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kayako alternative

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:33 am
by shiznatix
Hey everyone.

My company wants to start using some sort of helpdesk software to help organize users who have contacted us and whatnot to see what problems have come up with them in the past and whatnot. My manager guy wants to use kayako, I think this is a terrible idea. Why I don't want to use kayako:

-Closed source
--This means I can't just put at the top of the bootstrap file a small include that will keep the rest of my websites sessions running just fine
--I can't have someone who is logged into my website be automatically logged into kayako at the same time so if they want to see the support, they have to relogin
--customizing the templates is a hassle

-It is way too much for what we need. We get like 4 emails a day asking about basic stuff. Yes for bigger problems (once every 2 weeks) this would be nice but it seams like we are going way to overboard with this

So what I want is something smaller that is good and that I can edit! It doesn't have to be free, price does not matter. We use vBulletin and as much as I hate it, at least I can edit files to accommodate certain features that are needed. With kayako, nope. So, does anyone have any suggestions that would be good before I start killing everyone trying to make this junk work?

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:23 pm
by alex.barylski
While I agree that Kayako sucks...

vBulletin was my next suggestion. To handle support in software you really need something of a:
1) Community forum, possibly restricted to you and the client with an issue -- private topics
2) Knowledgebase so you can quickly reply with canned answers and hopefully avoid repeat questions.

A support system is really just the amalgamation of these systems.

If you are looking more for a simple bug tracker/issue tracker, you might want to look into Arctic issue tracker:

http://www.arctictracker.com/

There are several open source alternatives to each of the above. KBPublisher is one which comes to mind, if your looking for a knowledgebase.

http://www.kbpublisher.com/
http://aphpkb.sourceforge.net/

Then there are several commercial systems -- none of which I would recommend as they are equally buggy and easily exploited as the open source ones, but the commercial ones are hilighted far more than open source on sites like Secunia. I worked for one said commercial company and it was a weekely event to handle ticket requests because their insecure software would le someone f*ck <span style='color:blue' title='I&#39;m naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> up. Maybe go with a hosted solution, save yourself a lot of trouble.

Cheers :)

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:03 pm
by Christopher
I have heard good things about Cerberus and osTicket, but your opinion really depends on what features you need. Kayako is actually pretty good. There is also WHMCS is you want billing. Have you searched and tried out alternatives? I'd be interested to know what you find out.

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:05 pm
by alex.barylski
Thanks for that link osTicket -- looks pretty sweet. Although I still disagree about Kayako. :P

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:06 pm
by RobertGonzalez
Have you looked at something like TRAC, Bugzilla or Bugdar?

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:08 am
by shiznatix
Everah wrote:Have you looked at something like TRAC, Bugzilla or Bugdar?
it has to be skinnable and put into out website nice and neat looking. we use bugzilla for our internal bugs and whatnot but what we need for the client side is more of a email manager

Re: kayako alternative

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:26 pm
by alex.barylski
it has to be skinnable and put into out website nice and neat looking. we use bugzilla for our internal bugs and whatnot but what we need for the client side is more of a email manager
Definetely look into arborint's suggestion of osTicket then -- it's codebase is very simple. I would double check for XSS and SQLi exploits quickly though...