

Fanatical support is such a cornerstone of startup culture, if your product moves the needle on "happier customers for each support manhour" it's worth $1000s even for a small business with just a single full-time support person on staff.

yebyen2• 13 years ago

Have you heard of elivecd?

This has nothing to do with helpdesk software (it's a distribution of Debian+E17), but this was the first open source project that I ever saw that successfully got me to pull out my (paypal) wallet and fork over, similar to what you're describing.

The distribution comes in the form of a livecd which you can install "only with the help of the installer module" which I have not seen in any repository, but everything else is certainly open source. Historically the dev images have always come with free installer modules.

Of course being a livecd, you are free to use it without installing as long as you don't mind losing everything you've done each time you reboot. It may have also been the first livecd to enable a copy-on-write union filesystem (ram or on a USB stick) so that you could write into your home directory or really anywhere at all on the filesystem (apt-get install) without modifying the system image.

Thanatermesis only charged for the installer modules for stable releases, which to my knowledge started at 2.0 (debian lenny) and was supposed to get a new release for wheezy. But again, to my knowledge, no installer modules have been distributed for the new beta; they have spent more cycles on the new version of the website (which is finally looking mighty good today!)

http://www.elivecd.org

yebyen2• 13 years ago

I just tried the latest beta release, 2.1.56, it's pretty nice

Compared to compiling Enlightenment for yourself, it's really a breeze... most of what the installer module had to do was copy the rootfs to a live filesystem, but anyone on hackernews can probably do that.

Historically elive has been very good at having drivers pre-installed as well, but this round I lucked out... I think without the installer module, any closed-source drivers are not included; well my laptop only has intel hardware anyway.

malandrew• 13 years ago

I'm waiting until the docker ecosystem becomes solid enough that someone puts together a "startup in a box" setup with all the following integrated:

1) Open source gmail-like webmail

2) CI server like StriderCD

3) A helpdesk like this one

4) IRC server with web interface

5) Open-source task management like Asana

6) Some sort of login and identity management solution for all the services in the cluster.

What we'll be able to do with docker in a few years will be the organizational equivalent of what Linux did for personal computers and servers. Call it the "organizational computer" to complement the "personal computer". Standards for all of the above systems to talk to one another will eventually appear and we'll have the level of diversity in options that you have in Linux systems.

frenkel4• 13 years ago

We've updated the website with some screenshots: http://getbrimir.com/

Show HN: Open-source email helpdesk

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